Primary school admissions - MNHQ needs your thoughts!

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

We've been asked (in advance of primary school places allocation announcements in England, Wales and NI next week) for MNers' thoughts on the current systems for allocating primary places - so as ever we thought we'd come to you for your insights.

What do you think about how your LA allocates places? Have you found the process stressful? Do you think the difficulty/stress varies widely across the nation - and if so, which locations are particularly difficult and which are relatively stress-free? If you're in Scotland, where the system is different, do you think it works well (or not?) Would you support a change to the allocation system - and if so, how would you like to see it changed?

Any thoughts welcome. Best of luck to anyone waiting to hear about their child's place.

wouldn't it be fundamentally better to have children in a class that were all at a similar developmental point in a subject than all the same age?

If and when a parent turns up with a kid waiting to start school they could just assess them and put them in the right group?

RDutton - but public policy cannot run around every parent not wanting their child to be youngest. Someone has to be. And it certainly should not be facilitating clued up parents getting a far 'better' start for their child, and in the process making things worse for other summer children who start at just turned four . If the school starting age is too young then formal schooling should shift later. If certain children are not ready for school at that age they should be individually assessed - not eligible or not based on whether their birthday is summer or the last day of spring.

Ice - that would be great. We would all have to pay a lot more tax. And there would be difficulties that children are not necessarily at the same point of development in all areas. Nor is their development a straight line - so they could jump ahead or lag back through the system.

I want rid of faith schools.

Our only local outstanding primary is CofE. It's also really sexist in that very subtle so ingrained they don't even notice way that church related groups and activities often are.

I sent my child to a school that was a better fit for my child but is now in special measures.

I would have liked a better choice!!

Well I would pay more tax for that!

So would I Ice. I think we are a minority though. Which party is standing on a more tax ticket (for average people)?

It is our absolute right to start our children at CSAge.

Brilliant point RDutton, somehow it is always getting missed. I don't want my child to start a year early not because of some idiotic competitive advantage over others that some seem to attribute to my decision-making process, but because after researching the subject I (and not some box-ticking LA bureaucrat) concluded that my child will benefit from one extra year of unstructured play, where she is given an opportunity to develop executive functioning - ability to focus, prioritise, assess risks, self-control... all those skills that are developing v rapidly in the early childhood, but totally neglected in a formal instruction-led setting.

Besides, she is very physical, her language skills are behind that of her peers (but we are a trilingual family, so I am not overly concerned), so she will really struggle if started school one year EARLY than legally obliged to.

All it would do is further institutionalise disadvantage. Great if you are the privileged child of engaged and educated parents who have deferred you to fall at the top of a 15 month age bracket. Not so great if you are the youngest in the year and have no such privilege.

Will all due respect this is utter rubbish penguin If you had any interest in how the system functions right now you would understand that this is precisely the situation when articulate, well-educated, resilient, well-off (because "evidence" costs money) parents are able to just through the hoops that LA and DfE created for them leaving vulnerable children of tired, poorly informed, disinterested parents at a disadvantage. If there was a universal right for the parents to decelerate, there would be none of this 1. Postcode Lottery and 2. Law of the jungle where the fittest parents win.

Penguins...

summerborn parents wouldn't have to be 'clued up' if the CURRENT schools admission code was less subjective. Parents also wouldn't have to be 'clued up' if the DfE did their job and informed parents of their rights to request a reception start at CSAge; starting by ensuring admissions authorities have their school admissions legislation up to date (which many do not)!

The school starting age is a separate issue. The summerborn campaign is campaigning for fair and equal access to an education for children starting reception at CSAge. It's not about having the policy 'run around parents', it's about the parents not having to 'run around the policy'. It's the policy, the code, that is the problem.

It also becomes a problem when a child is forced straight into year one completely missing a years education. I don't think you get that there IS a compulsory school age in the UK and our children should not be penalised by starting at CSAge.

