Cross county movement

[slackmum]

I have just seen that Gloucestershire CC allocated 482 out of 7326 places to out of county pupils, I wondered if this is particular to counties with GSs or happens across all county boundaries.

Also how many of these children are likely to be coming for GS places and is it likely that as many Gloucestershire pupils are electing to go to schools out of county.

Please understand I am not against pupils choosing out of county schools just curious.

Also posted on Gloucestershire's forum.

[hermanmunster]

Hi

I think this happens across a lot of county boundaries simply because the boundary is artificial and people can often live much closer to a school in the neighbouring county than one in their own county.

[slackmum]

Are catchment areas based on counties or simply a circle of x miles?

[kentsussexborder]

Movement between counties works both ways for those on the Kent/Sussex borders.

There are those who opt for the true comprehensives in Sussex which perform better than than a secondary/Academy in Kent which has the top 5% creamed off. There are those in Sussex who would rather their child went to a grammar in Kent.

It also happens at primary level with many parents opting for a 'better' school in a neighbouring county.

[Tolstoy]

Are catchment areas based on counties or simply a circle of x miles?

I think it depends on the admission policies of the authority or school doesn't it? Some will have a feeder school policy but I think most places do it on a radius basis as the crow flies. This quite sensibly ignores county or country borders for the very reason Hermanmunster has put forward.

[Gman]

When a child is educated not in their home Local Authority, the home LA has to pay a fee to the educating authority. Where neighbouring LA's have similar number of cross border movements, then there is no tension as the payments even out.

But where 1 LA has children going 1 way, out, to other LA, there can be issues. Manchester LA has in the past created problems for children applying outside the LA. This is because the LA has a poor reputation for schools (the high achieving Independents do push the LA up the league tables).

Manchester has been paying its neighbouring LA's for years. It would explain why they find it cheaper to pay a HT from a nearby LA to mentor the HT's in Manchester and act as Chairman of the Board.

[Minesatea]

We live north essex and cross bordering happens alot here too. My DS's grammar has several suffolk children as would be expected but many essex children go to a good comp in south suffolk as well. We in fact had it as a back up on our CAF.