Buckinghamshire school catchment areas "are ridiculous" (From Bucks Free Press)

Buckinghamshire school catchment areas "are ridiculous"

7:00am Monday 14th September 2009 in

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SCHOOL catchment areas should be scrapped, watchdog members said, as a “radical review” of boundaries gets underway.

Two members of a council committee called for catchment areas to go as out-of-county children get places and parents can choose Schools and fight appeals.

Yet schools bosses said the boundaries were vital to keep schools local and few county children got places. They also ruled out abolishing the grammar system.

Conservative-run Buckinghamshire County Council has launched a review of catchment areas, the first since 2003, to tackle problems with over-subscribed schools.

A fall in the number of children in south Bucks is a driver for the review.

Liberal Democrat councillor Avril Davies said: “I am wondering if catchment areas are really a thing of the past.”

She said the 14-19 curriculum was shifting the focus.

Cllr Davies said: “Catchment areas are ridiculous considering parental preference, appeals and also so many children from other counties are educated in our system.”

And Michael Moore, representing the Catholic Diocese of Northampton, said: “I would scrub catchment areas. We have the fall-back of distance anyway.

“Appeals are just a nightmare. It would be so much easier to abandon [catchment areas] for the secondary sector.”

Yet Cllr Marion Clayton, who is responsible for schools, said: “Please don’t run away with the idea that our schools are full of out-of-county children displacing our children. It is simply not the case.”

She said: “They are simply a good way we can offer as many parents as possible their first preference school.

“We will never ever get to the stage where we can please 100 per cent of the parents with a first preference school. That is an impossible demand, I don’t think there is a local education authority that can do that.”

The review will be conducted by independent education consultant Alan Parker who will be given a “blank piece of paper” to take “carte blanche” with catchment areas, she said.

Schools could form “minor federations” so 14-19 students can take classes at different schools, Cllr Clayton said.

And she said the cost and logistics of transporting children to school by bus is “not a leading driver in this review”.

Promising a “radical” review she said: “I would like to see the number of appeals reduced. We are trying to do the very best we can for the families and children of Buckinghamshire.”

Factors to be considered included more children in north Bucks as more houses are built and more independently educated youngsters going to state schools because of the recession, she said.

But Cllr Clayton said: “Buckinghamshire has no intention of doing away with it’s selective system. It is obviously effective in Buckinghamshire.”

Council admissions manager Debbie Munday further defended catchment areas to the council’s overview and scrutiny commissioning committee.

She said they are a “tool” to decide which children get places.

For example, children from the Chalfonts, Seer Green and Gerrards Cross would have less of a chance than children from Chorleywood to get into the Challoner’s schools in Amersham without catchment areas, she said.

Mrs Munday said: “It allows us to say ‘these are the children that these schools are serving, not the ones over there’.”

Yet she said: “If we had an opportunity for a clean sheet of paper we wouldn’t put the schools where they are.”

Earlier this year the council agreed to expand the catchment areas of Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe to include Prestwood and the town’s John Hampden Grammar to include Gerrards Cross and Denham (see links, below).

The public will have the opportunity to give their views to the latest review, Cllr Clayton told Bucks Free Press.