School places stress hitting families

Each year there are thousands of appeals - most fail

Many 11 year olds in England are half way through their school summer holiday not knowing where they will be going to school next month.

Thousands of families are in the process of appealing against the secondary school places they have been allocated, unable to get into the most popular schools.

The government should be ashamed of itself

School governor

The number of appeals has been rising relentlessly - last year there were a total of 63,611 - with usually just under a third being successful.

The former chief inspector of schools, Mike Tomlinson, said one of the main problems was the wide gap between the best and the worst performing secondary schools.

He defends the right of parents to have a choice, but the reality - that schools choose pupils - caused "an enormous amount of stress and concern" in families.

Nothing was going to resolve that by September.

Moving

Charlie Gardener has two children at Sudbourne Primary school in the London borough of Lambeth, which is described by inspectors as "an excellent school with many strengths".

He is so keen to ensure his children get what he feels is a decent secondary place that the whole family is moving to Sussex.

"It is a very big deal for us because we've lived in Lambeth for 16 years - it's the longest I've lived anywhere in my life.

"To be honest it's much more convenient for my work to stay here, it's much more convenient for my wife to stay here - she's a self-employed photographer and she's going to really have to start her business from scratch again.

"But we're willing to do that because, however selfish it seems, we feel we're acting in the best interests of our children."

'Shameful'

Devon Allison, one of the governors at Sudbourne Primary, said the 43 children who left this year were going to 24 schools in seven London boroughs - and on their last day in the school, four did not have a secondary place to go to in September.

"I think that's a crying shame and the government should be ashamed of itself," she said.

"For a school like this that is doing such good work with so many disadvantaged children, that is such a pillar in its community, to be completely unable to support those children into secondary school is just completely wrong."

Mr Tomlinson, who stepped down as the head of the Ofsted inspectorate, said part of the reason for the problem was that parents could now make more informed choices about where they would like to send their children.

No easy answer

In urban areas there were a lot of schools to choose from but the difference between the best and the worst was considerably wide.

"Therefore parents - not surprisingly - would like their children to go to the better schools in the areas and they are simply over-subscribed."

One answer might be to make those schools bigger.

"I must add that some of the head teachers of those schools would be reluctant to do so, I suspect, because they fear they may lose the very qualities that people want to go to them for, if they became too large.

Splits

"The obvious answer is that ultimately we must have all schools at a sufficiently high standard, such that parents are not faced with this very, very difficult and traumatic problem that this number do face at this time of the year."

Not only might children be separated from their friends but in some cases from brothers and sisters.

"It does cause an enormous amount of stress and concern in families. It affects not only the children but it can affect the marriages of the parents as well.

"So it is a very serious and worrying problem - but there is no simple, straightforward answer that will resolve it for September."

Appealing can certainly be worth it.

In selective Buckinghamshire, for instance, a fifth of places are decided on appeal.

You can appeal even if you have accepted a place elsewhere.

You can appeal to more than one school.

The Advisory Centre for Education publishes information to help parents cope with the process.

It says that for most appeals, the panel will look to see if the rules have been followed and if the school could manage to take more pupils.

Schools have a set number of places to fill, called the standard number or published admission number.

It says parents should try to find out if any appeals were successful last year - which might indicate that a school can actually cope with more pupils than it says.

If the school is full the panel will then balance the problems faced by your child if they do not go to the school with the problems the school will face if it has to take an extra child.

• tell the appeal panel about your child

• explain why they should go to this school.

• explain why it would be bad if they did not.

And anyway, what is so bad about the schools with spare places? - investigate for yourself and don't take other people's word for it.