No School For You (From Wandsworth Guardian)

No School For You

7:38am Monday 8th February 2010

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In March 2010, Year 6 parents should learn the secondary school their child has been accepted to. There will be the disappointment of not achieving first choice, and for some, no school offer at all. These families are being let down by the selection system.

My parents are doing this for a third time. They know that March may deliver the prospect of being compelled in September to send my brother to an allocated school, which they may not want him to attend. They know this because in 2005 the schooling system failed me. I was unsuccessful in the six schools we had chosen. My parents anxiously waited while they made objection; I felt overwhelming rejection and failure. Fortunately upon review I achieved a place at my first choice school. Not all families are as fortunate. Parental appeals against school rejections are set to exceed half a million.

Although the system lets down parents, the real victim is the child; uncertain at first instance, and rejected in the second. The lucky are saved from obscurity by success on appeal or through waiting lists. Others are cast adrift from former classmates and friends, dispatched to allocated schools. There they make do among the flotsam and jetsam, of in some cases, other rejects; compelled to study among a peer group not of their choosing, in a school not of their criteria, in an area not of their selection.

The system ought not to fail your son or daughter in anyway, but it can.

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