It's not a case of 'readiness' either. Children should not have to be assessed for starting school ON TIME at CSAge.

We aren't stressed - in catchment for our chosen school which is undersubscribed for catchment and we have other children in it.

BUT - the infant and junior school are separate, and you have to apply for both. If you are out of catchment and in infants, you are highly likely to get into the juniors, even if children move into the area in catchment, who are higher up the allocation than you.

I am not clear how the appeals process works, but both sets get in, and junior school is now overfilled.

You can rent in catchment, move out, and get both your first child into junior school and siblings into both with this system.

I think if you apply out of catchment and get in you have to take your chances fairly, both for siblings, and for linked junior schools. I suspect this is an unpopular opinion, but I feel strongly the system needs to tighten up.

I applied into catchment and am very happy with my choice, but didn't apply to an out of catchment school which was more convenient for several reasons, as I could have got the first child in, but possibly not the next child.

Not stressful for most parents in this area. More than 95% get their first choice of school. DS got into catchment OFSTED outstanding primary. When we felt obliged to move him in yr2 he got straight into the school nearest to us (catchment was slightly further away) which was also OFSTED outstanding. (Not saying I place huge value on OFSTED opinion!) Most schools are CofE but community rather than faith the priority.

I would like to see an end to the state funding of all faith schools. Let parents spend their time and money on whatever religious education they feel appropriate. An oversight & tolerance of all beliefs is enough for a school to cover.

No. I'm sorry. You are both totally misunderstanding my point.

A later school starting age. Yes, that would benefit lots of children who currently start very young.

A universal right to defer. You really, really think that that wouldn't massively benefit the middle classes. You think that parents who often struggle to engage with the school admissions process as it stands would do so for the purposes of deciding which year their child started? You think that financial pressures of having a child in pre-school, or not working because you can't afford childcare wouldn't make the decision for the majority of poor families? You live in a very privileged bubble if you genuinely believe that instituting this as an automatic choice would create a genuine informed choice for summer born children.

And even if it did, and nearly all summer borns delayed based solely on what was best for them, what purpose does that serve but to now make spring borns the poor youngest. Wherever you push the line back to, someone falls the wrong side. The only real solution is to make the age for formal education higher so that virtually all children (bar SEN) are ready for formal education when they reach the normal starting bracket. Or to go with the Ice's high cost solution.

And yes, I do understand that there is a CSAge. As I've said, I have a summer born child myself. The law on when you have to be in education is only part of the picture.

The thing is, if all children are going to get the same number of years of school, they are going to have to start at different ages. I can see the frustration, but the reality of starting a child at 4.5 after Easter is that they start at approximately the same age as the vast majority of their peers, or they can start earlier and have the same number of terms. Wherever you fix the cut off that will apply to someone.

I also still don't understand how 'fixing' all this for summer kids wouldn't just move the problem to spring ones if take up was really as high as everyone seems to think.

I also still don't understand how 'fixing' all this for summer kids wouldn't just move the problem to spring ones if take up was really as high as everyone seems to think.

Because not every family will want to do it. In fact, anecdotally, very very small proportion will want to. Do you know that summerborns are disproportionately diagnosed with SEN?

I must admit we have been incredibly lucky.

I applied late for ds (Easter) for a place at a good out of catchment, but still in the village, school and we were accepted. But we had tried the local SM school first, unfortunately it did not suit us (very rough and tumble, teachers shouting at KS1 &nursery children, ht on long term sick). Quite a few children from ds's class that year disappeared to other schools.

I've been a little anxious this time, hoping sibling priority will get dd in as they are now an over subscribed school. I can't praise the school and it's teachers enough, it's an amazing school and I'm proud my children go there.

Sorry, the last sentence was omitted somehow
Do you know that summerborns are disproportionately diagnosed with SEN? Why do you want to see all the children who are mis-diagnosed with SEN due to age-inappropriate national curriculum struggling along??

