Tom, Dick and Harriet don't let you go to school

[Ian Batten]

On 15 Apr 08, at 1123, Tom Thomson wrote:
>
>
> The result you suggest would of course arise from catchment areas in
> many cases - boundaries sometimes get adjusted "to enable children to
> associate with members of their own social class" or some similar  
> phrase
> intended to conceal what's going on (and if you believe that doesn't
> happen I expect you believe in Santa Claus too).

Catchment areas?  Would you like the 1" to the mile map of those?

Here's how Birmingham, and most urban admission policies operate,  
excluding weirdnesses of church secondary schools (unusual).

1.  Children looked after.

2.  Siblings.

3.  For specialist schools, up to 10% selected by passing a per-school  
test.

4.  Everyone else, ordered by distance.

For our remaining selective schools it's exam scores, end of.

So the overall admission process is that you place state schools in  
preference order.  You then go to the first one for which you meet the  
criteria.  Computers are involved, because there's presumably some  
iterative algorithm to balance distance against preference.  The  
typical form for the middle classes will specify one or more of the  
selective schools (most of which share a single exam), followed  
perhaps by a speculative `good' non-selective school if that's not  
your local one, followed by the best (or least worst) of the schools  
that you would definitely be in reach of.

It generates appeals.  But not good ones, by and large, because the  
process is absolutely mechanical.

ian