hacked off with my areas 2008 primary admission process

[magicfarawaytree]

The admission criteria for community and voluntary controlled schools will allocate places to comply with national requirements as follows:

For pupils who have a statement of special needs naming the school
For children in public care

Following this:

Sibling applicants
Exceptional medical/social reasons
Children resident within the priority area of the school

Other applicants

so basically no longer guaranteeing children within catchment area a place. Its stinks with a capital S. Our school is not a top performing school by any stretch of the imagination. ranks almost 40 out of 90+ schools. and of the 4 closest schools is the lowest ranked. I Choose to send my children there to support the local school and contribute to improving what is a good but could be much improved school. also not having to do a nightmare run to school, it have a broader range of children most of than the other local schools.

one of the two kids who didn't get into ours this year is from a village 10 miles (20 mins) away, where my parents live. Her older bro is in our school because they moved into their village when he was already in school and ours was apparently the nearest (or I have heard not the nearest but given the distance they had to travel anyway they preferred ours) place he could get.
While I fully appreciate that it is going to be a nightmare for his parents, I would have been livid if she had got a place and ds hadn't, even though they didn't necessarily want their older child there in the first place.
And if I was in their situation I would move the older child to the school in their village (while there wouldn't have been a place for him in infants due to the 30 in a class restriction, there would be one now in juniors). Yes it would meant taking him away from his friends, but that happens, andtheir secondary isn't the same as ours anyway.
I should say their village school is excellent, I am not talking about failing schools etc here.

So your child is third on thelist to get in as she has siblings there already.

do you think her place should be guarenteed over thos who are in care or have SN?

who are u asking?

Don't think anyone has meant siblings over social or special need just whether it should be distance over sbiling or not!

i think the Op posted taht she was worried her daughter couldn't get into the school as it didnt' go on proximity anymore.

her place is 3rd criteria for priority so the onlyt people who will get preferential treatment are thos in care or those with SN.

Saying that if you live within the catchment area you get is is fine if you live in a more rural environment. but if the area is as highly populated as some london boroughs then that simply doesn't work as the catchemnt area covers enough children to overfill 5 schools.

there must be a criteria or else it is nothing more than a lottery.

I live in an urban area and there is a bun fight over places in more popluar schools and the critera MFT is the same as ours - some get in some don't - although I think it's distance rather than priority area. Priority area would actually be fairer/better as it could be based on walking distances and those with another school in proximity to them.

wheresmysuntan - staggered hours is one of those things that sounds really easy in theory, but is actually quite difficult in practice, at least if you're talking about more than 5-10 minutes either way, which would probably be necessary The school needs to keep the total number of hours the same & working out who starts first/ends first would be very complicated and could easily screw up someone else's pickup. In an area like ours You could have parents with children at schools A&B, others at B&C, some at A & D etc - there just isn't enough leeeway to accomodate everyone.

why should there be staggered hours?

for a school to have so many cat 1+2 applicants that siblings were unable to attend i would serioulsy consider a different school anyway as it would appear your at a EBD or PMLD school.

i just don't understand why people should feel that being able to afford a house next door to a school should entitle you to a place over someone who has a genuine need for that school.

.

Hmm. Here catchment is priority:

Looked after children (i.e. in care - I think)

Catchment with siblings
Catchment without siblings
Out of catchment with siblings
Out of catchment without siblings

Wherever they run out of places it goes on distance as the crow flies. For admissions this sept - some of the out of catchment with siblings have got in and some haven't. Obviously, those closest to school got in.

I think it's fairer to put catchment first tbh. If you are out of catchment and send your first child there, you know you are taking a risk on your subsequent children as you are 3rd/4th category down on the list.

Big hoo-hah about people with siblings not getting in this year but tbh, they live a good few miles away so to me it's fairer that those who live just round the corner get their children in, even if they don't already have an older sibling.

Gobbledigook, I think your list seems the fairest to me. I agree that people living miles away are taking a known risk when applying with their first child.

The only potential downside to your list is the danger of house price inflation if people move nearer desirable schools.

To a large extent that depends on how the catchment areas are set up - in my town, every child in the town proper is in the catchment area for both schools (both good schools), so the house thing doesn't apply.
People living in the outlying villages and rural areas are 'allocated' to one or other of the schools, but to be honest generally have a choice where they go. It's only in really over-subscribed years that this allocation might actually matter.

But all this stuff about 'being able to afford a house next to the school' putting you at an advantage - within our catchment area the houses right on top of the school, if you like, are a good £200K less than my house that is in catchment but right on the edge, or some of the houses just out of catchment. People don't only buy a house just to get into a school so that argument doesn't always stand. The houses closest to school aren't necessarily the most expensive are they?!

It must be a complete nightmare if you don't get a sibling in - the logistics of getting them to school - but you know that risk is there when you decide to send your child to a school that you are, possibly, several miles out of catchment for. To me it is not fair that an eldest child within catchment is denied a place at his/her local school because somebody else's older sibling got in on a low birth rate/application year.

Round here, most of the primary schools are excellent - honestly - so it's necessarily the case that you are being denied a good school if you don't get in your first choice.