"Do you know that summerborns are disproportionately diagnosed with SEN? Why do you want to see all the children who are mis-diagnosed with SEN due to age-inappropriate national curriculum struggling along??"

I did know that (lots of my family work in education). I have said repeatedly my views on the starting age for formal education. Those children struggle at least in part because the average starting age is too low. Your argument is that only a very few children would choose to defer if deferring were freely available, leaving the majority of the children you reference struggling just as they are now.

That's really just cherry picking out the privileged children to make sure that they aren't the ones hit by a formal system that starts too young. As I've said, if you start your child after Easter they are still the average age to start (the summer born campaign often talks as if most children start at just shy of 5, they don't).

I don't see how it helps. Either only a handful of families do it- in which case it's privileged for the already privileged. Or many do, in which case it's just shifting the cut off to spring.

Can anyone answer my question (at 11.20) regarding changing the age cut-off date from end August to end-March?

oink that has the same effect as just raising the CSA to 5.5.

I am in favour of this!

Put bluntly, there is no reason other than the practical one that if you suddenly had Sep-March one year you'd have a tiny year Oink. Which would be very expensive and disruptive in school financing (currently head based) so they would have to overhaul all of that. Cost is king.

Plus there isn't much demand so it isn't a vote winner.

Your argument is that only a very few children would choose to defer if deferring were freely available, leaving the majority of the children you reference struggling just as they are now.

Not true. If the parents were freely informed about the option to defer if they feel their children benefit from another year before school, some would and some won't. Afaik in Scotland the parents are given the choice, so what is wrong with England? What are you and LAs so afraid of?

I have attempted to delay my son's entry to primary school until compulsory school age due to his late summer birth date and the problems this can cause. I have been met with obstacle after obstacle and our local authority is very unwilling. The law states a child does not have to be in school until compulsory school age [5], and yet I have been forced against my will to send him at age 4 and a few days. What is the point in having a law that is ignored by local authorities.
The shame of it is that if I lived elsewhere, the local authority would be more accepting. It is horrible to send your child to school with others who have had the benefit of 25% more development time, potentially leaving him starting on the back foot. Example, my son can't yet say many blended sounds [dr, tr, ch, sh] but will be expected to take part in phonics in reception. How crazy is that? Too much too soon to coin a phrase.
Shame on you department for education for allowing it to happen.
The short answer is that I've been forced to apply for a school place I don't want! I have been asking for a delayed start since June 2014 and got my answer on Friday last week! It's a total shambles and if it doesn't affect you and your family then it's not well publicised either.

hear hear kelly

With regards to spring born the whole point of flexibility is that it takes away the 'hard line'
between any two sets of children.
Not all children will enter at CSAge because in the same way that there are parents of Sept born children who say their child could have gone one year early if the system allowed, there will be parents of Apr-Aug
born children who will absolutely feel they're 'ready'.

The system works very well in Alberta, Canada
summerbornchildren.org/2014/05/29/gove-loves-albertas-school-system-well-heres-how-they-do-admissions/

So we won't change the system whose whole purpose is to serve the children, but is failing a substantial proportion of them, because it will be INCONVENIENT for a couple of years?

I want to make a point about misinformation adding to stress.

In our authority the admissions helpline is dire and actually told me incorrect facts, as well as being extremely noncommittal, unhelpful and un-reassuring. (We moved during the admissions window with DTs and had to do a late application)

I then realised that there was a School Preference Advisor employed by the council specifically to offer unbiased independent advice. He had advice surgeries and he knew much more about the convoluted rules and also likelihoods nationally and locally. He was able to make calls to specific schools there and then and find out how long he wait list was, how many applications, and make a really good educated guess that we'd probably get the places once the initial applications were announced (we did).

A large part of his job was to advise parents disputing their places or helping SEN and looked after kids get places, but anyone could access the surgeries (they weren't much publicised mind)

More of the latter and less of the former