Random allocation of places (not by distance) : thoughts and experiences?

[ParentOfOne]

I understand that some schools in England allocate places by random allocation rather than by distance. Michaela in Wembley (NW London), Kingsdale in Dulwich (SE London), some schools in Brighton.

I also understand that a similar system is more common in some other countries.

Who has experience of this system? What do you think are the pros and cons? Would you welcome this system being implemented nationwide?

I think admission by distance can make sense for primary schools, because children are too young to go alone, and being allocated a school that's far can make parents' logistics a nightmare.

For secondary schools I'm not sure what to think.

On one hand I'd welcome getting rid of the tyranny of having to live next to good schools, and the admission by income/wealth which it indirectly causes.

On the other hand, I wonder if we can end up in situations where no person gets their preference. Eg what if I wanted school A, you wanted school B, but this random allocation allocates me to B and you to A? Is this a real risk? Is there a way around it?

Thoughts?

Seems pointless somewhere like my location, rural town in the SW. we have two secondary schools, one on the east side of town and one on the west. They both have a rural catchment to them as well as a town catchment. The logistics of getting to the school on the wrong side of town would be irritating, my kids can walk (1.5 miles) to our school but wouldn’t be practical to walk to the other one every day. By bus they would have to walk/take a bus from our village into town, then take a bus/walk out of town centre to the other school. The social mix of the two schools is very similar, so can’t really see what we would gain.

I can see it might be different in cities with denser population.

Do you mean a lottery system, like Kingsdale, where you have to apply and put your schools in preference order and are allocated the highest in your list if it can admit, by lottery,

Or

Random allocation as in the LA looks at the whole cohort and randomly allocates everyone a school irrespective of preferences etc?

@BangersAndGnash I am not sure. I suppose I'd like to hear about what systems there are, and the various pros and cons.

Eg I think most school places in Brighton are assigned based on a random system within catchment areas. I think it's something like people inside the area are given priority over those outside, but, within the catchment area, the allocation is random.

But then I'm not sure how often it can happen that I get your preference, you get mine, and the outcome is just too suboptimal

Kingsdale isn't entirely random - you have to sit a banding test, and 15% are music and sports scholarship places which sit outside the lottery system for the highest ranked scores.

Personally I am not in favour of random allocation. I had very specific requirements for secondary and so sat DD for almost every music place in London to ensure we had choice.

Where we live, the nearest secondary schools are 45 minutes, 60 minutes and 70 minutes, so we had a big commute whatever, but I can't imagine many people being happy if it's not their choice.

Who is also going to fund Little Johnny travelling 6 miles to his allocated school when he lives 100 yards from his nearest secondary?

All that would happen is endless appeals and endless in-year moves.

If we had been forced into that situation and allocated what I considered an unsuitable school I think we would have opted out and gone for online schooling instead.

Certainly I would have made it my main goal to appeal for absolutely every school I was interested in and to keep doing that until I got what I wanted.

It sounds like a total mess because there's so much variability between schools in this country. I don't know, but I suspect where it works they've got a more standardised way of running schools and all schools offer all available subjects? And how would it work with preferences such as kids who want to go to the same school as their primary friends, or parents who want their kids to go to a specific school? What if a militant atheist ended up with a faith school? What if school A offers GCSE Music but a gifted musician ends up at school B, which doesn't offer GCSE Music so can't progress to A-level (for example, see also dance, drama, Spanish vs French, tech subjects, art, anything where the GCSE is needed to progress)? Would it only be done at Y7 or also at post-16? What happens if you're unhappy with school allocation and need to change schools to one that better meets your child's needs, do you get another one at random or do you get any choice?

I like the idea of not having such tight catchments around good schools, but I just can't see it being a good idea if it's totally random.

You have misunderstood elements of the Brighton and Hove system for community schools. Parents still put in a form with up to three preferences on it, and the schools still have admissions policies which prioritise LAC and PHAC, compelling medical or exceptional reasons to attend that school, siblings, children with FSM in the catchment area, other children with FSM (complicated as number of places in this category determined by city average of children entitled to FSM), children living in catchment and finally other children. The difference with some other areas is just that rather than using distance as the oversubscription decider in each category, they use random allocation. But parents have still expressed preferences so this still applies if they would otherwise have more than one offer.

It can only work for small groups of schools that are close together really. Mine go to the village Secondary... it covers 6 villages and surrounding areas up to 7 miles away in one direction. If they combined this with other nearby schools, some children would be travelling for ages, probably in taxis as the school buses wouldn't be feasible. It would be an expensive mess.

But I grew up in London, there were loads of schools within a few miles. Ironically, didn't live close enough to any to be guaranteed entry. Combining schools like that into a joint catchment area, with good public transport, could work.

It will only work in areas where there is already a public transport network that allows students to get independently to and from schools. Otherwise, how are the children all getting to these schools? Do they rely on lifts which puts more traffic on the roads and means that parents need to change jobs/work patterns?

I live in a city where pretty much everyone goes to their local secondary school. In practical terms our other options (of every other secondary school in the city) were second most local school (2 miles walk/cycle); local faith school (2.5 miles walk/cycle) we were unlikely to get into as not of that faith or getting a bus into the city centre to get another bus out again (at least an hour's and often closer to two hours' journey).

Do they? Are you sure? Those LAs transport costs must be a nightmare?

@CassieAusten I understand that Brighton still uses other criteria (special needs, siblings, in vs out of catchment, etc).
And I imagine that this can work in densely populated urban areas but not in rural ones.

