secondary education - not privates school choices

[dementedma]

Ok, so where can I find threads about secondary education that isn't an angst ridden should ds/dd go to this private school or that private school?
Ds attends local state school. Does anyone else on MN do this or is it just me?

Martorana Noooooooo, that is why a non faith parents in our borough has a 1 in 5 chance of not being offered a school place or one in the nearest six schools for their first child. In our suburb we have 3 C of E primaries, 2 catholic and two inclusive that are bursting at the seams. The Catholic Schools are totally exclusive of children whose parents have not had them baptised by six months and have a reference from their priest to say they are long standing practising Catholics, with apparently an unblemished record of attendance signed off even when away from home, and the Church of England Schools actually seem to be increasing the proportion of places for which priority is given based on church attendance in spite of guidance from above the diocese and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Their argument is that splitting the places between parishes based on church attendance widens the catchment So the pews are obviously heaving with parents of 3 and 4 year olds, no one can blame parents if the only way to get a place at a local school is to turn up at church every Sunday, and parents who cannot or will not meet the faith criteria that live on the doorstep of these schools have to put up with the traffic congestion at drop off and pick up as children are dropped off at the school whilst they have only the offer of the two schools that are not oversubscribed, tucked away in inaccessible suburbs two or three changes of bus or a hours walk away, if they have any offer at all. Vince Cable has risked upsetting the faith lobby on the issue www.richmondandtwickenhamtimes.co.uk/news/10500289.MP_wants_religious_schools_open_to_all/

Of course with the only way to address school place shortages being Free Schools or VA faith schools (thanks to our Council winning that principal at Judicial Review) that looks like being a more common issue for parents.

Sorry, shooting, that sounds ghastly. And good for Vince.

It won't surprise you to know that in My Glorious Reign there will be no faith schools either. Although the Terrier is a very conscientious little altar server- what with her being no good at non verbal reasoning........

I have asked for my previous comment to be withdrawn for reasons of confidentiality.

You only have to jump through hoops to get into faith schools in cities,if they are oversubscribed. In rural areas most of the primary schools are church schools and they serve the community, you do not have to go to church, do have to be christened, do not have to be Christian. They serve the whole community. There is no other school choice.

Mantorana - surely a school an hour's walk away is going to be about 3-4 miles away, so an under 8 should definitely be offered free transport if that is the one allocated to them?

As TamerB says most rural schools are Church schools and that's the one you go to. What these threads go to show is that the problems of cities and rural areas are often not the same, and nor should the solutions be.

I think the LEA has to offer free transport if the school they offer is more than 3 miles away. Certainly that applies round here.

How is it working in Hackney with the banding +lottery approach to admissions? That does seem to me to be a good solution, but I don't know how it works in practice.

LaVolcan I am not sure the principal has been tested because last year the parents offered one of the schools who did not make it a preference, around 9, did not take up the places, in at least two cases to my knowledge, keeping their 5 year old at home.

As far as transport goes: two miles for under 8s, and low income families up to 11 in England. Slightly different rules in Wales and NI.

www.adviceguide.org.uk/england/education_e/education_school_education_ew/help_with_school_costs.htm#statutory_walking_distance

But then again I can see that Greater London is going to be different. I am used to living in areas where the schools serve outlying villages where the bus services are patchy, so school buses for secondary pupils are the norm and even infants may be taxied to school.

There has been a bit of a fight going on in Oxfordshire about the transport issue, I am not sure whether it's been resolved. This was partly because their policy was slightly more generous than some. E.g only part of the village we used to live in was outside the 3 mile limit for secondary but they used to allow children from the nearer end of the village to take the bus also.

Lavolcan
the 3 mile issue is a MASSIVE elephant in the room in rural areas
because houses near county boundaries are sometime nearer to a school "over the border" but lEAs have not yet got the mapping tools to untangle it ....
just a matter of time

near here we have a school within 20 feet of the LEA border
and the bus to take kids to a school 4 miles away stops outside it

There is no excuse now:it's not new legislation.

However, it was much the same during my school days. We lived just inside the limit, so had to watch the 'country buses' sail past as we waited for either one or two service buses. (My brother caught the two buses, I used to walk the first mile.)