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?

I haven't read the whole thread, but the replies I read mention that it wouldn't work in rural areas. And I agree.
But it can work in densely populated urban areas with good public transport.

@LadyQuackBeth That's my whole point.
In many parts of London there are easily a dozen secondary schools which students can commute to, using public transport, in 35-45 minutes.

A system like that of Brighton, where each school gives priority to those living within catchment but uses a random allocation within that area seems fair to me.

If we set the catchment to something like 3 to 5 kilometers, it means the area is wide enough that it will include rich and poor postcodes, but still small enough that the distance is commutable and you don't send kids 20 kms away.

Again, I am talking about densely populated cities with good public transport. I am not talking about rural areas.

If we do something like this, how would rich parents game the system? If some schools are partially selective then tutoring will help, but if they are not selective at all, how can rich parents game the system?

Or am I missing something?

@LadyQuackBeth ,you compare it with private schools, but private school pupils can come from very far away. If we set a 3 to 5 km catchment, we won't have students coming from 2 hours away.

The argument that Chelsea remains more expensive than Croydon weakens, because any school in Chelsea will have council flats within a 3 to 5 km radius.

Creates way too much traffic.

My dc went to secondary 5 minutes walk away. They left at 8.50 and got home at 3:40. Plenty of time to do other stuff. I would have hated them having to travel.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow May I ask where you are based?

Most families do NOT have a good secondary school they are happy with 5 minutes away.

Any change creates winners and lowers.
Of course those who live next to a good school they like won't welcome this change.
But then the question becomes whether this small minority should block change for everyone else. Does someone who can afford to live 100 metres from the school have more right to send his kids there than someone who lives in a council flat 2 kms away?

Again, I am talking about densely populated urban areas with good public transport. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was something like 60% of households in inner London and 40% in outer London not having a car. So, again, if done properly, this policy won't mean sending kids 20 kms away and it needn't mean parents driving them for hours and hours. Not to mention that, between Ulez, low traffic neighbourhoods, school streets and other parking restrictions, driving a child to school in London has become incredibly harder, and understandably so.

"Or am I missing something?"

Yes. In fact, you mentioned it yourself:

"I am talking about densely populated cities with good public transport"

[emphasis added]

So, you're basically just talking London here?

I mentioned earlier on this thread that I live near a city of 220,000 people which has 14 secondary schools.

There is a reasonable bus service in the city but all of the routes are generally via the central bus station in the middle of the city.

So to go from one part of the city to another it is necessary to go into the centre of town and then get another bus to whatever your destination is.

If a pupil were to go to a school in a different area of the city that may well involve a 10-15 min walk to the nearest bus stop, wait for the bus to arrive and then a 15 min bus ride into the centre. Wait for another 10-15 mins to catch another bus followed by a 15 min bus ride and then a 10-15 min walk to the school.

In contrast, most school catchment areas in the city have a radius of no more than one mile. That is going to take maybe 20 minutes to walk.

@Another2Cats it seems we both agree that this kind of policy cannot work in areas which aren't densely populated and which don't have a good public transport.

We are both in agreement on this.

So what would I be missing??

Brighton isn't London yet it seems to work there.

I am honestly not familiar enough with other cities to have a view on where it would or wouldn't work. But you will notice that my point has always been that this requires good public transport. I never said nor implied it could work everywhere.

I dislike the uncertainty for children and stops schools being part of the local community, which is especially vital in london which can be a bit transient.

My son has an ehcp so it wouldnt affect me but it will create an insane pressure on london's roads, many parents wouldn't put their DC on the bus to be frank due to the number of mentally unstable people causing havoc (happens quite a bit even in my naice area!) Honestly london roads cant take any more cars!

