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?

@minnienono Most US cities have low density, are spread out and have poor to non-existent public transport.

@mondaytosunday I don't mean to be pedantic, but most schools do not have a catchment, as in, they don't give priority to families living inside a specific area. People often mention "a 600 metre catchment" to really mean that the maximum admission distance was 600 metres in a given year.

I am sorry you had that experience. But don't you think that a random allocation system would have been fairer?
Not completely random so that someone living 20 kms away would get a place, of course.
Whether like Brighton, which divided the city into a number of areas and applied random allocation within each area, or a different system (e.g. each school having a 2-3 km catchment area and applying random allocation inside that area)

I don't mean to be pedantic, but most schools do not have a catchment, as in, they don't give priority to families living inside a specific area. People often mention "a 600 metre catchment" to really mean that the maximum admission distance was 600 metres in a given year.

I don't mean to be pedantic either, but do you know the percentage of schools that do not have catchments, or have you confidently stated that it is "most" solely based on your own personal experience?

(like poster above, also live in an area where every school has fixed catchments).

@redskydelight yes where I live it's rarely an actual catchment. It's distance.
One secondary I looked at described it as an elastic band around the school that will stretch or shrink depending on the amount of applications they have plus variations in priority places needed that year.
My daughter didn't get a place (to be fair we were told we would be at the very edge of the elastic band and we didn't think we would).
However a child in my block of flats who is a year younger did get in.

Let me rephrase, clarify and rectify, then.

The vast majority of schools in London do not have a catchment area.

My comment was not based on the presumption that the whole country works the same way (I know very well that proper catchment is a thing in certain areas), but on the observation that the vast majority of the comments I have read on this forum mention "catchment" improperly, i.e. they say catchment instead of maximum admission distance, e.g. things like "catchment was 800 metres this year and 900 last year).

Is it sufficiently clear now?

There will be social housing much closer than your example. So all those children who could have got a place at the school on distance would miss out and then have to travel. It's not just FSM that marks social housing or poverty.

Increase in appeals because parents have the right to, it's free, there can be incredibly good reasons why they would be at detriment from having to travel further.

You must not have seen public transport in London between 6.45am and 9am and 2.45pm to 4.45pm. It's a huge issue to get the existing numbers through town centres and back out again every day.

@NeverDropYourMooncup There will be social housing much closer than your example. So all those children who could have got a place at the school on distance would miss out and then have to travel. It's not just FSM that marks social housing or poverty.

It is perfectly possible to prioritise children on free school meals or families in receipt of certain benefits - Brighton is doing it.
Yes, it's not just free school meals that marks deprivation.
But neither is living in social housing.

You seem to imply that living in social housing is a better indicator than FSM - it is not. There are also many council flats which have been sold (thanks, Lady Thatcher...) in the private market. No criterion is perfect.

Yes, those who live the closest to a school they like would miss out.
That is the whole point: should someone who live 100 metres away from a school have more right to that school than someone living 1 km away? You seem to think yes. I think not.

Increase in appeals because parents have the right to, it's free, there can be incredibly good reasons why they would be at detriment from having to travel further.

??This makes no sense. It is perfectly legal to have a system with elements of a random allocation. You cannot appeal just because you don't like it. Brighton has had this system for a while. Have they been flooded with appeals? I don't follow your line of thought.

You must not have seen public transport in London between 6.45am and 9am and 2.45pm to 4.45pm. It's a huge issue to get the existing numbers through town centres and back out again every day.

We must live in different cities, then.
Again, as mentioned previously, most secondary school students already use public transport.
Again, if the catchment areas are set properly, most children won't end up in schools 20 miles away.

Your reservations seem to be those of a typical NIMBY: the current system gives more certainty to the lucky few who live closest to a school they like. The people in this position do not want to give up this privilege, couldn't care less about how unfair the current system is on others, and will come up with every excuse under the book to justify their opposition.

I grew up in the US, in a suburb of a major city. You went to your nearest primary.

