If you want to start a lively debate in a Scottish staffroom, forget Curriculum for Excellence refreshes or artificial intelligence in the classroom. Just mention catchment areas.

In the past year, several local authorities have reviewed admissions policies, including changes agreed by councillors in Midlothian following consultation. On the surface, these decisions are about lines on maps and oversubscription criteria. In reality, they are about something far more personal: where children belong.

As a primary teacher, I don’t experience admissions policy as a governance issue. I experience it when a parent arrives, slightly flustered, explaining that their placing request has been refused. Or when I’m trying to fit 29 waterproof jackets onto pegs designed in the 1980s for 22.

Overcrowded and half-empty classrooms

Across Scotland, the picture is uneven. In some urban areas, rolls are climbing in particular catchments, often linked to new housing. In others, particularly rural communities, numbers are falling.

Recent reporting by Tes has highlighted how rural schools are disproportionately affected by declining rolls. Local authorities have consulted on mothballing or closing smaller primaries as pupil numbers drop. For those of us in busier schools, that can feel like a different universe.

For colleagues in small rural settings, it is existential. I once worked with a teacher who led a two-teacher rural school. She knew not just every pupil, but every dog, sheep and tractor associated with them.

When closure was first mooted, it wasn’t framed as an educational failure, but as a budgetary necessity. The community, though, heard something else entirely: you don’t matter enough.

Under the Schools (Consultation) (Scotland) Act 2010, councils must consider educational benefit and community impact before closing a school. That safeguard matters. But when rolls continue to dip, and funding tightens, the pressure doesn’t disappear.

Meanwhile, in parts of Edinburgh and Glasgow, some primaries are bursting at the seams. Temporary classrooms pop up on playgrounds. Dining halls double as PE spaces. Staff joke darkly about running a waiting list for pegs.

The irony is that both situations - half-empty rural schools and oversubscribed urban ones - raise the same question: how do we plan school places fairly?

Parental choice: theory and reality

Scotland’s placing request system gives parents the right to apply for a school outside their catchment. In principle, that’s empowering. In practice, it can deepen inequity.

In every authority I’ve worked in, certain schools acquire reputations: the “good” one, the “sporty” one, the “strict” one. Sometimes those reputations are deserved; often they are outdated or simplistic. But once they take hold, placing requests rise.

The recent admissions review in Midlothian was about clarifying criteria and managing demand more consistently. That’s sensible. Yet the bigger issue remains: why are some local schools seen as fallback options rather than first choices?

From a classroom perspective, the impact is tangible. Larger classes make differentiation more complex. If you’re supporting several pupils with additional support needs - and Audit Scotland has reported rising demand for ASN provision - every extra body in the room matters. Not because teachers can’t cope, but because attention is finite.

And let’s be honest: class size is not just a number on a spreadsheet. It’s how many children are trying to tell you about their weekend at the exact same moment.

Impact of closing rural primaries

Rural closures hit differently. A primary school in a small village is rarely just a school. It’s the venue for the Christmas show, the coffee morning, the emergency meeting when the power goes out. Remove the school, and you remove a pulse point.

I once attended a consultation meeting about a potential closure. The hall was full - not of angry campaigners, but of grandparents, former pupils and toddlers who hadn’t yet started school. The message was simple: this building holds our history.

Of course, local authorities must balance budgets; it is not unreasonable to question the sustainability of very small schools. But if equity means anything, it must include geographic equity. Children in rural Scotland deserve viable local provision, not a daily hour-long bus journey because their roll dipped below a threshold.

Teachers sit in an awkward middle ground. We don’t draw catchment maps or approve housing developments without new school capacity. But we deal with the consequences.

We reassure families when placing requests are declined. We welcome children mid-session because another school has closed. We reorganise composite classes when rolls shift unexpectedly.

There is humour in it, of course. I have taught in a classroom so full that we developed a choreography for lining up - a sort of gentle conga to avoid collisions. In another setting, I taught a composite of 11 pupils where discussion felt like an intimate book club.

But both contexts were rich and challenging. The point is not that one is better than the other, it’s that children’s experiences are shaped profoundly by decisions made far from the classroom carpet.

Planning for belonging

If Scotland is serious about tackling the poverty-related attainment gap through initiatives such as the Scottish Attainment Challenge, then equitable access to stable, high-quality local schools must be part of the conversation.

Parents with the means to move house or manage transport can often navigate admissions complexity. Others cannot.

A truly equitable system is one where every catchment school is trusted and well-supported. That requires joined-up thinking between education, housing and transport planning. It requires transparent consultation. And it requires resisting the temptation to see school places as merely logistical.

For our youngest learners, primary school is their first sustained experience of community beyond the family. It is where they learn to read, yes, but also where they learn that they belong somewhere.

Whether we are debating admissions criteria in Midlothian, managing bulging rolls in Edinburgh or fighting to preserve a rural school elsewhere in Scotland, that sense of belonging should be the touchstone.

Because when we redraw a catchment boundary or close a school, we are not just shifting numbers on a spreadsheet - we are redrawing children’s maps of home.

Catriona Egerton is a primary teacher in Scotland

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