Yep, I knew two kids from a poor family who had to walk the 2.75 miles to school every morning because they couldn't afford the bus fair.The Dude wrote: That's insane. They actually penalized people for living close to their kids' schools?
I lived exactly three miles from my (Catholic) school, there was a regular school within 10 minutes walk, another about a mile away and one about 2 minutes walk closer than my school. So in a three mile radius there are four high schools (double digit numbers of primary schools), three of which are "normal".BTW, are there really non-rural places in the UK where there is no secular school within 3 miles?
However to put things in perspective.
RC Primary schools make up 6% of the total and CofE primary schools make up 25% of the total.
RC secondary schools make up >6% (I'm not sure of teh exact figure nut I know they beat out the CofE and have 10% of all schools overall) of the total and CofE secondary’s make up 6 % of the total.
The main reason for this is that there has been an increasing demand for Catholic high schools in England because they do on average do a fair margin higher than the national average (in GCSE results, my old school scored 11% higher than the national average and 17% higher than the average for the area, it is a common story on most of the league tables).