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.

Of course a lot of the posters on here are not going to agree in the faith school issue.
I just think this was a non issue until there was a lack of school places, if you took the faith schools away, you would still have a shortage of places.
I get people's anger that if there was a Catholic School on your doorstep and you had to travel miles away.
I strongly disagree the ALL Catholic Schools are white MC, I would be interested to see these links some posters have promised to upload as I highly doubt they went into every Catholic School in the country to find this information out.
This is an issue I always find myself in a debate about as I have very strong views on my child obtaining a Catholic education and obviously there are lots of people that see this as very unfair.

Sweetie, I've said until I'm blue in the face that it's only schools that are oversubscribed and therefore select based on faith - and therefore discriminate against the children of those who don't attend the 'right' church or churches - that tend to be demographically unrepresentative. Coincidentally, it's also these schools that tend to be 'better'.

I'm on hols and having trouble with wifi - MN is being problematic enough arm! Did you check the Campaign for Fair Admissions website? I'll keep trying, though.

Why do your strong views on your child getting a Catholic education matter more than my Sikh friends' views on their children getting a Sikh education? Why should the state prioritise you over others?

I was adamant that I wanted multifaith education. Luckily I got it. Thousands don't. Non Christians are forced to attend CofE schools in rural areas.
The place for faith education is at Sunday school or equivalent and home imo.

Sweetiepie why can't your children get a catholic education outside of the hours 9-3pm?!?!

Here are a few links:

Open letter from 20 Anglican clergy and lay members citing evidence from a 2013 Sutton Trust study

March 2012 that found that 76% of Catholic primaries and 65% of Catholic secondaries in England had a smaller proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals (a government bench mark for deprivation) than the average for the first half of their postcode. The figure for Church of England secondaries was 40%. However, the Church has a much smaller presence at the secondary stage, compared to the primary – the figure for its much more plentiful primary schools was 63.5%, from this analysis of government statistics - there are other good figures in the article.

LSE research showing that faith selecting schools are not representative. One of the authors told a select committee that 'I was able to show that religious schools have higher ability and lower free school meal intakes compared with the neighbourhoods in which they are located. To give you an idea of the magnitude of those effects, if we take a community school and a voluntary-aided religious school, both located in a neighbourhood with exactly the same levels of deprivation, the community school is likely to have about 50% more free school meal children than the voluntary-aided school.’

Campaign for Fair Admissions research showed that comprehensive secondaries with no religious character admit 11% more children eligible for free school meals than live in their local areas. Comprehensive Church of England secondaries admit 10% fewer; Roman Catholic secondaries 24% fewer; Jewish secondaries 61% fewer; and Muslim secondaries 25% fewer.

The same research shows a clear link between religious selection and socioeconomic character.
A clear correlation is found between the degree of religious selection and how socio-economically exclusive schools are. Religious comprehensives that do not select by religion typically admit 3% more, but those whose admissions criteria allow religious selection for all places typically admit 27% fewer.

Only 16% of schools select by religion but they are vastly overrepresented in the 100 worst offenders on free school meal eligibility and English as an additional language. They make up 46 of the worst 100 schools on FSM eligibility and 50 of the worst 100 on EAL. (If grammar schools, University Technical Colleges and Studio schools are excluded, religiously selective schools account for 73 of the worst 100 on FSM eligibility and 59 of the worst 100 on EAL.)

Compelling evidence

Agree with April. I hope that those insistent on a faith education keep up the twice-daily prayers, grace etc during weekends and school holidays if it's that important.

And on the demographics of church congregations themselves, this Tearfund found that adults in social grades AB have above average prevalence of regular churchgoers compared to their relresentation in the wider population (22% and 21% respectively), as well above average proportions of fringe or occasional churchgoers.

Adults of social grade C2, D (skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled manual) have the lowest proportion of regular churchgoers (12%) and the highest proportion who are closed non- church (37% and 40% respectively).

Further research has also showed that churchgoing in the UK is a disproportionately middle-class pursuit.

