Penalising parents for exercising their rights?

! This post hasn't been updated in over a year. A lot can change in a year including my opinion and the amount of naughty words I use. There's a good chance that there's something in what's written below that someone will find objectionable. That's fine, if I tried to please everybody all of the time then I'd be a Lib Dem (remember them?) and I'm certainly not one of those. The point is, I'm not the kind of person to try and alter history in case I said something in the past that someone can use against me in the future but just remember that the person I was then isn't the person I am now nor the person I'll be in a year's time.

#2 son is due to start secondary school next year and we’ve just put in his application for the same school #1 goes to and his preferences for the LEA-controlled schools.

#1 son goes to an excellent independent school (top performing state secondary in England) and #2 son wants to go there as well but the school is badly over-subscribed – they turn down over 1,000 applicants every year – so the odds are stacked against him getting there.

For his LEA preferences, we haven’t chosen the nearest school to home because it’s rubbish which presents us with a bit of a problem – if he doesn’t get into the same school as #1, how is he going to get there?

I drop #1 son off at school in the morning on my way to work as it’s in vaguely the same direction as the office but the other two schools on #2’s list are in the opposite direction.  What we need is for one of them to be able to go to school by bus but there’s a problem: none of the schools is more than 3 miles from home and a weekly bus pass for a child is £10 – taking off school holidays, that’s about £400 a year!

The 3 mile rule is what the British government says is the maximum distance a child of secondary school age in England can be expected to walk to school.  There are exceptions for children with medical conditions of course and #2 has a heart problem so he fits the criteria for getting a free bus pass … but only if he goes to the local, rubbish school.

You can get a free school bus pass for your children if you meet the usual criteria and it’s this that has annoyed me.  If you’re unemployed your children can have a free school bus pass.  If you’re an asylum seeker your children can have a free school bus pass.  If your household income is below a certain level your children can have a free bus pass.

It may surprise my regular readers to know that it’s not the freebies for the workshy or asylum seekers that irritates me, it’s the latter.  I work, I earn an above average wage but I have 4 children.  Someone on minimum wage with 1 child getting income support, housing benefit, etc., will have as much, if not more, disposable income than me but the household income criteria is an arbitrary threshold, it doesn’t go up if you have more children to pay for.

Ok, so it’s my choice to have 4 children (although I did inherit 2 stepsons) but if the system offers help for parents – which my taxes pay for – then it should do so fairly.  And if the system purports to offer parents the right to choose which school they want (or need) their children to go to, it shouldn’t penalise them for exercising that right.

10 comments

  1. axel (1214 comments) says:

    A joke from the Corries, mid 70s i think,

    ‘…the sooner England gets home rule, the soonier everyone will be happy and get on with their lives….’

  2. axel (1214 comments) says:

    At a slight tangent to the original question.

    How much does the independent school spend per pupil per year?

    How much does Harrow spend per pupil per year?

    How much does the ‘Bad’ local school spend per pupil per year?

    I am coming to the conclusion that council run schools are too random and have too many stupid dogmatic overheads to function well.

    Who do you trust to run a school, a faceless bureaucrat in the local council, who can transfer to another department or council at the drop of a hat or the headmaster of the school, who only has to run the school and will be forever tainted, personally by its results?

    I think this might be an interesting Freedom of Info question to ask, as I’m sure that ‘good headmasters’ in independent schools do a lot better than ‘good headmasters’ in council schools, as they can react and plan according to their precise situation without the interfering busybody councillors, who for the most part are dicks

  3. axel (1214 comments) says:

    Good luck with getting #2 to the good school

  4. wonkotsane (1133 comments) says:

    The independent school does well because it’s outside of the interference of the local authority which means they can set their own curriculum, spend money how they see fit, earn money from selling course their curriculum and get corporate sponsorship. They’re sponsored by Tarmac and the Royal Company of Mercers.

  5. axel (1214 comments) says:

    so, free enterprise (the school) 1 big business (the council) 0

    At the moment, newcastle has a problem with useless headteachers, most of them were promoted out of the classroom, into the office, waiting to get promoted into the upper echelons of the education department but because they are usless….

  6. clyde (6 comments) says:

    that british bloody gov again
    must admit wonkotsane dont know much about english school system, but seems a nightmare choosing a school
    my kids school is 2 mile away in next village ,and all kids travel free on school bus
    not gloating just abit of info
    kids walking 3 miles to go to school just aint fair

    and no im not on benifits

  7. clyde (6 comments) says:

    that british bloody gov again
    must admit wonkotsane dont know much about english school system, but seems a nightmare choosing a school
    my kids school is 2 mile away in next village ,and all kids travel free on school bus
    not gloating just a bit of info
    kids walking 3 miles to go to school just aint fair

    and no im not on benifits

  8. jameshigham (87 comments) says:

    The system is now designed to make life hell for the middle-classes until they fall off the bottom into serfdom.

  9. KC (2 comments) says:

    Just think, a few years ago that bargain £32 a month you’re paying for your mobile phone would almost have paid for your sons bus travel! How did we manage without them?

  10. axel (1214 comments) says:

    http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/health/anger-as-scots-patients-face-cross-border-cancer-lottery-1.1058612

    this is a repeat of an issue that first got me onto this sight but it was england complaining!

Leave a Reply to clyde Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.