Given the large amount of threads about admissions, how would you change the current system to make it fair for all?

[itsmeitsmeolord]

Or do you think that would be an impossible task?

The catchment area for dd's secondary ed consists of two schools which are both classed as failing.
We are doing 11+, doing a couple of tests for state schools out of catchment and as a last resort will have to consider private ed.

It is highly unlikely that dd would get an offer for anywhere other than one of the two failing schools.
As a parent I want my child to go to a school that seems to care about its' pupils, I'm not looking for massively high results but would like to see that able pupils reach their full potential and less able students are not written off.

How do you think we could fix the system so that all children have a chnace of a decent education that will encourage them whatever their abilities and allow children to be educated fairly locally thus being a part of their local community?

Define 'good'.

Ofsted define it, in terms of results anyway, comparatively, so by definition all schools cannot be good. Ever. Unless every school got the same results.

jackstarbright Thu 04-Mar-10 15:13:38
"The schools with the best headteachers tend to be well led and have good behaviour from most students."

So make those heads responsible for the nearby poorer schools as well. And combine the results for the league tables.

"So make those heads responsible for the nearby poorer schools as well. And combine the results for the league tables."

choccy - I like your thinking - great idea!

That is already being done, we have a school going into special measures which is being twinned with another equally shit school but a new head, they are calling it a consortium and have told us which primaries will be feeders etc.

All it is going to achieve here is a larger pool of crap education. The new head is from yet another school that is mediocre at best.

I honestly think that we need some sort of targetted training for creating much better head teachers.

why is the not moving thing a good idea? on what criteria should you be able to move house other than you want a better life/ better location/

if you follwed this line of argument you would be for a communist state.

the problem is there is too much variation in schools and too much divide between rich and poor.

rather than banning people from moving house they should ban people from earning obscene amounts of money. or tax them more heavily and spend that money on failing schools.

many children who are fine at primary often go off the rails in year 7. i think 11 is the wrong age to change to a big, anonymous school. i think they should re-introduce middle schools - of course its expensive, but bringing up children is extremely important for soceity.

I think there is a need to define quite a few terms.

'Good' is definitely one of them.

Is a 'failing' school one that doesn't care about its pupils and writes off leww able students, as the op assumes? Is it to do with exam results? Or leadership?

Good teachers - moves afoot for teachers to be de-regsitered from GTC if not up to muster (already closely monitored)

Good parents, pupils, attitude - can we/should we define all of that?

Good education - what is a good education? Is there an agreed definition? I doubt it.

Going to the local schools without all this choice and veering off into specialisms worked well for me and continues to work well for my children. There seem to be huge problems in England, and maybe some other pockets, that I can't really grasp.

also making everybody go to the closest school will still result in divisive schools, there will be schools in posh areas and schools in poor areas. most towns and cities are divided thus.

it would be better to let everybody choose their school so they don't have to go to the closest then house prices wouldn't be dictated by school results.

the schools which are not as popular and sucessful would need more resources and better teachers rather than being funded by how many pupils they have on roll

most poor schools ie the ones that receive less money because they have less children on roll, often then have to employ new teachers with less experience because they are cheaper.
you should have to have a certain mix of experienced and new teachers.

I'd like a clause introduced to limit the sibling rule so younger siblings would not be given priority if the family had moved further away from the school than when the first child in the family got in. If they lived in the same home, or one closer to the school the sibling priority could still apply.

As a teacher (with a teacher DH) I'd prefer it if my children could be allocated places at the schools where we teach so our loyalties aren't divided between umpteen schools. This is probably more important at primary than secondary though because it's unreasonable to expect a 4-year-old to get oneself to school alone whereas an 11-year-old should be capable of doing so.

In theory I like the 'comprehensive intake' tests that some schools round here use but don't like that it means children who live very close to the school but fall into a popular 'banding' miss out on a place at their closest secondary. It feels fairer than some of the other ways of selecting.

The obvious solution is for all schools to offer an excellent standard of education and for the government to stop publishing league tables so that schools can be judged on what people see when they visit or speak to the Head/pupils/staff instead of by numbers. My children are not statistics to me so I'm unlikely to select a school on a statistic but league tables feed on the concerns of parents who want the best for their children and are terrified of making the wrong choice.

YY, agree that league tables are counter-productive.
It has made parents focus on the wrong things in my humble opinion.

The shit schools near me are shit because of pupil behaviour, lack of experienced motivated teachers and resources such as i.t or sports equipment.

If those issues were solved I would be happy to send dd there. As behaviour improved along with teacher morale I'm sure results would improve too.

SE13mummy - Interested in your point about banding selection being unfair on some categories of children.

I wondered if you don't get the children whose parents can afford the houses 'at the school gates' filling up the 'brighter' bands, so the poor but bright kids who live slightly further from the school gate miss out. With the 'less able' poorer children filling up the lower ability bands.

The result being the school consists of bright affluent kids and less able poor kids. Whilst the bright but poorer kids go to an unpopular school. Just a thought!!

The thing about everyone in the catchment/local to the school getting a place would just be IMPOSSIBLE in my area. My DD's current secondary is the only one in this end of town that wouldn't involve a journey involving 2 buses for ANY of the children attending the 6 feeder primaries.

The school is rated outstanding by OFSTED despite the fact that it currently has over 2100 pupils, and yet manages to cater for all abilities, has an excellent G&T programme AND an excellent SEN department. Yet it is impossible due to site restrictions to increase the size of the school any further OR increase pupil numbers.