I actually had a massive commute to school as i chose a grammar and it was an enormous PITA catching bus connections/cancellations etc. If my DD had to do that for a rubbish school i would just send her to a local private (or HS if she preferred)

@MrsKateColumbo I actually think a lot of the anxiety issues many secondary age children have stems from the big thing of having to apply to a school and hoping you'll be lucky enough to get in.
I'm still heartbroken for the child in my daughter's primary class who was stood sobbing in the playground the morning after the allocations were announced because she didn't get a place at any of the 6 schools her parents applied too.
She spent the whole final term not knowing where she was going to go for secondary the following September.
Going to secondary should be an exciting adventure - but for 11 year olds these days it seems to be a terrifying nightmare 🙁

@MrsKateColumbo I dislike the uncertainty for children and

But the only people who don't have any uncertainty with the current system are those lucky enough to live close to a good school they like.

stops schools being part of the local community, which is especially vital in london which can be a bit transient.

That depends on how you set the catchment.
If you create a system where someone living 20 kms away can get in and someone living 500 metres away cannot, then yes.

If you set a 3-kilometre catchment, then no.
For context, 3 kms can mean a 10-minute bicycle ride or 15 minutes - 6 stops on the bus.

You cannot tell me that we'd destroy a sense of local community if we give the same chance to a family living 3 kms away and to one living 100 metres away.

It will create an insane pressure on London's roads

Why? If you are assuming that most London secondary schoolchildren walk to a school next door, whereas with this policy most would be driven by their parents, both assumptions are wrong.

The only stats I have managed to find were old (2000 and 2008), but mentioned that ca 55% of secondary school kids in London take public transport.
If you consider that these figures include private schools and that miles driven in London have gone down (and plummeted in inner London) since then, the % for state school kids now is likely to be even higher.

https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-does/questions-mayor/find-an-answer/school-buses-0#:~:text=Answer&text=Nearly%2050%25%20of%20children%20at,TfL%20bus%20network%20each%20schoolday.

https://lcc.org.uk/news/secondary-school-children-mind-the-gap/

many parents wouldn't put their DC on the bus to be frank due to the number of mentally unstable people causing havoc (happens quite a bit even in my naice area!)

Source? Again: most secondary school kids already travel by public transport in London

I actually had a massive commute to school as i chose a grammar and it was an enormous PITA catching bus connections/cancellations etc. If my DD had to do that for a rubbish school i would just send her to a local private (or HS if she preferred)

I presume your grammar was not 3kms away and/or public transport links were poor?? If so, then your experience is not relevant

@Needmorelego I actually think a lot of the anxiety issues many secondary age children have stems from the big thing of having to apply to a school and hoping you'll be lucky enough to get in.

Do you mean with a Brighton-like random allocation, or with the typical system which allocates mostly by distance?

My grammar school was an hour, taking the bus into town and then a further bus to where it was. The buses frequently didn't turn up/had too many people so i had to walk part of the way, it was actually only about 4 miles but could take 2 hours on a bad day.

My cousins walked to their school and i always envied them 🤣🤣.

Where i am in london everyone in my little area gets one of the 3/4 schools so actually all primary kids do avoid uncertainty atm, and kids can travel in groups for safey

How many schools do you have within 3km?

No just the fact that instead of everyone going to their nearest school you have to apply and hope you will be lucky enough to get a place.
It's a pressure that 11 year olds don't need.
Even in the days when everyone did 11+ you'd know right from your early school days you'd be going to either Anytown Grammar or Anytown Secondary Modern - not possibly Miles Away Grammar or Next Town Modern.
You went to the local school.
I don't know how many schools you can apply for in Brighton but in London it's 6 - and even then some don't get one of those.
It should be simple.
Children should just go to their local primary which feeds into a local secondary.

@MrsKateColumbo Where i am in london everyone in my little area gets one of the 3/4 schools so actually all primary kids do avoid uncertainty atm, and kids can travel in groups for safey

Not all of London is like that. In fact, London is full of so-called black holes, ie of areas which are close enough to many decent schools that the distance is easily commutable, but not close enough to be admitted.

So you can have situations like someone not admitted to a school which is 1500 metres away, but then assigned to a crap school, undersubscribed because no one wants it, which is 6 kms away.

For primary schools, distance can make sense (even if it creates injustices) because kids cannot go to school by themselves.

