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?

How can you get 2 or 3 kids to different schools all at the same time?!

Get over it op.

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.

Where are these schools? In our LA it is only large town schools (of which there are not loads, mainly on the coast) that have any space at all. Even then, we’re talking about library spaces etc, not extra classrooms. We’re part of an informal group of 12 village schools in our area, and not one of these buildings has enough space for the 33+ children crammed into each tiny Victorian classroom, let alone an extra class.

You don’t. If you move miles away you move your kids school. I’m not talking about people moving down the road here. And why should I get over it? Why should we just accept things that don’t seem right?

Which is why the Scottish and Australian systems work. The older one is guaranteed a place.

Well, planning and better funding. Australian first year of school class sizes are capped at 26.

We were in temporary accommodation 5 different ones so do you think I should have moved my kids 5 times?

Generally there is one as schools are much more experienced and expecting of bigger classes.

None of the year groups in my school had only one class.

I do think in general Scottish schools are bigger (in terms of having a an extra few classrooms) as they’re used to having to accommodate changing numbers, but generally numbers tend not to change that much. There wasn’t another boom year in the whole time I was at primary, for example.

Parents physically can't get their children to multiple schools when they all start at the time.

Imagine having 3 primary age children all going to different schools a 10-15 minute walk apart.

Siblings should have priority for this reason.

I don’t understand the argument that there is more than one class? many English schools are 2/3 form entry, that just means a problem arises for the 61st or 91st child instead of the 31st.

to @ARichtGoodDram

But the problem rarely arises, because the catchment rules are strict. The schools have a fair idea of how many students are coming each year.

If there is a small boom, they manage, because there has been more investment in schools.

In answer to your question, anyone can challenge oversubscription criteria. Schools are required to consult on their admissions policies and you can feed into that. If you then think the policy is unfair in some way, you can contact the school’s adjudicator, who will look into your complaint and then publish their judgement and may require the school to make changes. I doubt it will help you, unless you have younger children, but it may help other local families.

I also doubt that any adjudicator would find it an unfair policy, as hundreds of schools across the country do similar (and hundreds have a catchment siblings priority)

Both are accepted practice in England.

The point is in Scotland there’s no set 2/3 form limit.

if there’s 13 children in catchment in a year group they have to accommodate that. If there’s 113 they equally have to accommodate it.

Generally school rolls per school don’t vary massively. The odd boom year is taken into account when building the school, or zoning new areas to schooling.

Sorry but am calling bullshit on this, have you seen the price of rent these days 🤔 you want me to believe all these people can afford rent on a flat near an outstanding school and a house.

Bull

Ok maybe SOME people did this but it will be like 1% of the reasons for people moving. Sooo y'all expect the other 99% to have to drop 2 or even 3 different kids at 2 or even 3 different schools every morning.

There's a good reason siblings get priority

Totally agree with you op, our council does not do this and I think it's a really unfair way to allocate spaces.

The order we have is

1. siblings in the catchment (based on distance)
2. other kids on the catchment (based on distance)
3. siblings outside the catchment (based on distance)
4. other kids living outside the catchment (based on distance)

I think this is the fairest. I'm sorry for kids who move for various reasons and siblings end up in different schools but this is the fairest may to do this.

It happens right now in my area. For some families if they can't get in the school they want their alternative would be private school. Compared to paying school fees a year of paying rent is cheap.

@Saschka Some local authorities deal with this issue by still using the address of the family home, rather than the temporary rental when it falls within the same LA or is situated nearby. This means if you genuinely relocate, e,g, for work and have to rent you are ok, but not if it is just a front to get into catchment.

I just don’t think the primary places system works very well. Needs to be a standard national criteria system. I’d like to see proper catchments. We used to live in a crummy SE town and (due to sibling priorities largely from nearby “nice” town) had to walk past three schools to get to ours.

Then moved to an area where the highest priority was “it’s your nearest school”. This was a mess as we didn’t live near enough to our nearest school to get a place, and then were way down the priority list for all the others. Ended up in a half-empty sink school 45mins drive away. Had DC at two different schools for a couple of years while waiting for a space and ended up appealing when youngest was out of infants.

Pre-kids we lived next to a very popular secondary school. The house over the road was rented out to a series of families to get a child in to the school. Every October a new family with a 10 year old. What a scam.

Like I said, some schools will be different of course but the majority will have space. And Primary One classes are capped at 25 pupils followed by 30 pupils for P2 & 3 then 33 from P4 to P7. I imagine by the time they get to that point that the school will have figured out a way to accommodate all the pupils in the larger year groups. Obviously in some situations like your own it isn't feasible but it usually is. It's more typical for schools here to have more than one class per year.

These are parents who would otherwise be spending £25k per child per year to send their children private, so yes they can afford to rent a flat for a year as well as run a house.

This. I’m another one who lives in a naice area with a desirable secondary. People absolutely rent and then it’s BAU once the first child has gotten in. The alternative is £1.5m on a house.

Imo the only solution is wholesale improvement of schools , so people are less fixated over getting into A rather than B.

DH grew up in the USSR. School admission worked as follows: turn up on 1 September to your nearest school. If there was a boom of kids the school would simply be expected to cope, or teach kids in two shifts. Not that I am endorsing it but I can imagine the chaos in England.

Are you on the waiting list for this school OP? Stay on the waiting list and check every half term if there’s been any movement. Moving a child during the early years of primary is not too disruptive.

I think it’s fine as it is, would be ridiculous to have multiple siblings at different schools.

put your child on the school waiting list, there’s usually a little movement here and there.

No, but if your address changes, you do lose your rights on the list. Complicated then.

We live in a city and it is pretty common here. Totally unfair to commute your kids from surrounding villages for primary. Move to the village school! - We are a town sized city that’s extremely expensive, which is what drives this. City centre can be a black hole and yet has 3 schools.

The school doesn’t begin with G does it? Exact same thing happened in our area the year my DC1 started. Thankfully, as you say, we have three other very good schools close by (and lots of movement, as it’s London) so most people end up happy.