Thanks April. Given a decent internet connection I can do this all day, there is plenty of information out there!

In a nutshell: there is strong evidence that faith based selection discriminates not only on the basis of religion, but also indirectly on the basis of class.

How the various churches reconcile this with their social justice rhetoric is beyond me. Their public statements on the issue are so obfuscatory, misleading and deflecting that they skirt very close to being outright lies.

Can only speak of our experience (Norfolk). I am fine with how places are allocated, not been stressful, don't see a need for changes, no idea if it's better or worse elsewhere, partly because I have learnt on MN that other people get stressed out about things I think are no biggie.

Mind, DC school is one that I think many MNers would turn nose up at. There's a lady down road who says the same, so she carts her kids daily to (still state schools, primary HT is a relative of hers) 14 miles away. I guess that suits her.

I am glad you are all congratulating yourselves for your research.
I have read with interest. So what you have basically found is that Catholic Schools have a lower intake of children eligible for free school meals, ummm so I suppose because my husband works (in the trade sector) we must be middle class, I can't wait until he comes home from work, from his very working class job to inform him that actually we must be considered middle class as we pay for our children's school meals.
What I asked for is the evidence to support that the schools were full of white MC, so far still cannot see any evidence of this, just another stereotype created by parents who do not agree with faith schools.

undoubtedly people do baptise DC, pretend to have faith (or if agnostic or vague believer embrace faith) for a time and / or go to particular churches to get their DC into popular schools.

In some ways admissions based on church attendance seems no worse than distance! More people are likely to be able to invest time in jumping through the church's hoops than be able to pay housing premia!

Another Scottish poster here. Very easy - I just turned up at the nearest school and enrolled them.

I deferred my very bright DC1, so he started school at 5 years and 6 months. This was partly because his fine motor skills weren't great at 4 1/2, and I thought he'd find school frustrating. 5 1/2 was perfect for him; he was still lagging behind in writing even at 5 1/2, so 4 1/2 would have been a nightmare.

It was no hassle at all, his nursery teacher agreed that he'd benefit from starting later.

DC2's birthday meant that we had no choice - she started at 5 years and 4 months. Her birthday would have automatically made her one of the older ones, had it not been for older children who could have been in the year above but had been deferred.

Ha! Obviously didn't visit DS's Catholic school which is hugely multicultural and one if the reasons I love it. DSL has friends who are Polish, Malaysian, Nigerian and Filipino among many others. If anything I'd say there are fewer white faces in his school. I suspect in other areas though the "white, middle class" thing is true.

We are also above average for FSM locally but we are not in a particularly Middle class area so that makes sense I suppose. DS is on FSM though as I cannot work at the moment.

I'd be interested to know how we fare locally for FSM take up as OFSTED etc only give national figures.

But segregation of children by religion is a bad idea all by itself. It is also bad to segregate by class or race...but religion is bad enough on its own.

I thought we were in general against ghettoising and the idea of schools as breeding grounds for extremism and lack of tolerance?

Ah yes - why base discussion on actual evidence and research, eh?

if i were in charge i would
a) base admissions on distance measured by walking route (not as crow flies). our nearest primary is across the river thames. to get there would take 3 buses or a nightmare drive. if i could fly or swim across the river that would be helpful

b) siblings should only keep priority if they remain in catchment. our school is full of families who live the other side of town. they stayed in their tiny house til the eldest got to school age, got them in then moved out. not fair. the younger children shouldn't get places above children who are in close walking distance

c) faith criteria - on the fence... seems unfair that those with a religion get more choice, maybe the non faith schools should be prioritised to those declaring no faith?

