Are good schools oversubscribed everywhere? Or is it just London / inner cities?

[lowrib]

Having lived in London all my life I'm used to good schools being over subscribed, and this being a real problem. I just assumed it was the same everywhere.

DP is from Scotland, and says it's not like that at all. He says in Scotland you just go to your local school and it's fine. It that true?!

Also, in general are there places where great schools are easy to get in to?

The reason I'm asking is because we're planing to move out of London and settle somewhere less urban for DS's school years. Don't know where yet - we have ties to quite a few places in England, Scotland and Wales, and all bets are on right now.

So, in a few years time, DS will be starting school in the September intake. In a perfect world, what would suit us would be to move in the June / July, just a few months before term starts. But that won't work from a school application point of view will it?

Originally I thought not, but then again if there are in fact areas which good schools aren't over-subscribed, then we could just turn up next to a good school and get a place, couldn't we?

I'm confused - help!

TIA

It is a real problem, more in other parts of the east midlands then in Derby though to be honest. I moved ds to the local primary from a private school last year. It's a good area and there was 3 places availiable. It wasn't a good school though, hence why he's no longer there. The 'outstanding' secondary is a bus ride away and is always over subscribed, our catchment school is dire so was out of the question. Parents can apply for places at any secondary school, every other parent is applying though and places are limited. If every school was a good school there wouldn't be a problem.

Lowrib "That's what it's like in Scotland, according to DP and bigstripeytiger"

depends whereabouts in Scotland you live
Its getting more like England every year. And the class size reduction promised by the SNP government hasnt happened. Parents have been taking councils to court to shoehorn their kids into popular schools.

Hi Aliarse. Whearabouts are you, if you don't mind me asking? (Wondering which areas you're talking about?)

edinburgh

Is it a city / rural difference in Scotland do you think, or is that too simplistic?

If I have understood this correctly, in Scotland you are guaranteed a place at your local catchment primary. You can request a place at a different school if you wish. SATs etc do not exist, and from what I understand the majority of parents use their local catchment school. This system seems much more sensible to me than the strange pseudo-choice we have in England.

On the business of 'good schools', when people discuss good schools in London they do often use this term to mean largely white, middle class schools. The middle class white schools in rich bits of London obviously get much better SAT scores than the schools with a poorer, more ethnically diverse population. It seems to me that the way OFSTED reports work must favour them as well. In my bit of London, all the schools with outstanding OFSTEDs are in very rich areas.
DS goes to a very ethnically mixed school with a middling sort of OFSTED and fairly low test scores. It seems to me to be a really good school. Many of the local middle classes would more or less bankrupt themselves to go private rather than send their children there. I think this is largey due to SAT scores and OFSTED reports rather than race directly.

sorry i only know about here
I mis-typed council as the plural

DP is from Edinburgh originally. He says that's news to him, things must have changed.

ThursdayNext "The middle class white schools in rich bits of London obviously get much better SAT scores than the schools with a poorer, more ethnically diverse population."

I agree the SATs scores are obviously a bit of a circular argument. For example where you have people with English as a second language - of course SATs scores will be lower if your English isn't great! That doesn't mean of course that individual children aren't reaching their potential. It's one of the many reasons why it's really unwise to take SATs scores at face value.

I thought that was what 'value added' was trying to address? Isn't this supposed to measure how much children improve, no matter what level they're at? (My knowledge of this is limited, forgive me if I have the wrong end of the stick on how 'value added' works! I also have no idea how effective or not it is!)

Am I right in thinking that in Scotland you don't have SATS or league tables?

Have I hit the nail on the head here maybe?
Are the league tables actually the problem here?

Or was it like this in England before SATs anyway?

We're in Manchester and have the same problem with oversubscription. But ironically - a scottish lady told me the same thing about Scotland. I don't understand the education system there but they don't seem to have the bad schools that we do! Scotland's academic year starts in August as well so I would assume that if you had an August birthday you would be the oldest of the next year down....

I initially wanted my child to go to our local high school but we are not in the catchment area for it. That is because we live close to the school and we are one of the poorest areas in Europe. The catchment area for our local high school extends to the Bolton borders to include the affluent villages but not the road opposite the school. There were no problems about this and local children got in on a distance category until a sudden unexplained population explosion happened just after a couple of countries joined the EU about 4 or 5 years ago, though of course, that might not necessarily be the reason why and they say they don't know - it just happened. Our catchment area school is the 3rd nearest to our house and I wouldn't send a dog to it. We will get a place in our 2nd nearest high school (which is now oversubscribed also but didn't used to be) which is a nice ordinary comprehensive school. We are moving house because of this - and so are most other families that we know.

Weeeell

I live in a middle class suburb of a small city in the Midlands. Our nearest school (10 mins walk) is very good IMHO; its Ofsted is "good" and the pupils do well in SATs. More to the point in my view is its ethos, the HT, polieness and behaviour of pupils etc.

If you live in the area you will get in; we also take pupils from out of catchment, tho more in some years than others.

AFAIK every school in the city (which I am sure includes many you might classify as "good" (can you tell I am uneasy with this label!?) offers places to all catchment area applications.

Not sure if this answers yr question? Obviously some people don't get where they want to go but that's because they put down the school in the nice part of town but don't live there.

BTW A school being "oversubscribed" doesn't necessarily mean that people from catchment can't get in; just that lots of hopeful parents put it on their list

Why do you want to move house so close to yr DS's school start date? It's not ideal in many ways wrt school, tbh (tho it may suit you for some other reason I guess).