I can't really see a fairer way to do it than distance. As far as I'm concerned, whether you are first born or not, you should be entitled to go to your local community school and not be 'gazumped' by people that live miles out.

not necessarily the case that you are being denied....

Agree with you Gobbledigook - and your system is the same as it is here. The problem we had was that even though we were in catchment we didn't get in to the school because 22 out of 30 places went to siblings. The 8 places remaining were on proximity 'as the crow flies' and we were the 9th closest so we lost out. However,at least 6 children live right on the edge of the catchment/further out than us but got a place because of a sibling - they have to walk/drive past our house to get to the school. We have to walk in the opposite direction to our second closest school.Luckily it is doing well and has just had an excellent ofsted. BUT we are not in its catchment so should we want another child to go we would be at the bottom of the list simply because the LEA placed our first-born in an out-of-catchment school. We are not the only ones in this position.

"If you are out of catchment and send your first child there, you know you are taking a risk on your subsequent children"

Not necessarily because catchment areas change. DS1 got into our chosen school purely on proximity (about a mile by road I think) and the children of our house's previous owners went there as did several other older children in the road. A firstborn child just up the road did not get in this year. This school has an intake of 90 so it's not taken up by sibings. Should they change the priorities I would imagine that BabyDragon could easily not get in as I assume more families have moved into housed closer to the school (it's surrounded by prime family housing). I would have no chance of getting her and DSs to different schools on time.

I know it's still not necessarily true Soupy. I could be eating my words as they have knocked down an enormous house on a humungous plot further down our road and are building a job lot of family town houses on it. Even in catchment it could get harder and harder to get in if new houses keep going up.

Of course catchments can change like you say.

But assuming everything remains the same - you know the criteria and so you know your sibling is in the 3rd/4th group down before you make a decision.

Sorry, but if you agree catchments change (and certainly here there are no catchments really, they change every year) then you do not know the situation at all when you apply for a school. "Catchment" simply depends on how many applicants are nearer than you are and there is no way of telling this. When I chose the school for DS1 there was no reason to suspect that any subsequent children might not get in based on proximity alone. Thank heavens for their sensible siblings policy.

The first-born child I mentioned was allocated a school further away than our school and in the opposite direction along a busy, traffic laden road (there is another school closer but it is a one form intake and therefore oversubscribed). There would be absolutely no way that having children at both schools would be workable at all.

I do, however, think that if you move out of reasonable proximity to the school, siblings should not get priority.

Oh I think I misunderstood. Here there are set catchment areas and they don't change year on year. The set catchments have been so for years and years so generally you do know that it will be the same catchment when your sibling goes. Of course nothing is 100% guaranteed and I guess the LEA could decide to move boundaries one year - but it's not happened here for years.

If catchments did change here, it would more likely affect in-zoners. So, since our school is oversubscribed, they might decide to draw the boundary in which may cut off siblings who were previously in zone (we are in zone but right on the edge so if they shrunk it we'd be one of the first houses to be cut off). Is this what you mean? So where you are this happens every year and the boundaries move? You could be in zone one year, out the next? If so, that sounds like a nightmare and a little unfair because if you've got more than once child, how on earth can you make decisions for every child starting with number one when you don't know what will happen when it comes to their turn to go into reception?

Yes, that's different to our situation here where catchments are 'set' and are unlikely to change.

GDG, catchments in all areas are set to change for admissions in 2008. The new criteria will prob vary from LEA to LEA but if there is a priority area it will change so that rather than be 'as the crow flies' as it is now, it will be distance by road. IE the route that you wuld actually take to school rather than sticking a pin in a map where the school is and drawing a circle.

The houses nearest to my local school are bigger and therefore cost more than the houses further away, the area is also nicer immediatly next to the school which also has a bearing on the house costs.

LEA's cannot gurauntee any places to people whether they are in catchment or not. If there are 100 children in the catchment and only 50 places - half of them will obviously be disappointed.

I haven't aimed this etire post at you GDG, i just can't rememeber who said the things i was replying to lol!

So with the new system will siblings take priority or not? So would they do 'with siblings' by distance first so they could fill up with siblings regardless of whether they were previously 'in zone' or not iyswim?

Like I said to soupy - it's a nightmare when they change things because for child A you make a decision, taking into account that you've got siblings to follow, based on the criteria as it stands. TO keep changing it makes it difficult for everyone and almost impossible to make the right decision considering all your children.

this is so confusing!

I mean how can 'parents be at the centre of the decision making process' when they aren't allowed to give priority to parents who put a school at first choice?

Also, it says giving priority to siblings but not excluding local children who don't have siblings - well how the hell do they do that?! At the end of the day, there are limits on class sizes so if you fill them up with siblings you are excluding local children without older siblings aren't you?

And like i said earlier, it's not necessarily the most expensive houses right on top of the school. THe houses immediately around our school are smaller and cheaper than ones that are further out.

gdg I agree with the arguments you have put forward on here, althought with this changing the catchment area concept it has got more complicated.

I think we are lucky, in that, we live in a village and the catchment area is that village. So all straightforward. Although they are building more houses so there is the chance of the school getting oversubscribed. But any substantial developments are on the edge of the village, so not causing a problem to people in existing housing.