Archery Annie
Why evidence and research??
I asked the poster up thread to show me evidence that all Catholic Schools were white and MC, so at I have been shown that they have fewer children on FSM, well shoot us down for working, there is nothing on the criteria to obtain a place in a Catholic school on the basis of whether the child would be entitled to FSM.
In fact in our school we are actively encouraged to ensure we I inform the school if we are struggling financially to see if we would be entitled to FSM.
Also just wanted to give an example (I am aware we could be at this debate for days as we are never going to agree)
Say all faith was removed from schools, give it a few years and everyone would start to work out which schools were performing better. The house prices in that area would rise, the rich MC you all seem so sure are in all the catholic schools would start buying within the catchment and shrink the catchment down, now unless you happen to have a house right next door to this school in the first place, everyone else would be bussed out to next available school (which would be the school not doing so well) and you would all be on here complaining again.
I get that you think Faith Schools are unfair and I have said this up thread, if I weren't Catholic I would be hacked off but be careful what you wish for, in this day and age of pushy parents, you would simply be swapping one problem for another

sweetie maybe but you would be eliminating the immoral and damaging practice of segregating children's education by religion - so it would still be worth it.

Good grief - I have just read up a bit about faith and free schools including the level of discrimination that are allowed to exhibit.

I am absolutely horrified.

Children are the MOST important people in our society to protect from discrimination and segregation. How the hell did we come to this point?

Sweetie, given that no one has said Catholic schools are full of 'white MC', why on earth would anyone provid data to prove that they were? It's a construct you've invented.

However, taken together the data shows a pretty clear picture. Faith sekection disproportionately excludes children at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale; the demographic profile of church congregations and the behaviour of MC parents gives a good indication of which parts of the socioeconomic spectrum are pushing them out.

FSM is a good proxy for privilege or lack thereof. Schools that practise religious discrimination in admissions do not reflect the demographic profiles of their local areas, as I've demonstrated - they significantly exclude the least advantaged children.

Did you find the statistics on the socioeconomic profiles of churchgoing populations helpful? Again, a good indicator of attendees at schools practising faith-based selection....

What about the Sutton Trust research on the disproportionate number of MC parents who've faked faith to get their kids into a church school? Again demonstrates impact of faith selection when up to a third of places at faith selective schools went to students whose parents knowingly worked the system, and those parents are disproportionately MC.

The Allen/West research looked specifically at the class change in Catholic congregations and the impact on the profile of Catholic schools - was that helpful to you as it dealt specifically with Catholic schools which seem to be all you're interested in?

I certainly disagree with you that the state should be funding faith schools, but that's not my argument here. My argument is that faith-based selection is disgustingly discriminatory by class as well as segregating by religion (and often race - see the Cantle report into the 2001 race riots which dealt with this issue).

You've still not answered why you think you're more important / deserving of priority for your wishes than eg my Sikh friends?

IceBeing
You obviously hold that view very strongly.
DH an I both attending Catholic Schools and we have friends from all different religious back rounds, some are atheists.
Just because we attended a Catholic School it didn't mean we were actively encouraged not to talk to people who weren't Catholic.
When we joined colleges, universities and the work place we are not all brainwashed we do get that we live in a multicultural society and are tolerant of others beliefs, in fact I think attending a religious school made me more tolerant of others beliefs. I am obviously only speaking for myself, I know that some people who are religious can be very over hearing and pushy with their views, but I certainly am not one of them and we are not ALL like that.

I found the application process somewhat frustrating due to the mismatch between when the council sent us the first letter about it, and when lots of the local schools held their open days. By the time we started to ring round local schools, half of them had already held open days and wouldn't arrange an individual visit with us. So it would have been helpful to get the letter from the council a few months earlier!

My other annoyance was that distance is measured as the crow flies, but we live just up the hill from a river, with the nearest road crossings a mile away in either direction. So, if we hadn't proactively listed five schools we liked, we ran the risk of being allocated a 'nearby' school that would actually be a 2 mile drive away...

It's utterly outrageous that schools are allowed to discriminate against children on the basis of their parents' faith (or lack of).

This would be illegal with any other public service.

There aren't enough places as it is - there is no way that schools can cater for every faith in every area, so it is ridiculous and unfair to even try.

Schools should be schools, not churches / mosques / synagogues / temples.