While I agree that the choice mantra is a load of bobbins, it's not true where I live that there is no choice. My DC go to the local school for lots of reasons but there were certainly other options. I know lots of people whose children go to a school here which they are not in catchment for.

"Why do you want to move house so close to yr DS's school start date?"

It's to do with finishing of contract dates. Any earlier than June 2013 and it'll be a pain. It could either involve a commute (which will be impossible if we end up in Scotland for instance which is one of our options) or effectively living in two places for a bit, which is far from ideal on many levels (and may not work with catchment areas rules anyway). Or, and this is my least favourite option - staying put that year and moving DS's to a new school the following year.

There may be other ways round that part of the problem (e.g. different job!) but I wanted to get my head round when we need to know where he'll be going.

Bristol seems to have largely the same issues as London, I think. I wouldn't suggest moving here for stress free school applications, although the rural areas around us,ie South Glos and North Somerset seem to be better at offering good options. I think, simplisticly, that it does seem to be a city/country thing...

I don't think it was Tony Blair who started the idea of people choosing schools.

Back in 70s/80s my parents didn't opt for the nearest school for us for primary or secondary.

I think it is the existence of league tables and ofsted reports that has encouraged large numbers of people to all rush for the same one or two schools in a particular area. It is human nature to want your child to be at a school that is perceived to be a good school, even though your child may do as well in a school where there are fewer able pupils or overall results are less good.

To answer OP if you are thinking of moving to the home counties I'd move before the applications deadline if possible. If you are thinking of a very rural area eg. Herefordshire you can probably still get into a good school as a late applicant.

ShoshanaBlue - Scotland is different to England in terms of when children start school - The cut-off up here is the end of february, so children are a minimum of 4 1/2 when they start. Also if the child is born between Dec-Feb (not sure of exact dates) parent can choose to defer for a year) this means that if a child has a dec-feb birthday they can start school at 4 1/2 or 5 1/2 depending on the parents wishes.

Lowrib - there arent SATs up here. Im not aware of widely publisised league tables as such, though have seen data comparing educational performance in different primary schools. IMO the main reason it works is that most people just go to the local school.

bigstripeytiger you're brilliant! I had heard of the deferment in Scotland, but (because of my screwy maths) didn't think it applied to us, but if it's Dec to Feb it would.

Does that means, that if DS started late in Scotland, there might well be other children who were starting late with him too - i.e. it perhaps wouldn't be as disruptive as I had imagined if he started later?

I looked up the SATS stuff in Scotland BTW.

I found this article.

Here's an excerpt:

"The curriculum in Scotland is far less rigid and centrally controlled than in the rest of the UK, and allows teachers and local councils more freedom and autonomy to decide if and when a child will be tested. It is an autonomy that Scottish educationalists take pride in.

Mary Simpson, an authority on Scotland's assessment policy at the University of Edinburgh, said a great deal of trust is placed on the teacher's skills to judge a child's progress and suitability.

"Scotland has always had a much more egalitarian, bottom-up trust in the teacher," she said.

Under the five to 14 curriculum, children work through a series of six levels, known as A to F, in up to 19 subjects ranging from languages and maths, to music and ICT. Each level has a test for English and maths but there are no formal regulations requiring each child to sit each test at each level, or when that test is sat.

It is left to Scotland's 32 councils or teachers in each school, to decide when and if a test is sat. While in England every child sits an exam at seven, in Scotland some councils dictate that each test should be taken while most are more flexible and may ask for only two or three tests of each child ...

The Scottish national assessment programme, which measures a school's performance, is designed to measure whether the teacher is getting it right. "The system in Scotland is still being designed to give informed judgment to the teacher, for improving and fine-tuning their teaching, not to judge, segregate or label children," she added. It appears to have succeeded: Scotland's ranking internationally on maths, language and sciences has improved since the mid-1990s and is now well above average."

Sounds great!

oops! This article!

lowrib

Deferment is pretty common up here, and would not make a child stand out at all. My impression is that a child with a late Jan/feb birthday is more likely to be deferred than not.

The curriculum is changing in Scotland. The article that you linked to which talks about the levels is out of date now, as curriculum for excellence is replacing it, and it remains to be seen how that will work out, but the principle of progressing at a rate appropriate for the individual child remains.

My DD1's school is very good and is often undersubscribed (rural Hants). I would say that pressure on schools tends to be less in rural areas because there hasn't been the huge growth in housing you often get in towns.

OP, you mention Wales, don't know where but we are in Wales and certainly where we are you could choose any of the three schools within reasonable travelling distance (you would only get funded transport to the nearest though).

All are perfectly ok schools, the main differences are how 'welsh' they are (ie is Welsh or English the playground language).

At secondary level, there is really only one (possibly two depending on exactly where you live) option on schools, and no private schools nearby - so yes, going back to an earlier literary example - Pandora Braithwaite and Barry Kent would be going to the same school. Neither is great but neither really terrible, as far as I can see.

I reckon if you go somewhere rural enough with a thinly scattered population, the nearby school will have to let you in pretty much regardless as the council won't want to pay out a fortune in taxis!

New curriculum for excellence in Scotland, so there have been changes recently, but I have never heard of anyone being refused a place at school. I am in rural Scotland, people send their dc to the school they want them to go to - if it is not in your catchment you have to provide transport yourself. The school rolls are dropping here, less children around, so the days of tiny schools are numbered imho.

The whole over subscribed school thing is to do with England afaic tell.