Only 3/4 of the pupils living in the catchment area can get a place there, as there has been a LOT of building in the catchment are in the last 4 years (3 whole new estates). Our area has a new primary, but we will not be getting a new secondary in the area until 2015 at the earliest. To take every child living in the catchment area, the school would end up with over 2800 pupils currently, rising to 3000 pupils in 2-3 yrs time. Even MY LEA thinks that is excessive!!

Bring back a grammar school/ secondary modern system but with more opportunities to "switch streams".

A lot of disruption in comprehensives is caused by pupils who have disengaged from academic study and dont see the point as they're probably going to get poor GCSE grades anyway. Not everyone is destined to be academic but everyone has things they can succeed at.

Many teenagers would be much more motivated in a more practical environment focused on a skilled trade.

And WRT not being allowed to move for 2 yrs either side of primary start date AND secondary start date? Where does that leave people who are forced to move for work? Or council tenants who may have waited 3-5 years for a 2/3 bed house (often in one-room temporary accomodation) and get offered a house 2 weeks before their DC is due to start school? Would they not be allowed to leave the temp accomodation? Or someone who has moved during those times because they are fleeing from DV? Where would the rules on those ones lie? That would be a totally impossible rule to stick to.

I think the solution really is to make all school equal by getting the right mix of NQT's and experienced teachers, ensuring that ALL schools have the same facilities, OFSTED checks that aren't just meaningless 'tick box' exercises, teachers who don't teach effectively being sacked, better SEN training and departments in ALL schools. Smaller schools where possible. A cultural expectation of good behaviour in EVERY school, whether it's on a posh estate or a 'sink' estate. Headteachers with vision and drive to be the best, and make their school, however large or small, a school for the community, that prides itself on meeting the needs of every child in the school. (sorry for the plagiarism, DD's HT ). Putting money and GOOD teachers into schools that are currently 'failing'. Getting rid of stupid league tables that tell you precisely sod all about how well the school will teach your child to the best of their potential, and everything about how well the school will teach your child to get the best results for their league table. .

Believe it or not, the HT at DD's school of 2100 pupils knows EVERY child by name. She's an amazing woman. I'd struggle to remember 21 teenagers names!

Generally the 'bad' schools have to try a lot harder than the 'good' schools.

If the parents in one area read to their children every night, ensure they do their homework, come from professional, educated backgrounds themselves, and in another area the parents are like the characters of 'Shameless', then the first school is very likely to be rated 'Good' or better, while the second school is going to have to work very hard to get that same level.

In areas like London, the 'good' schools select the children from professional, motivated backgrounds by requiring church attendance, or by having tiny catchment areas. The thing is in many such areas, there are perhaps five or six shit schools, and one good one. So the only effect of eliminating the barriers to entry to the 'good' school would be that all schools in the area would be shit. Which, while egalitarian, isn't really the solution I think people are looking for.

The problem is a social one, parents with no respect for education or authority begetting children who are allowed to ruin the education of everyone else. Perhaps in another 20 years or so, society will react against this. Because it's not a global phenomenon, and was not even in a UK one a few decades ago.

Have just been working out the implications of the 'no move' rule. With just my DD and DS, I reckon that gives me at least a decade of being forbidden to move house - what about new jobs? an extra bedroom or a larger garden?

I wish there was a way of having selective education in which the abilities of all children were valued and enhanced, regardless of their academic ability. So that no one was left feeling that their education was inferior just because it differed from someone elses.

And there must be a way of making parents understand that a school is not bad simply because it has what appear to be not brilliant GCSE results.

I can't believe anyone would want to have the government control our lives to such an extent that we are not allowed to move house.

This is a free country, you know. These control tactics have been tried in other countries and have failed spectacularly.

Controle over people moving house? So wrong!

By piprabbit Fri 05-Mar-10 02:07:55
""I wish there was a way of having selective education in which the abilities of all children were valued and enhanced, regardless of their academic ability. So that no one was left feeling that their education was inferior just because it differed from someone elses."" sounds like a good plan!

"I can't believe anyone would want to have the government control our lives to such an extent that we are not allowed to move house."

This wasn't and entirely serious suggestion, you know!

I am rather enjoying the choice available in the Californian system. The mainstream is public school but there are loads of private schools that can be based on Steiner, faith, Montessori, poshness, language or whatever you like.

Or you can HE (and this is supported through a 'virtual' public school which even buys you a computer and online curriculum - or you can do it independently).

Or you can go to a charter school which vary - some are like private schools, some are almost like drop-in centres, running classes you can go to once or twice a week and can be co-operatively run with parents. So there's a lot of options, even if you're not prepared to pay for a top drawer private school.

I think choice is critical. I'd hate a system where every child has to go to a particular school, no exceptions. What on earth do you do if your child just isn't fitting well in that learning environment? Why not send your child to a French speaking school if your child has dual nationality or you might be planning on moving there?

It sounds like Soviet Russia or something if you start saying every child must have an identical education. Not every child is identical.

I think the system that most people are describing here is the Comprehensive system!

Carmen An education system that allows parents to choose what's best for their own child?? Who'd have thought that would work? .

My plan:
-everyone is in the catchment for a school, no-one falls into gaps between schools
-catchment is carefully drawn according to local circumstances, no simplistic nearest-the-school-gate. The catchment is purposely drawn so that every school includes a 'good' estate and a 'bad' estate.
-schools are funded according to their PAN (?planned admission number? or summat like that: anyway its max number of admittees). Thus, if a school is popular, then it is bumping up against its funding allocation but if a school is unpopular and low on numbers then it ends up having more per head than popular schools, and can use that money to improve itself/pupils. This is open to abuse so needs careful auditing.