For secondary schools, I get why someone living 1km away should be prioritised over someone living 10 km away: sense of community, travelling times, etc. But, for secondary schools, why should someone living 100 metres from the school be prioritised over someone living 1500 metres away? What is the rationale there?

@Needmorelego Children should just go to their local primary which feeds into a local secondary.
In an ideal world, maybe.
But we don't live in an ideal world.
Schools are too different from each other.
And, again, the trend of making most secondary schools academies means that they are completely unaccountable to anyone. Have you seen the long thread on Mossbourne https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/5225872-mossbourne-academies-investigations-into-alleged-emotional-harm-and-abuse-why-are-needlessly-strict-academies-unaccountable ?
There should be alternatives for those families unlucky enough to live close to schools run by repressed headteachers who didn't get enough love from mummy and who now implement batshit crazy policies which bully and terrorise their students.

I think we are all being played off against each other, because class sizes are too big and children needs are not met, and teachers are in a rock and a hard place, because of red tape, and unrealistic expectations.

The reality is the parents matter massively and the more time they invest in the children and I do not just mean academics, I mean wholesome mental health health input and a positive flourishing environment, the more the children can achieve to their best potential.

My strong inclination is that children from deprived households should be placed by their primary schools in the best local schools and be given priority. Up to 25% of cohort, Too much travel is not good.

@ParentOfOne in my imaginary "ideal" world I would have everyone go to their local school for lower secondary (Years 7-9) and they would all be comprehensive schools.
Then at 14 there could be a variety of different types of schools and it wouldn't be so bad if a 14 year old has to travel a bit further - as they would be getting an education style more suitable for them or they particularly want.

Did the parents not apply to any of the schools they were likely to get a place at? Because that's the only circumstance where that would have happened.

They were living in an odd "black hole" area which actually affected quite a lot of children who were randomly allocated an undersubcribed school miles away rather than ones nearby they had applied for.
It was all a bit odd.

The argument that Chelsea remains more expensive than Croydon weakens, because any school in Chelsea will have council flats within a 3 to 5 km radius.

Not sure what the point is that you're trying to make - they've both got social housing within a very short distance. Making it random allocation would reduce the opportunities for children from social housing to be offered places (probably why some of those schools you mention are in favour of it, tbh) and many would have to pass multiple secondary schools in order to reach a randomly allocated one, as the distance is more within 1km as the crow flies.

This would increase traffic hugely, placing additional demands on public transport (and policing these larger number of children crossing very busy boroughs and transport hubs from far earlier and until much later each day) and the roads as a whole from parents having to drive siblings to multiple schools, leaving many stood around for longer and not actually in school; when some already arrive at school just after 7am due to a need to drop off siblings or because the overstretched public transport cannot guarantee to get them to school at 8.20 - 8.35 or back again between 2.45 - 4pm. This would also increase children travelling around peak rush hour when employees would be travelling home. Unfortunately, it's also important to consider safety for those children in terms of crossing postcodes in many areas - being in a group with friends or just others who live in the same area can be safer than lone students.

In addition, if the entire Admissions Code were dumped and rewritten to remove all categories other than EHCP and LACs/PLACs, it would also hugely inflate/create a lucrative market for appeals, costing schools considerably increased sums of money - and even more when the potential increased numbers of appeals would mean that relying upon volunteers to take part in panels would be unfeasible, so there would need to be a paid role created (only the Clerk is paid at present, panel members can claim expenses) to ensure that they were held within the statutory timeframe.

@Araminta1003 My strong inclination is that children from deprived households should be placed by their primary schools in the best local schools and be given priority.

I think Brighton does or has proposed doing something like this, whereby children on free school meals are given priority over the others. I'm not sure about the details but I imagine other people can elaborate.

@Needmorelego They were living in an odd "black hole" area which actually affected quite a lot of children who were randomly allocated an undersubcribed school miles away rather than ones nearby they had applied for.
It was all a bit odd.

I don't follow. London is full of state secondary schools where the maximum distance is 800 - 1200 metres. So there will be lots of families living 1 or 1.5 km from certain schools, and not getting in. What is odd about that?

