Sibling priority screwing over local kids

[SJ1987]

We missed out on getting in to our (extremely popular) local primary school. It’s an extremely good school, multiple ‘outstanding’ oftsteds, amazing pastoral/SEN provision. We live 0.38 miles and the max distance this year is 0.32 miles. The area we live in isn’t desirable for the amazing school. It would be considered rough by a lot of people.

Following a FOI request only 8/30 places went to children on distance criteria. 19 places went to siblings. Siblings are prioritised over distance.

We’ve submitted a further FOI request to clarify average and furthest sibling distance. But I know for a fact that kids attend the school from many miles away - often maybe having lived near the school before moving to ‘better’ places.

Are we able to challenge this? It seems grossly unfair that local kids are missing out to siblings who live in different towns. Is there a distance at which people are supposed to move schools if they move house? Or is this just the game when it comes to the best schools?

Not really, we haven’t moved because there are no school spaces in all three years of our local school… so they’d still not be together at one school like they are now.

All my friends and family are there, all the kids friends are there, our work is there, I’m disabled, I need the support network if I’m sick, the school was outstanding when we lived 0.28 miles from it and now it’s middling at best. Weirdly some people do consider their children’s mental health and friendship groups when they move house, and logistics for pick ups etc. It works for lots of family’s and it’s unfortunate but if you buy a house in an area with one oversubscribed school and then moan about it, I don’t see why this is a problem you didn’t see coming when you gave birth.

We aren’t all fighting you for your school spaces 😂

“Equally no one is forcing you to live in a place where you can’t get a school place that’s adequate to your desire”

That’s quite harsh… OP lives very close to the school and would, I suspect, have got a space from her house in other years. You can only go on the past data available.

Blimey

I hardly think OP is asking too much for her child to be able to attend the local school.

She has a school. Just not one she wants. Same as a lot of parents who haven’t moved their siblings…

The whole point of the thread is that people aren't getting access to their local schools!

Also your second sentence makes no sense. It's more difficult for people to move, especially the vulnerable . than it is for someone, having already made the decision to move, to also move both their children into the same school, if they hate two separate school runs!

Also wanting a school near your house , with local friends etc is reasonable. It's what most countries do, placing kids as close to home as possible.

Especially when it comes to people gaming the system. MN hates private school so much but keeps strangely quiet on this subject

I can beat that OP - local school prioritises ECHP and LAC (as they should), then siblings, then 50% of the remaining spaces go on lottery. So, in a two form entry school, you get 30-40 kids admitted as siblings, then 10-15 on a lottery, most of whole don’t even live in borough, let alone in catchment (it’s a bilingual state primary so people even apply from out of London). So maybe 10 places on proximity. The furthest distance offered is often less than 50m. We lived less than 500m away when we applied with DS, and were number 70-something on the waiting list 🤯

Luckily we liked our second choice really!

That's happened, yes. Or the music room is switched to a classroom.

Mostly numbers don't jump around a lot from year to year, as far as I understand.

So tough luck if you are bereaved, made redundant, abandoned by or your landlord issues a no fault eviction - your kids lose their school as well and have their education disrupted.

Siblings split across multiple schools is a nightmare, especially for working parents - there are very good reasons why the sibling rule dominates in the primary sector where catchments can change from year to year even without sibling priority.

Siblings fluctuate by year - the year my first was starting school three quarters of the places went to sliblings. A year later it was less than half, other years it was just a handful. Luck is a lot less unfair than disrupting children's schooling to punish them for family disruption, not of their making.

Where I live they got rid of the sibling priority across the whole county for a couple of years and it caused so many problems they brought it back again.

From my experience, there usually is a classroom because most schools expect to have more than one class per year really. I know some schools will be different and that temporary measures might have been taken at some point but usually they do have the space.

Siblings should of course be prioritised.

The catchment is often the moving party rather than the parents which is why sibling priority matters.

Should the school evict children who find themselves a hundred metres outside the catchment without moving house?

I'm sure if the parents actually moved a sizeable distance they'd move the kids school anyway but on this thread we are talking yards or a couple miles tops. Sorry but why the hell should they move school just because they moved a couple years away 😂
And the idea that all these people moved house multiple times just to get in the school and then moved a little further away to be tricksy is hilarious 😂 really made me laugh there are many reasons people move house and that's an extremely rare one.
Why the hell should someone have to take two kids to two different houses just because their landlord was selling so they rented a different home a couple streets away

Sorry if that's harsh I understand it's frustrating when you hd your heart set on a certain school for your kid but let's be sensible here

If you think it's 'extremely rare' then you've probably never lived an area with a good school -surrounded by other less good ones.
I used to live in a grammar school area and it was an open secret - similarly when I lived near an outstanding school.

Catchment is a fixed area, it doesn't change. Often old parish boundaries.

You would actually have to move a few miles to move out of the Catchment area for our school in some directions. But less than a mile in another direction. It covers 3 villages.

Funnily enough I do live in an area like that, I still think it will be far at the bottom of the reasons most of those families have moved house.
Maybe a handful of families do that but why should all the other families who moved house for legitimate reasons be inconvenienced?

It's a lot easier to have a slightly longer school journey them it is to get multiple kids to multiple schools

Just wanted to pick up on the no fault eviction situation. Me and my children stayed in 5 temporary accommodations. So my kids would have had to move school 5 times. I made sure they had that one stable security that they knew.

Yep we have “Renter’s Row” locally - the flats are rented out for 12 months to get the first child into the local outstanding secondary, then they move back to their “actual” house once safely enrolled in September, safe in the knowledge their other two kids now have a guaranteed place.

Catchment areas move in and out with the numbers of children born in the school year.

Church schools may give priority to children born in their parish but they don't have elastic walls either - too many births in one year will result in children failing to get a place, they just do it on religiosity instead of metres from the school office.

If this isn't an issue in your area its likely the school has more spaces than normally required by the birth rates in the catchment so no adjustment has been necessary in recent years.

@C8H10N4O2 thats a Distance requirement. Areas with actual Catchment areas have to define them.

On our council website it lists every street in the local authority and tells you which Primary, Secondary and College (plus preschool) your address is allocated to.

The school was a factor when we decided to move. I moved to a village with less than 1000 people total (only 40% of them under 60) and chose a house less than 0.2 miles from the school.

Was I genuinely meant to predict that I'd potentially miss out to children living 13 miles away?

If you move out of the area you should then move schools. Children should go to the school nearest their house.

There’s a good chance there won’t be an in year space at the school nearest a child’s new house