Parents to be consulted over plans to change sibling rule Post Reply

[Ganges]

Hi I agree with Gruffalos dad. His decision seems very reasonable. @ KatherineHepburn your responses sound very emotive like this change would affect you?

[KatherineHepburn]

No Ganges, but I have friends who have been stuck in the no schools dead-zone and it is really awful for them. I am so excited by the prospect of a new school to deal with this. I was stunned that people were just not interested. There was just so much anger directed at something which just isn't offering a full solution for any more than a handful of people.
Oddly, I found myself less emotive than someone quoting me verbatim on a point by point basis...but there you go.

[gruffalo's dad]

Petal. Maybe I am Ganges as well! If you look you will see that I have a posting history independent of other posters. And Papinian disagreed with the fixed distance which I proposed and seems to favour catchment areas, which have their own disadvantages.

There have been lots and lots of good contributions on this thread. I see that Wandsworth Council is watching this thread as its account has made a post on the thread recently, so hopefully someone will look at our contributions. And, if I have time, I will make a submission to the consultation, although I guess I'll have to use my real name for that.

[Honeybee]

Maybe I have missed this, but how do you make a submission to the consultation?

[hellokittyerw]

I understand everyone has strong and emotional views about the subject, it's a subject that's close to our hearts.
But comments like petal's last one (gruffalodad being someone else) really add nothing to this debate.

Katherinehepburn - I hope you are wrong about people not supporting Belleville's plan to open a new school!!! I am really hoping that despite that thread not being popular on NVN, people are registering their interest with belleville!

[Ganges]

It's just that I know people who renovated their properties in sw4 rent near the school get their kid in and then move back a week or so after they have been accepted in the school. They can then subsequently get the rest of their kids in!! So I think the 800m rule would benefit those who genuinely live near the school.

[Sagittarius]

Could the Council please explain how to make a submission?

Personally, I totally agree with Katherine Hepburn. To me the sibling rule makes sense. Dropping off two (or more) children in different schools at the same is impossible. Will schools be forced to allow constant lateness and earlier pick ups? Forcing families to move school if they move house is OK on paper, but there is a shortage of school places and the local schools are not guaranteed to have places. For the record, both my children are already in school so I have nothing to gain by supporting it.

I also felt wronged when I saw children coming to school by bus or train, but 4 years later I realised that the catchment areas stretch much further in later years and many of these children did not cheat the system but were legitimately offered a place.

Out of curiosity, if the local schools were underperforming, would you still be so adamant that your kids should go to their nearest school?

Anyway, just my opinion... I would also encourage parents with pre-reception children to support the new school.

[lanmum]

I've been following this thread with interest as there are so many different, yet equally valid points. It does seem that a lot of the frustration caused is because of people who are unfairly playing the system, not necessarily the sibling policy as such.

Instead of scrapping the sibling policy, if checks were tightened up on those who rent in an area (when they moved there, any ownership of other properties within 10? Mile (commutable radius) copy of tenancy agreements to check length of agreement and a record kept of move dates once their child has started school, with the rule that if they change address within a set time, then siblings do not get priority, would this not deter people from doing this as they know the siblings won't get in? This would help with school places, stop the temporary renting in an area and iradicate the bad feeling this causes? Then people who move for legitamite reasons (of which, I believe there are, such as parental divorce, issues with rental raise, redundancy etc) wouldn't have to uproot their oldest child/children, possibly in a time when they most need stability of school.

Just an idea...

[Siyeo]

So strangely with all that has been said it seems Wandsworth Council has immediately given some specific guidelines on people renting locally to schools to gain an admission advantage. Seemingly there is a problem with this type of behaviour that sadly people can't figure out for themselves and now have to have laid out in black and white for them.

[Siyeo]

It is also strange how the people who have rented to gain an advantage also think that the people they they rub shoulders with in the relevant playgrounds, don't know who they are and don't discuss their poor moral judgement.

[cynic]

Why on earth is it so objectionable that if you move away from the local area of a school (because you 'have to/ want to/ choose to') that your child may have to (wish to?) also move schools.

Also all this talk of dropping siblings at two different schools, well again that's pretty much a choice isn't it, (not to move one sibling to the other school)


I do hope everyone appreciates how preposterous these two aspects would sound to most of the rest of the U.K. let alone to the rest of the world.

[Siyeo]

Because it is not right to rent for a short term near a school to gain an advantage and at the exclusion of local children and then move to a bigger house generally funded by the money that is saved from not paying for private education. Local means Local not Earlsfield, not Southfields etc.

[Siyeo]

What is preposterous is how people choose to do this short term renting to gain what can be only considered a selfish advantage over the people that do live locally. This clearly now has to be spelled out to people as a number of people think that unless rules on behaviour are defined in black and white, it is ok to wade in with elbows out wide and tread on peoples heads to better themselves.

It is sad that people need this spelling out to them and we all wonder why we are living in a nanny state. Some people seem unable to police themselves

[footiemum]

I know this topic could run and run but here is a link to the paper that was discussed on Wednesday evening by Wandsworth Council. It gives more detail to the consultation and a summary table re sibling allocation for 2014. I'm not sure if the link will work but try searching "Wandsworth council paper 14-458".

http://ww3.wandsworth.gov.uk/moderngov/ ... 016-17.pdf

[AbbevilleMummy]

That's really interesting, thanks footiemum for posting the link.

So the 174 does include all schools, not just community schools. Also, as HW and BV are specifically mentioned and referred to a few times it seems that they really do want to target the problem surrounding these schools.

However, it does concern me that the council are going through this entire process in order try and improve the controversy around HW and BV, yet they do not have a say over the admission policies for these 2 schools. The council could implement these changes which would have quite an impact on families in other schools, and then no impact at all on HW and BV as the schools could just not implement them.

And for anyone who says that HW and BV will go with the council's recommendation; if HW and BV wanted to change their admission policy they would. They could do it now if they wanted. But they haven't.

Also, some have said that they would go with the council's proposals just like they did when moving to straight line assessment of distance. The key difference here is that that change didn't impact existing parents of the school. This change would. Schools do not tend to go against existing parents, governors, and powerful PTA's. Therefore it will be interesting to see how this plays out BTC....