LONDON LETTER:Parents and 11-year-olds fret about getting the right schooling – for different reasons, writes MARK HENNESSY
TEARS WOULD not have been unusual in English and Welsh homes this week as 11-year-old boys and girls discovered they will not be sitting beside their best pals when they go to secondary school in September.
On Monday – dubbed National Offer Day – parents, who had listed their preferences for up to six state-run schools last October, found out how they had fared via letter, e-mail, text, or by going online.
So great was the interest that the e-admissions site dealing with place offers in London crashed for a time, and telephone and e-mail systems elsewhere also went down.
Up to one in six of the 650,000 secondary school-age children – one of the highest figures in recent years – failed to get their top choice this year, though most were given their second, or third.
The issue of school places is an emotive one, dominating parents’ conversation at the school-gates. Some are prepared to lie, some even to move house, to get the favoured school for their children.
Derby, Hartlepool, Telford and Wrekin, Barnet and Hackney councils all said they suspected cheating had taken place, while in Telford six couples submitted applications using false addresses.
The competition has been even more intense this year, because so many parents, once able to send their progeny to fee-paying schools, have had to trim spending because of the recession. In the so-called “stockbroker belt” in Surrey, for example, the drift away from private schools this year has forced the local authority to start building more classrooms to cope with the rise in applications.
Throughout England and Wales, more than 100,000 children appear to have failed to get their parents’ top choice. And city dwellers and those living in the poorest districts do worst of all. Local authority inspectors have discovered that, in some cases, children have been sent to live with grandparents for months so that they are within the catchment area of a school.
In Wandsworth, fewer than half seeking a place got their first choice, while in the whole of London it was 65 per cent, though this is a slight rise on last year. However, 88 per cent were given one of their top three choices in London. This, though, can leave parents with awkward commutes and children losing touch with primary school friends. Those living in rural areas do best.
School league tables create their own pressures, as parents strive for the best performing institutes. In Leeds the two most popular, Roundhay and Pudsey Grangefield, had 400 applications for 250 places and 319 for 195 places, respectively.
In stark contrast, poorly performing schools in the city cannot fill a fraction of their desks: Hyde Park had just 41 applications for its 150 places, while Parklands Girls in Seacroft had just 39 for 140.
In Scotland, the situation is slightly different, where children are allocated their closest school, while in Northern Ireland parents will get an offer of a school place on May 28th.
Some local authorities, such as Brighton and Hove City Council, have opted for lotteries to decide who goes where, rather than leave it to less objective – and sometimes more questionable – methods.
The battle for places in so-called “faith schools” is even more intense, mostly because the quality of the education on offer – despite a decade of Labour investment in state schools – is better.
In one south London Catholic school last September, the headmaster outlined the facts of life plainly to parents during one inspection tour: he ran the school, they did not; they needed him, he did not need them.
To qualify for Catholic schools, for example, parents have to show they are members of the church; that they and their children attend services, and that they are involved in their local parishes.
Each year, parish priests must fill in forms declaring the parents’ compliance, provoking some confrontations and more than a little bitterness from those found not to be suitably religious.
Under Labour, billions have been spent on education, and standards have improved, but it still lags behind other major countries – particularly at the lower end of society, which is often left with so-called “sink” schools. The curiosity is that despite the investment, 1,300 schools have closed in the last 10 years – a third of them vanishing in the last two years alone. These include 85 comprehensive secondary schools.
Teaching unions dismiss much of the furore as liberal cant, with one teaching union leader, Chris Keates, declaring bluntly, though not in accord with the sentiment of the times: “Parents express preferences, not choices.
“The hand-wringing of commentators about the very small percentage of those who don’t get their first preference has an underlying message that somehow these parents are being short-changed and will have to settle for ‘second best’,” he said.
For thousands of parents in England and Wales this week, that is exactly how they feel – and neither they nor their children are happy.