My main question: does the Brighton system avoid a situation where we would prefer each other's allocation? If so, how?

Eg let's say my preferences are A, B, C
and yours are D, C, B

Can we end up in a situation where:
I get C (my 3rd, your 2nd)
and you get B (your 3rd, my 2nd)

Instead of me getting B and you getting C?

I think that, yes, the system could be designed to avoid the type of situation that you describe by allowing for people's preferences on their application form. Imagine that all the applicants to all the schools are ranked in order using a random method. Then you go down the list, starting from the top, and allocate each child to the highest school on their preferences that isn't already full. So you will be allocated a place in school A unless it's full, in which case B unless it's full, etc. If you are allocated C and I'm below you in the list, there's no way I could get B as it must have already been full when they were doing your allocation.

Disclaimer: I have no idea if the Brighton system works that way. I'm just suggesting an approach.

I think this could work well in my local town. Lots of schools, all pretty good but quite different from each other, reasonably good bus network. I have a feeling there may be downsides I haven't thought of though!

There was a big thread on this a year ago and it wasn't popular.

There are also huge complaints locally about Kingsdale having lottery entry which means that kids from 20+ miles away get places and kids 200 metres away don't.

The thread was on Brighton or Kingsdale? The Brighton system avoids the Kingsdale excesses by giving priority to students within a wide catchment area, and using a random lottery within that catchment. On paper it sounds sensible

Alvin Roth has a great book on this, essentially no- everyone gets admittance to the highest school they ranked that also accepts them. It works similarly to the medical match but instead of 'ability' or the priorities usually given (distance, siblings etc) its based on random numbers.

I think that one of the down sides may be that if you didn't get the school you wanted it would feel more unfair than using a system (eg distance or whatever). It may not actually be more unfair (especially given your point about house prices near good schools) but it may feel unfair because people don't like to think that such a big decision was just down to random chance / bad luck rather than some kind of accepted system.

It was on the concept of random allocation in general. Almost nobody was in favour.

It would only really work if all schools had the same offer available though.

DD's school offers music, 3 MFL, Latin, Classical Civ and a huge range of sports and extra curriculars.

Of our 3 local options, only 1 offers music. One offers 2 languages. None offer Latin or Classical Civ and the extra curricular offer is pathetic at all of them.

Lots of parents won't care about Music or MFL or Latin, a significant number will.

Are we just saying to kids, tough... parents can fund music and languages out of school because our ideology of restricting choice makes things fairer?

In the end it doesn't - some parents will have the resources... time and money... to send their kids to private music, JDs and orchestras. Some won't and so their kids will just miss out.

There is already a State Plus system, this would exacerbate it.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5149998-scrap-school-catchments-now

But presumably this is also a problem with the current system, that typically allocates on distance, as the pupils wanting to study music, MFL etc may not be the ones that live closest to that school? Is there a reason why it would be worse under the random system?

Kingsdale can indeed have pupils applying from living across the road and from 25 miles away and the 25 miles kid can get a place and across the road kid doesn't.
I think it's an awful system.
I believe they are changing it so pupils attending certain local primary schools will get higher priority.
For primary and lower secondary everyone should just go to their local school and all schools should be as good or bad as each other.

I don't live in Brighton, but where I do live, the outcome in that scenario would depend on which (if any) schools were over subscribed and how close you each lived to them.

I live near to a city of around 220,000 people. There are 14 secondary schools covering the city and surrounding rural areas (along with 5 special schools).

Some of these schools have a specified catchment area and others don't. There are 8 with catchment areas and 6 without (two of those six are religious in nature).

But when you look at the over subscription policy of the schools, even the ones with a catchment area, then they all state that if the school is oversubscribed at any particular criteria then it will be proximity to the school that will be the tie-breaker.

My child goes to a lottery based application school and two of their friends from primary go to a different lottery based secondary school.

They are all really happy with the school. The only downside I see so far is the "local" friendship group. Because it is lottery based, kids come from all different directions and week end and holiday meet ups are not easy where as at primary school everyone is local and lives within a few streets.

@OhCrumbsWhereNow but the current system, by distance, favours those with more money. It favours those who can afford to buy closer to good schools, where houses cost more, or those who can afford to rent for a while next to a good school then buy elsewhere. It's hard to argue that this is much fairer or much less ideological!!

@Needmorelego yes,in theory all schools should be equally good, in practice we know all too well that's impossible. The demographics will always play a role. Plus the current system has made most secondary schools academies, which are de facto un accountable to anyone. Look at the big thread on Mossbourne : not even the department of education can overturn a school's decision! 300 people came forward with allegations of emotional abuse and cruelty, and nothing has changed.

Thats an argument for aptitude testing really.

I think it's a terrible idea, but I'm in Scotland with fixed catchments, so it's a bigger leap.

One if the best things about fixed catchments is knowing everyone in your local area, the huge number of friendships made on the walk/bus to school. Nobody is driven to our high school and less than 5% drive to primary.

Private school pupils come from all over and the driving just completely ruins the whole area around them. A school should be part of society/community and not totally separate. There is so much interplay between our local shops, theatres etc because the school is part of the same community.

The schools just represent the areas, most people are happy moving for am extra two bedrooms and the school only being a bit worse. It's all on gradients rather than fixed lines. You are kidding yourself if you don't think that richer parents wouldn't play the system, whatever it is.