Are you a victim of unfair school or council admissions policies! Do you have to home school through no choice of you own! A child will be offered a place ahead of your son or daughter no matter how long they have been on the waiting list for a specific school, if they live nearer to the school (as the crow flies), if they are a cared for child (foster or adopted) or if they have a sibling their. Is it fair... Well does your child fly to school, the walking distance from points A to B could well be shorter than points A to C depending on road layouts but the child at point C will be awarded the school place, if it's a shorter distance in a straight line. A foster or adoptive parent(s) are paid sufficiently to care for their child so should they get priority if a parent is forced to home school, therefore unable to seek employment or maybe reduce work hours to suit. Already having a sibling at the school is a fair point, I don't think any parent would choose different schools for their children unless they had sufficient reason. I propose change... Should the distance really matter, as long as you live within the schools catchment area? I don't think it should and would actually like to see this policy scrapped. Although maybe a slightly fairer way could be if the schools catchment area was divided into zones, as an example: Zone A could be a radius of 1 kilometer from the school, zone B = 1 - 2 km, zone C = 2 - 3 km etc. So if you was first on the waiting list and fell into the A zone, you would not be overlooked by someone who moved closer. I'm not saying this is a fair way but would certainly be a more reasonable approach. After all, if its your local school, should you not get priority over someone who has another local school but would prefer to choose 'your' local. As for cared children, I disagree they should get automatic priority but maybe they could have a points system so each individual case would be judged independently, with a minimum amount of points required to get priority or move further up the waiting list. So if you find yourself in a similar situation, having to home school and be overlooked on several occasions after initially being in pole position, or you just happen to agree then please sign this partition.  

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