Scottish Primary Education

[Doublethecuddles]

Is anybody else glad that they live in Scotland and don't have the stress and worry that those in England have in getting a primary school place? There whole system seems so complicated!

I am so so glad our schools are all under local authority control.
Obviously councils aren't perfect but here they HAVE to let children in catchment into the catchment schools so this has to be tied into planning applications for new houses. Some schools can add no new capacity but the one we are prob moving to is building new classrooms this year.

Our council have a long document setting out priorities (although the council can completely overturn them 'on exception' - such as if they've let developers build lots of new flats that aren't officially in any catchment FFS) and I seem to remember that the RC priorities list is particularly wooly.

Technically the council do have to let children go to their catchment school - IF they can accomodate them. They're allowed to not take them, although if it goes to appeal they have to prove that the school can't take them (eg no space, not able to fit the classes in further up the school, not enough staff). But ours are run very close to the wire and there have been capped intakes at quite a few. It isn't even whether the P1 intake can be fitted in - if the intake can't fit in up the school they can cap numbers. I think at that point they base it on distance. I wish our council would tie it into planning applications - they are absolutely crap at this. Our primary school cluster has gone from 5 schools to 3, all of which are having buildings shoehorned into the playgrounds. There's loads of new housing going up and all they have is an area zoned for a school (which will be single stream and frankly not enough - and there is no indication of it actually being built). They seem to wait until the system is at crisis point and then flap about.

We have at least 40 P1s to come to the school, and that's before looking at non-catchment siblings. The council tried to cap the intake at 30. A few years back P1 was capped at 16, and nobody got their appeal. At the time we were wondering about a third child and joked that we'd have to live opposite the school to have a chance of a place. Eventually everyone will be allocated a place within the city, and hopefully roughly within the cluster, but I don't think Scottish primary education is uniform across the country, it seems to vary a lot by council area.

Ds's school was getting full so they had to convert the library into a classroom and put the books into the gym hall.

I've read in the press that the new hill head primary in the west end of Glasgow was considering doing pe in the car park! (Or moving their p7s up to high school early)

I know jordanhill (the only non la school in Scotland) has always high demand and I've never heard of anyone getting in from out of catchment.

I think some high demand rc high schools stipulate that you have to have gone to a rc primary school. There was quite a big furore about St ninians in East ren and new houses that were built.

Down the road woodfarm is in the top 50 but struggles to fill its places so takes lots of placing requests from Glasgow pupils.

At ds's high school someone in the connected primary didn't get into s1 because the parents had moved out of catchment, even though there was an intake of 300.

But generally it is much easier than the English system 99% of the time.

We are waiting on a placing request. When we moved into the are we were on catchment for the school ds and ds1 went to then moved out of catchment. Ds2 starts in August ao had to do the placing request. There was only 1 year that the placing requests were refused and that was the now p4's but they all got in on appeal. I'm starting to feel anxious now. The letters due out any time really. The year they all went to appeal it was nearly the end of summer hols before they found out. I would be a wreck by then I think.

Good luck youmake there might be people who are thinking of deferring, and there's generally some movement on the waiting lists before appeals. I can still remember the relief I felt when I got the phone call offering us a place.

Jackie not sure how you can say 99% of the time it is better - I know a lot of people struggling with admissions.

Our school lost their library. At the moment we still have General Purpose space in accordance with the council's rules on it - I'm expecting those to be revised in a year or so when it becomes clear it is the only way to fit pupils in.

PE is done in the hall or the remaining playground - but when we pointed out that the new building took a lot of the space away, and the hall would be needed to provide space for increased school lunch take up, it was made clear that there was no extra help. I think some schools are getting a hall extension though.

There are some schools in the area that walk the children offsite for PE - and the time taken to walk there counts towards the 2 hours of exercise a week they're supposed to have.

Hillhead - there must be a lot of people coming in associated with the university? I think that is a lovely site, but badly planned school.

In the end our local school had to find someweher else to house the nursery and then managed to make 2 classrooms out of the nursery building - it's separate but in the school grounds. I think the main issuee now is that they only have one hall. That one hall now has to cater lunch times for a far larger school as well as PE for everyone to be timetabled and assemblies etc. They do PE outside as much as possible too, but then they always have done that. Packed lunch kids eat outside a lot too though I think they do a shift pattern for lunchtimes.

I'm awaiting a placing request for my youngest dd. Her older siblings are at the school as it was our catchment but then we moved house, 10 houses out of boundary. There's 16 placing requests, 4 spaces and 5 of requests have older siblings and attend the school nursery. The other requests have no older siblings at the school and don't attend the nursery. We have excellent wraparound clubs so I think that's a massive factor. So nervous and I've another week to wait for news

There's a school near us where packed lunches are eaten in classrooms at desks - although the week the inspectors were in they managed to get them into the dining room.

Outside packed lunches I imagine are quite good when the weather is ok. This is Scotland though

To all those waiting for placing requests, our experience was that there is a lot of movement on the lists at this time of year. I know a few people who have had the 'last day of the school holidays' call, but I would expect stuff to be sorted for most people before that. And I imagine the councils want to minmise appeals.

Yes, the outside packed lunch is fine in the nice weather but it usually has to stop for a while after the first child gets stung by a wasp.

