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Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

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It’s interesting when you look at the pupil population information.

One of the”west” schools- Pupils entitled to free school meals at anytime in the last 6 years. 15%

One of the “east” schools - over 75%

Its actually more to do with children being tutored.  I know a massive number of Fortismere children are tutored and of course places like Greig City Academy the children are not.

Greig City Academy teachers pour endless time and effort into getting kids into university (including Russell group). 

So there are things that skew the way things first look.

In the days of "value added" it was always better to judge a school by how much improvement there is from the starting point at year 7 (high in West schools, low in East schools) and what progress is made by the end of their school life. Places like Greig City Academy and Parkview always did really well in this category even though their results may not be so good.

Isn't Progress 8 supposed to  help identify how much improvement a school makes from baseline on entry depending on whether children are deemed high, medium or low achievers at that point presumably on the basis of SATS results? I think Greig City is unjustly ignored by many - I'm guilty of that and on reflection it might have been a better choice for at least one of mine. 

It’s pretty stark if you look at a map of deprivation in the borough and plot where the schools are. The higher deprivation is around the school, the lower they sit on the performance table.  It seems the defining factor in most cases.

I looked up my own school and it’s in the bottom 10% of the performance tables and the area is one of the most deprived in England.  A short bus ride away there’s another one, in the top quartile, plonk in the middle of one of the least deprived areas of the north east.  It’s all rather self fulfilling and incredibly depressing.

i agree with others about the usefulness of tables like these as they aren’t really telling us what the school is doing for their pupils but the real problem, which no school can tackle, is that less money at home makes the uphill struggle sometimes insurmountable.

How about we do away with catchment area as it stands.
Everyone within a 3 (?) mile radius of a school can apply and places are allocated via lottery..no right of appeal

Over time the social distortions and house price cluster lunacy would be eroded and schools would become closer to properly comrehensive.
Political suicide and destined to drive the chattering clases into a seething fury of entitlement..but

Oh and while we're here, how about funding schools* adequately ?
( * Please feel free to insert NHS, prisons, Law and Order, Social Housing, Benefits to suit...)

I think this is an interesting idea and, in theory, should make the admission system fairer. I have a friend in Twickenham who told me her council had put a lottery system in place for schools to stop the high level of fraudulent applications (mainly by people temporarily renting near the most popular schools). But I had a look online to see how that system works and it looks like it's no longer in operation.

I did find out that Brighton and Hove use a lottery for school admissions. But it's not a lottery across the whole city, they still use catchment areas and have a lottery within those. It's been running for 10 years and has made the schools somewhat more inclusive and diverse, but not all children get offered a place within their catchment and some catchments have higher income brackets than others so it's not a complete success. 

I'm not sure how big Haringey is in miles, but I'm guessing if a lottery system was implemented we might still need 2 or 3 catchments to allow the children to safely get to and from school. Personally I think more than 2 miles is a bit impractical. Especially if the 41 is anything to go by, anytime between 7.30 and 8am I'm told it's so full it doesn't even stop at my stop. So getting a more diverse social mix could depend on how the catchments are drawn up, using the railway line as a boundary (for example) won't solve the problem.

I totally agree with your inadequate funding observation, my oldest child is in year 10 and I've seen a massive reduction in school funds over his 11 years at school. The 'fair funding' proposal is going to make it even worse for most (all?) Haringey schools - although I haven't kept up to date with this issue so I'm not sure if it's still happening.

I mean that catchment areas should be re-structured, some are as low as below a mile..this masively distorts house prices and there are pressures and damends on schools to increase intake which may impinge upon what they do which makes them successful in the first place.
If all Haringey residents could apply to places at all Haringey schools - a ballot system could operate to enable this - then would be in everybody's interests to ensure that all schools were good ..Yes, it would be a major upheaval and cause a lot of short-term disruption, but in the long run, might do something to address the prevailing imbalance and inequalities.

( This is before we even think about the grotesque effects of the fee-paying system....)

We used to have to walk three miles to secondary school. And back.

Outside of London and a few other big cities it’s the norm.

We were talking about walking, not travelling.

Bonus -fewer obese kids. 

Thought the subject was secondaries?  My great nephew walks the 2 miles to his (he’s 11 and lives in Nottingham). Anyway, travel aside it’s about what’s fairest. A school full of kids of better off parents who can afford to live near or a school that takes kids who need an education?

And we aren't talking about 5-year olds. Maybe you should be fully awake before commenting on posts. This thread is headed                  " Secondary School Performance "

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