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

Edinburgh parents as far away as Leith have taken the council to court last year over class sizes legislation (council tries to set size limit, parents win legal challenge, kids taught in corridors) to get their kids into Sciennes Primary.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8102137.stm

Popular Edinburgh comprehensive schools like Gillespies and Craigmount are oversubscribed and children are turned away. (They were last year.)

Re: deferrals...my friends seeking to defer ths year (again in Edinburgh) have been told by council that it is not as easy as it used to be to get a deferral for the Nov-Feb born child. You really have to make a strong case. It can mean an extra year of a school nursery place/funded nursery place that our council is finding difficulty affording. I would ring nearer the time and find out from the council how you would work with this. (Not just assume you can defer I mean.)

HTH

Lowrib, yes, the contextual value added score is supposed to address this problem. It's a 'measure of how well pupils have achieved relative to what they might have been expected to achieve'. I don't know what evidence there is to support it's validity, but I'm somewhat sceptical as the score for my DS' school is pretty low and it seems like a good school to me. I also get the impression that when people talk about 'good' schools they are referring partly to SAT scores but not to CVA scores.

I think most children in Glasgow just go to their local school, so I don't think it's a simple city / rural difference in Scotland.

'Good' schools have probably been oversubscribed in London for a long time, but I suspect that this has got worse over time. I would agree with snowlady's comment:
'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'
In England we fill in a form to list our preferred schools and are then disillusioned when we realise that in reality we often have little choice. The Scottish system of a guaranteed place in a catchment school with the option to request a place in a different school seems much more sensible.

I do think the problem of good schools in London is rather exaggerated though, as often when people talk about good schools they do mean good, predominantly middle class, high test score schools as opposed to good schools which have a relatively deprived and ethnically diverse population and lower test scores. People with preschool children seem to encourage each other in a sort of frenzy of school admission madness, even if they are close to a perfectly good school (have done this myself, it's hard to avoid).

I know of two boys and a girl, in the small pre-school nursery, who are now both five (one has December birthday the other is January). At least one boy in my ds's class is a February birthday he just turned 6 a few weeks ago, (he could have started school in Aug 2008.

Deferrals are pretty common now, especially here, where I think nurseries aren't over subscribed, it gives the parents quite a bit of worry when they make the decision, but I have never heard of anyone regretting deferring. I have heard people regretting starting their dc at 4 1/2 yrs(in Scotland), because they realise it is really tough to be 4 1/2 and be at school from 9 - 2.45p.m, especially if there are children in the same class who are a year older.

The stuff about deferrals is really interesting as in a perfect world, it would make much more sense for us to move a year later. I was really not keen on this though as I thought changing schools wouldn't be great for DS.

But if we move to Scotland, it's reassuring to know that DS could do a year in England (starting at 4 1/2) and then if he joined a Scottish school at 5 1/2 he wouldn't be the only new child, and this would be seen as a standard time to join the school, which I guess could make a big difference. We wouldn't actually be seeking to defer ourselves in this scenario - he'd be joining a year later in effect.

It's a possibility worth some more thought anyway.

It's unlikely we'd be moving into Edinburgh. Much more likely somewhere out of town.

Yes, but they might put him in P2...?

Umm yes, I hadn't thought of that, thanks FiveOrangePips.

I wonder how it works if you join a year late then? Might you get a choice of year do you think - or not?

(Back to choice again, but a straightforward one this tims )

No idea, but I know there are lots of people out there who would know, it may be down to the conversation you have with the teachers at the school - if you show them his work from his first year at school they will advise/direct you. Good luck, I am glad I live in Scotland, it sounds from all the private versus state threads on here that it is a pretty divisive system in England. I am not saying we don't have it here, but it is much less of a big deal for most of us - most people send there children to state schools.

I moved from England to Scotland at a much later time (Oct half term of Y11 in England) due to family circumstances. I did a week in S4, then due to the fact that I'd moved in the October, I had actually missed 18 months of my standard grades, rather than just a year, and had had to change some subjects. I personally spoke to the headteacher, and he let me 'defer' a year so that I at least had a chance of achieving any results for my SG's.

Never did work out how the admissions worked there though, as in the year I ended up in, there were people like me who ended that year (S3) aged 16 (we broke up on my 16th birthday), and another who was 14 on the same day. Confused the heck out of me!!

TBH, I can't comment on what the education is like in Wales, but IMO, having experienced both the English and the Scottish education systems, the Scottish one wins hands down. If I could afford it, I'd move back to Scotland, for my DC's sake!

Can confirm that it depends where you are in Scotland. Certainly Edinburgh has a major problem with over-crowding in popular schools. As for deferral, generally in Edinburgh it is as follows:

Birthday Sep-Dec - Can apply for a deferred place, need backing from a HV or pre-school etc. to say your child would benefit from deferral - but it is more and more common for Dec boys to be deferred. You may or may not get the extra funding for another year at pre-school. At DC1's school he is one of the youngest boys in his year as a Sep birthday.

Birthday Jan-Feb - have an automatic right to defer based on your opinion it would benefit your child. Most Jan and Fed children defer. Also are guaranteed the extra year's funding at pre-school

Birthday March onwards have to defer until following year.