Councillors and Civil Servants Open Your Ears!

This is a bit of a rant, and hopefully it will give you a chance to let off some steam too. Do you feel like you are being treated like an idiot, or not really heard? Then read on. Otherwise, go get a cup of cocoa and take a break from the stress.

I get a strong sense that the Council are just not singing off the same hymn sheet that parents are. Whenever the Council Official speaks at a public meeting - so far Gil Sweetenham - I hear the same arguments repeated over and over again. It's that broken record assertiveness technique at which he is so astonishingly adept, and which makes officials everywhere so hard-of-hearing when it comes to parents and their concerns. Open up your ears Mr Sweetenham!

And this public representation of the Working Group leads me to sense that it just does not recognise the overwhelming agreement between parents who say, "We want social justice to be the primary criteria by which you design your proposals, because we want all our children to get a good education." One parent at the Balfour School meeting last week put it well when they said that the system would not be fair until all the schools in Brighton are good schools.

Social justice means ensuring a comprehensive intake for all our schools. A comprehensive intake involves making sure that a schools intake comes from across a wide variety of backgrounds: this is usually agreed to produce the best performance for children across the board, whatever their needs, and rural schools usually do better in this sense as they have a larger catchment area with a broader spectrum of children. Ideally this would include rich, poor, working class, middleclass, or from different cultural backgrounds, religious denominations, and so on, although it is very difficult to ensure that sort of variety of a mix. It all promotes a richer learning experience in which children are less likely to be isolated because no group dominates particularly.

So, surely the Secondary Admissions Review should promote this over and above any other criteria for selection? And how will the possible single catchment for Falmer manage this at all? It seems to me that it will lead to a "ghetto" school. I suspect that it would have a less comprehensive under the new fixed catchment in 2008, than it does currently.

So you might think that the point of the admissions review is to give parents choice, but apparently it is not about choice. Mr Sweetenham told us it's about being able to express a preference. But how can you express a preference if there is no choice?

OK then, surely if there is no choice it's about creating good schools all round and educating children. Isn't that what the education system is about? Admissions are therefore a hugely significant doorway to that period of secondary education as they enable that comprehensive intake? But under the proposed fixed catchments, this doorway becomes so much more significant because the future is so much more uncertain for some children faced with a "ghettoized school".

Free School Meals
When I spoke to a council employee last week about the Admissions Review, I asked how important sharing Free School Meals allocation between schools has been. Free School Meals (FSM) are an indication of deprivation, and under a comprehensive school system, those kids from deprived backgrounds would be spread across all the schools in the city. They said it wasn't a "main consideration", then said it was still "important". They admitted that transport, links between schools and communities and the simplicity of the process were, "considered more highly...maybe." Well, this is certainly echoed by officials at public meetings: that's their mantra and it shuts out the sound of "social justice" and "comprehensive" when it comes to Falmer.

Best for "the whole city"
When Gil Sweetenham says that fixed catchments are the best solution for the "whole city", that doesn't just mean children, it means businesses, students, and residents - maybe the Council too. "Hooray!" you may say, but shouldn't the primary beneficiaries of any admissions process be all our children. After all, the whole city can only gain in the long-term from all our childrens' succeeding.

Transport
I can see the Council's eyes light-up with a Swiss efficiency at a smooth transport system, requiring no extra effort on the their part to put on school bus services for children as they can use already existent bus routes. I think the Council see fewer cars on the roads taking children to school, so that local business is not disrupted by the school run.

Even so, there are a lots of children in East Brighton who will be travelling some distance to their local school. Fact is, there are not nearly as many schools in the east of the city. Many parents will still prefer to drop them off by car when no dedicated school bus service is available. And the big question remains, "So, Mr Civil Servant, exactly how does this marvellously efficient transport system based on all those colourful maps ensure our children get a shot at a decent secondary education?"

Can I add as a warning to all parents that seeing the kids going to Falmer run the gauntlet each morning from the bus stop across the slip roads to the A27 gives me the shivers every time I pass.

A simple admissions system
Then, they want parents to be able to understand a simple system. In this way, perhaps the Council will be able to avoid the emotional and financial burden of appeals against the admission results by distressed parents and kids? Then again, a simple admissions process may lead to years of complex difficulties for children sent to sub-standard schools - and by "sub-standard" I mean a school that is only "satisfactory", because "satisfactory" is not good enough for any child.

Links between schools and communities
And I keep hearing about links between schools and communities, but I'm sure what this means exactly; it sounds suspiciously like empty spin. What would these links achieve if the school is not providing a good education for children? Surely that's the first priority, and a responsibility not simply of the local school, but of the city of Brighton & Hove as a whole. I'd rather my child travelled some distance and received a decent education, than that they were able to walk to school, but received a "satisfactory"one (and that's the fragile state it is currently in at Falmer, it may change post the 2008 fixed catchments).

The nod they give to social justice is slight and insincere. All the talk of each catchment taking its share of socio-economic deprivation is about keeping us quiet - more spin. The pill still tastes bitter. Do they really think any parent in the now proposed Falmer 2008 catchment are stupid enough to believe that our Free School Meals quota will evenly balanced with other catchments? No, they will be significantly higher, perhaps as high as 50% - correct me if I'm wrong Mr Sweetenham, but that's what I thought I heard at the Balfour School meeting and that's what I wrote down. Patcham's would be 8%, and other schools would get around 23%.

Don't they understand that until they make sure every school receives a comprehensive intake that the schools themselves will not get a chance to rise above that "satisfactory" level? Admissions is about ensuring equality of opportunity above all else, by ensuring that every school takes the strain and starts from the same position on intake. Fixed catchments deny a preference simply because they deny choice in the single catchments. And if you want real choice make sure all the schools are good.

So, for those Council Officials who replay that record over and over again, please stop and actually listen to parents who are talking more than sense, they are saying something that is actually right.