@NeverDropYourMooncup Making it random allocation would reduce the opportunities for children from social housing to be offered places (probably why some of those schools you mention are in favour of it, tbh)

I don't follow. A lottery system would only reduce the chances of the social housing kids who now happen to live right next to very good schools; in all other cases, it would increase them. And, anyway, it is perfectly possible to have a system which somehow prioritises children on school meals then applies a random lottery. Brighton is doing something like this.

and many would have to pass multiple secondary schools in order to reach a randomly allocated one, as the distance is more within 1km as the crow flies

I don't understand what you mean by "the distance is more"

This would increase traffic hugely, placing additional demands on public transport [...] and the roads as a whole from parents having to drive siblings to multiple schools

No, most kids would simply take public transport. Most London kids already do. see my previous reply.

if the entire Admissions Code were dumped and rewritten to remove all categories other than EHCP and LACs/PLACs, it would also hugely inflate/create a lucrative market for appeals, costing schools considerably increased sums of money

How so? Why would a random allocation system incentivise more appeals? Note that I have never advocated removing all the other categories like children in care, special needs etc

@ParentOfOne it was a bit odd because a newer school had been build only a few years before which was pretty much intended for children of that area to attend (if they didn't want one of the many nearby Harris schools).
But then a whole load of children didn't get a place at the newer school and people couldn't understand why.

I grew up in the US, in a suburb of a major city. You went to your nearest primary. I mean unless there were exceptional circumstances that’s where you went. If a boom birth year they had a couple portable cabin type school rooms. Then there was one large secondary (a high school so equivalent to Y9-13) where everyone went, about 2500 kids.
My experience here (London zone 3) is that schools are grouped - not evenly spread out at all. So one kid might live relatively close (and within the catchment area) of three schools, and another kid may not live in any catchment area of a state school. This is what happened to us. We lived just over 500m from our nearest school but it was oversubscribed so we didn’t get a space. Nor the next three nearest schools, because they were all pretty close to each other but further from us. They offered my son a space at a school on the other side of the borough, not nearly as desirable as the four nearer our home.
To say I was nonplussed by this is an understatement. I had no idea that this was how it worked here. We bought a house fairly near an ‘excellent’ school on the assumption that that’s where our kids would go. If no room, surely the next nearest, or the next or the next!
Where I live now there is an excellent primary in my street. I live 250m away from it. My neighbours did not get a place for their child there. A friend, who lives 65m from the school, told me her son did not get a place! How ridiculous.
Secondaries I have less knowledge of.
The solution is to have children go to their nearest school, and those at the edge or without any catchment area to get in as a priority over those who have two or three equally good schools within walking distance. Put a portacabin room in if you have to. Any new housing builds must take the increase pressure of more students into account, so instead of adding that third large apartment complex put it aside for a new school.
Where we used to live there was a large telephone exchange building. As more and more of these buildings are made redundant, they could be turned in to schools. We would have been 330m from that building, and importantly, it was 800m away from any other school. That’s a heck of a lot of families in that 400m radius.

This is honestly what it feels like to live in a rural location and realistically only being able to get a place in the nearest school. One of the reasons we went private was the lack of languages at our local comp. They focus on a language that isn't offered at any of the sixth form colleges for A level and can't find any teachers for their second language.

Nightmare in the USA, meant kids were on school buses crossing the city for 90 minutes often. I can see the reasoning behind it but simply not practical. Schools ideally need to be in walking distance or on established bus routes (rural schools are obviously different)

Its clear that what works in one area won't work everywhere. I'm in South Yorkshire. We have fixed Priority areas. Every Secondary has a handful of feeder Primaries (so the catchment areas line up). For Secondary schools, the entrance criteria is LAC/ECHP, Catchment siblings, Catchment staff children, catchment feeder schools, catchment, non catchment siblings, non catchment staff children, non catchment feeder schools, any other children. Reality is everyone in catchment gets a place, with perhaps a handful of non catchment. Your catchment school might not be you nearest school, but thats usually as you live near the catchment border (or in the case of my children's school, the school is on the catchment border, but next school is only a mile in the other direction)

This system wouldn't work in central London. Population is to variable.