You're very likely mistaken about one major item. You probably went to your "hard catchment" primary. If you lived near the edge of your catchment, you might have been nearer the primary in the next catchment, but what mattered was which side of the catchment line you were on, not the distance.

The distinction, which other posters have pointed out, is that London doesn't really have "hard catchments". What people very loosely use as "catchment" is the distance within which children normally can get a place at a school. No guarantees if a new apartment block goes up or in a year with an unusual number of siblings, etc.

You are correct that, in most US suburbs, a school is required to accommodate all students living within its catchment lines, expanding capacity if necessary and that this is a major difference to the UK system where schools have fixed capacity and students need to take up the adjust.

You failed to mention that one consequence of this is that students have essentially no choice in their public (state) schools. They are usually guaranteed a place in the catchment school corresponding to their address, but they cannot choose to attend a school in another catchment even if, as I mentioned above, that happens to be the nearer... or just much better. I think very few Mumsnetters would be willing to support a system which eliminated parents' ability to choose their children's schools.

One major problem with the UK system, at least as it pertains to London, is that it prioritizes giving as many children their first choice as possible without taking into account the cost to children who don't get their first choice. To illustrate, imagine that Child A lives 600m from School A, Child B lives 400m on the other side of School A, and School B is 500m beyond Child B's home. So, in a straight line:

Child A ... 600m ... School A ... 400m ... Child B ... 500m ... School B

If Child A and Child B both prefer School A, Child B gets the place and is 100m better off than if they had to attend School B, with a 400m walk rather than a 500m walk. The problem occurs if School B is also Child A's second nearest school. Now Child A is 900m worse off than if they'd been allocated the place at School A, with a 1500m walk rather than a 600m walk. That's how "black holes" form in London. Too many Schools A fill up with Children B, and some unfortunate Children A are allocated Schools B.

@ParentOfOne (trigger warning - suicide mentioned)
Wasn't it in Brighton some years ago where a father killed himself because he was so distressed by the idea of his child having to take several buses across the city to a random allocated school and he felt he had failed her because of that?
I am assuming there was more to his mental health - but this could have tipped it.

@Needmorelego Oh, please...
I have no idea if that is true or not, but it is completely irrelevant.

I know families in London who applied to schools which allocate on distance, got none of their choices, and their children ended up far, far away. One child had a commute of more than 1 hour, and very unreliable because the last stretch was by bus, on a stretch of road with no bus lanes.

Single cases are irrelevant. There will always be winners and losers. The proper question is not whether a single person was worse off, but how many and by how much.

Again, it seems to me that a lot of the opposition to these systems is typical NIMBYsm.

@ParentOfOne but it is relevant.
Children should go to a local school. Keep communities together.
No random allocations.

@ParentOfOne random allocations leads to such a disjointed life.
People should be able to live in community and go to school in that community.
Not live with a "well you might go here or you might go there...who knows...lets hope for the best".

@Needmorelego No, it is not relevant.
A single case is completely and utterly irrelevant.

If you can prove that the Brighton system has consistently resulted in more kids travelling too much, then let's talk about that.

But don't quote single cases unless you can prove they are relevant and representative. Doing so is either naivety, or outright bad faith.

Communities and disjointed life???
I am not talking about allocating places to kids living 20 miles away.
I do not advocate the Kingsdale system, which does that (or used to, it may be changing, not sure).

I advocate a system where a kid living 1 km away from a school has the same chance as one living 100 metres from the school. And, again, this would only work in densely populated areas with good public transport.

Please, please, pretty please, do tell me how giving the same chance to a kid living 1km away and to one living 100 metres away breaks the local community and leads to a disjointed life???

The current system where many schools allocate mostly by distance ends up being a complete lottery for most families, except for the lucky few who live next to good schools they like. For everyone else, it's a lottery: how many siblings will there be this year? How much will the waiting list move because of kinds going private? How much will the improvement of school A and the worsening of school B affect the applications in school C? Etc

Do you oppose this system because you benefit from the current one?