Mine are High School now so not sure where they eat their packed lunch.

I hated the waiting for the placing request letter feeling but was probably worried unnecessarily as subsequently found out school were really needing placing request pupils (High school). Despite the council website indicating that it was a school where previous requests had been turned down so therefore discouraging applications!

My DC choose to have packed lunch outside everyday unless they are made to eat inside because of bad weather. They love having the freedom to run about outside. We are fortunate we have a large playing field, trim trail and picnic benches for the children
We only have 1 which I think is standard in village schools

That's not true of RC schools here. They are open to all children in catchment regardless of faith. Our children were not Catholic when they started and I appl normally no placing request required.In fact most children are not Catholic. I don't think it's fair to judge them all the same.

The issue with places in RC schools here is quite recent I think, and follows on from general population growth/closing of schools. The rules are pretty clear, and I think if there is pressure for places, then it is only fair to give RC children priority. My MIL suggested RC school, but we didn't want to and thought it would be unfair to take the place then exclude our children from activities.

I imagine the situation varies a lot across Scotland though, and pressure is likely to be greater in the cities. Although thinking about the rural area I grew up in, I have no idea where the nearest RC school would have been. I don't remember hearing about them until I moved through to Edinburgh. We had a small local school, and a smallish private school a bit further away. And loads of outside space, shockingly more than the schools here. Plus a brilliantly ancient heating system that regularly broke down in winter giving us extra days off

The worst thing about the Glasgow-Hillhead situation is that they sold off all the properties of the schools they closed, instead of creating a community hall, or more nursery space (in addition to the nursery designed into the school), or just holding onto it for future needs, they sold it for short term profit.

The school is only a few years old, and so over flowing they could probably have reopened one of the others.

I am as optimistic as I can be that we will get a place. We live in a small town that really doesn't have a huge amount of movement on the lists. It really boils down to how many people in catchment don't go to the nursery. We do only have one daycare nursery near by and there aren't a huge amount of nursery 4's in it this year and we have 3 schools in what is actually a small town so fingers are firmly crossed that there isn't a huge number of children not in the nursery. If we don't get a place it will be another 4 years ago where we probably really won't know until the last minute.
Me and one of my neighbours are mugging the postie daily just now.

Anyone can apply for their local catholic primary school without the need of a placing request. They have a slightly different admissions criteria, ie baptised catchment is given priority over non baptised catchment. You only need a placing request if you live out with the catchment boundary.

Some of our local schools are over subscribed with pupils getting placed out with the catchment school. The local authority has to pay for transport for some of the pupils and siblings are pretty much guaranteed a place at the same school.

Never had a problem getting mine into primary school, it's a small village and they got a place straight away. I am very glad we don't have all that faff like down South!

Hillhead - there must be a lot of people coming in associated with the university? I think that is a lovely site, but badly planned school.

Oh, it was planned wonderfully (considering the derelict private property in between the upper and lower portions of the site which the council did not buy or condemn so they had to build around ) the problem is, they never considered the birthrate, nor the changing demographics in the area due to all the new student flats nearer the river. Between out if cachement allowances in the early years,and the unplanned (but could have been) population changes, they ignored all the design features that made it so nice, repurposing every square cm for classroom and no longer having the general purpose rooms meant for art & music, nor a library, nor a social hall, and converting the nicely designed covered outdoor space to more toilets. And now the suggestion of adding a classroom in the underground carpark, a space not designed for children to access.

They also sold off all the schools it replaced, leaving the council with no property in the area to use for more nurseries (again, ignoring birthrate and demographics) or for contracters to use for before and after school clubs/care so we have none to speak of, or as an actually useful place to shift a multi-year subset of the school population

Due to a fire at our school when I was a kid, my older brother's class and the one between us spent their P6 equivalent year in the Sunday school classrooms of a large church nearby. My year, the rebuild was done so we were back at the school. If they had suggested something like that for the P7s, i would have supported it.

Is there really a derelict property in the middle of it? I have only ever seen it from Kelvin Way or Gibson Street and kind of assumed it fitted together somehow

I'm frankly amazed there is another council as short-sighted as Edinburgh! They even had the gall to use the same birth rate data to justify building in playgrounds that campaigners had used to try and stop them closing schools. But at least ours are only building on playgrounds (and using offsite space such as a church hall) an underground classroom sounds bizarre.

Jeez, I don't know it was so bad, I always assumed it was much easier than the english system

I'm waiting to find out if my DS got a place at a high school that is out of my catchment area.....we moved out of the catchment area but he wants to go to the high school all his classmates are going too. I'm hoping he gets a space as his sister also attends that school but there is loads of new houses that have been built so we'll need to wait and see.

Does anyone know when we find out if our DC's got a place?

Bloody, it should tell you on the council website - as part of the placing request process document or whatever they have decided to call it. Ours says that decisions will be communicated by 30th April so I guess that should be fairly standard.

BloodyDogHairs we're in Glasgow and found out last Wednesday. It was a no. Appealing now.

Oh no! how long does the appeals take? I hope it's before the induction week at the high schools.

I've checked the website but can't find a date but I'm sure now I've asked we'll probably get the letter tomorrow