losing sibling priority

[iamthemusicman]

Does anyone have any experience of a school changing their admissions criteria and amending the sibling priority?

DS school is currently consulting on amending their criteria - siblings are currently number 2 (after LAC), they are proposing to amend this to siblings that live at the same address as when the sibling was admitted or now live nearer.

I wondered how closely do they look at previous addresses? Do they actually look in to it? Has anyone been declined a place for a sibling after moving??

I have a younger DS who wont need to start school for another 3 years yet but its a concern of mine because we were considering moving soon as we desperately need more space but i really don't want to lose his sibling priority.

Its the part about the same address or "nearer" that concerns me as we want to stay in the same area but if we moved to say the next street and lost out on a place because we were "further away" i would be gutted! Are they supposed to have a defined area... say live at the same address or (for example) within 3 miles??

All council and voluntary aided schools in our borough only have sibling priority out of catchment in our area. Our order are
1.LAC or previously looked after children
2.Children with school named on a health or special needs plan
3.Children in catchment area by distance
4.siblings out of catchment

1. Other children

As with others, I understand and agree with the principle of what they're trying to achieve, but it feels badly thought out.

Presumably you could end up with a situation where someone who moves from 20m away to 30m loses out to someone who lives 1km away but hasn't moved.

Our council changed ours as they were getting some schools with sibling only years and catchment got screwed over as people miles away got priority. That sucks and hardly fair that the ones so close are then sent to neighbouring boroughs in some cases.

We had similar problem Tomorrow round here. There were no spaces for "catchment" children at some schools, because of out of catchment siblings. This had a knock on effect on surrounding schools and it meant people living right next to the schools were being sent miles away to schools with spaces.

DC old school lost sibling priority a few years ago - faith school changed the categories and that year 7 siblings did not get a place - uproar of course, and after appeal only 2 children were offered a place.
families ended up removing all their children and going elsewhere, some stayed on the waiting list, others had siblings in different schools.
the following year the categories changed again and now sibling priority has its place again - but its silly.
we moved and kept our DC (due to SEN) at the school, and as such meant we were entitled to a sibling place for reception - we lived 7 miles away!
we have applied to our oversubscribed village school instead - and hope and pray we get a place - thankfully siblings come way below catchment children so we should get a place - fingers crossed for April - (I will kick myself if we don't!!!)

It's tricky, I keep trying to come up with alternatives which would get roughly the same end principle (i.e. stopping people renting nearby short term only to love very soon afterwards once they have a place).

Really struggling though - can only come up with having a set distance within which you can move, but it just delves deeper and deeper into an administrative nightmare.

Admissions folk - can academies choose to implement a catchment area if they do desire? I know they are their own admissions authorities, but how much free reign does that give them?

ours have done away with sibling priority altogether, saying it was too meaningless to define "sibling"

I have heard of other policies which say something like "a sibling who spends 4 or more nights a week under the same roof EVERY week"

or have clarified that they don't mean step siblings, or have said that a sibling is a child who has the same primary carer, etc.

Also, of course at the same address as the original application.

Thanks, I knew they could essentially do what they want (so long as it's legal), but naively thought that they wouldn't be allowed to suddenly implement what is effectively a catchment area without wider coordination with local schools to ensure fair coverage...

Yes our london borough has just brought this in, which effectively means if you move more than 2 miles away from the school there is no sibling priority.

It takes effect from September 2018.

The definition provided by the school sounds sensible in that if in the event of a low birth year their child gets in, that they are not penalised under catchment rulings. The policy seems to "protect" those families but doesn't cover those who may move just two streets away. Been wracking brains about how to word it to make it fit all though!!!!

I have been badly affected by sibling rule. My closest school had 4 siblings not get a place in the year we applied for my daughter. We live 40m from the entrance and didn't even stand a chance. It really frustrates me as three children in my daughter's year travel more than 10 miles to get to school (parents moved but still work in the town), five live more than five miles away and seven more than three miles away. That's half the class lives more than three miles away!!!!! We are not some rural community - we are a town with six infant schools.

I got allocated a faith school a 25 minute walk away from my front door. We would have to walk past three other schools to get there. We went private in the end.

Sounds like a great policy tbh. I'm in London and know of one local school that literally only took siblings last year - none of whom lived within a twenty minute walk. The family living directly beside the school gates didn't get a place, because of all the siblings from families that had got their eldest in then moved further away.

Protecting sibling priority for those who stay in the area seems a fair compromise.

Our school has been oversubscribed every year since current Y5 were in Reception, but before that it was always slightly undersubscribed, so used to end up taking children who didn't get in to other local oversubscribed schools.

So a family we know didn't get their DD into their nearest school despite being only a few hundred metres away and in catchment (which is a real thing here), so she was admitted to our school. And then her younger brothers were admitted into oversubscribed years as siblings out of catchment, ahead of eg my DC1 who was "other children in catchment".

The family hadn't moved house, and their nearest school was still stupidly oversubscribed. It feels right that they should benefit from the sibling rule.

So there's something I like about "sibling applying from the same address as the original application" as it protects that kind of family.

I think what they want to get at is "you can keep your sibling link so long as you haven't moved somewhere that wouldn't have got your elder child into the school when you applied" - ie discouraging people from moving close simply to get the first child in, then moving to where they actually want to live. That's very hard to quantify, mind you, although you could do a simple cross check eg "you're relying on a sibling link with a child who was admitted in 2013 when the cutoff was 1.2 km ... Do you still live within 1.2 km?"

All admissions criteria disadvantage someone. The fairest admissions criteria are those which try to mitigate already-existing disadvantage (hence prioritising SEN, LAC) rather than doubly disadvantaging anyone. At primary sibling links are defensible on logistical grounds; not so at secondary.

I wish more schools would do this. The amount of "cheating" for a school place that goes on where I live is shameful.

And definitely for secondary! I think sibling priority should be scrapped altogether.

But I think prh's post immediately after the op is more sensible than the slightly vague wording the school have given out.

Sibling priority in senior schools seem a little bonkers. By eleven children can walk or catch buses.
Lots of families I knew growing up had children in different seniors and managed to deal with it fine.