@ParentOfOne I apologise but I am completely confused and lost by what you are talking about now.
It should be simple - everyone that lives on a certain housing estate or specific streets go to Primary School A. Then Primary Schools A, B, C and D feed into Secondary A.
In the same town/city/area Primaries E, F, G and H go to Secondary B.
That - in my humble opinion - is how it should be.

@Needmorelego What is there to be confused about?
I think that, for densely populated areas with good public transport, a system based on random allocation is preferable to and fairer than one based on distance.

What system are you advocating? One with no choice? I don't quite understand

Well the choice is you choose to live there.
That system is how it generally used to be.
There were always a few exceptions.
A child that moved to the area but only had a year or so left at school may have stayed at the school they were already in.
At my primary school 2 children attended because their mother was one of the teachers even though they lived elsewhere.
The housing estate I grew up on the first few streets were built before the primary school was so children in those streets went to a different school. Once the primary was built some didn't change schools and younger siblings went to their school instead of the new one.
I would like to add that there should be a variety of school choices for age 14+ and a child doesn't have to go to there local school.
But for primary and lower secondary - children should go to their local school

Oh, get a grip. I don't want to offer places to random kids statistically more likely to be wealthier at the expense of kids from four extremely deprived estates pretty much on the doorstep, making them have to travel from those areas (poorly served by public transport) into the town centre before 7am, then have to try and get 2 other buses to take them to other schools.

@NeverDropYourMooncup So giving the same chance to families living 100 metres away and to those living 1 km away = offering places to kids statistically more likely to be wealthier at the expense of deprived estates, and forcing them to travel before 7am on 2 buses.

Sure, mate.

Not really. The social housing is closer except for a tiny number of absolutely enormous mansions - they send their kids private.

@ParentOfOne I am still confused and not very good with KMs so can't visualise how far 1km is - but are you saying that with random allocations a child who lives 100m away from a school (and this is presumably their closest school) might randomly be sent to a completely different school across the other side of town?
How is that sensible?

1km is 10mins walk. Far less than the average school will admit children from, even in city centres!

According to Google, the average travel distance to Secondary school in London is over 5km

@TheNightingalesStarling thanks.
So under my utopian (😁) system if 100m away and 1km away are both in that schools dedicated catchment then children from both those homes would go to that school.
Simple.

"Would you welcome this system being implemented nationwide?"

@ParentOfOne School admissions are managed at local authority level, not at national level. Current Government policy is to legislate to give local authorities some more control over Voluntary Controlled and Academy schools that are their own admissions authorities. However, beyond that, it would be bonkers for Government to try an coordinate admissions at national level - there are too many local factors.

In Brighton, only some of the schools have randomised admissions, not all of the schools.

I haven't read the full thread, but did skim-read your posts. Apologies if this has already been clarified, but what is your motivation for asking the question? e.g. Are you a parent who is exploring an idea, or a school governor considering it for your own school, or are you perhaps canvassing opinion because you work in research and/or policy?

@nubofit I am just a parent.

I find the current system deeply unfair. I find that, in many cases, distance is just a loose proxy for income and wealth, and that admission by distance increases and exacerbates existing inequalities (houses become more expensive next to a good school, and this keeps the plebs away).

I know that nothing will change for when my child starts secondary, but this doesn't stop me looking into the matter, if only out of personal interest.

@ParentOfOne perhaps put your enthusiasm into making sure ALL schools are good schools.
Supporting them via their PTAs etc.

@Needmorelego How exactly would I do that?

I made a post at the end of last year about Mossbourne in Hackney

Most secondary schools are now academies, and academies are de facto unaccountable to anyone. Not even the department of Education can overturn a school's decision. More than 300 people have come forward at Mossbourne with allegations of emotional abuse and... nothing has changed!! The DfE isn't investigating. The school has commissioned its own review, which won't be made public.

In this context, how much, exactly, can a parent do through the PTA?

In SW London there is another school (Ashcroft) where they give you a detention if you dare cycle to school.