Should I put as first choice a school my son has no chance of getting into?

The order you put school in does matter if you are lucky enough to qualify for more than one school. In that case you will get your higher preference. Schools never know in what order your preferences have been made, though, so just put them in your true preference order.

How bad are these "terrible schools"? What makes them so awful? Low GCSE grades? Violence? Are they "failing schools" ?Quite how bad are they?

Are there really that many awful schools? All comps around here are decent, Some good, some outstanding. Some less desired because of " rougher estates" being part of catchment, but that's it.

Anyway, I am sure you will get into one of your top-5 ones, it IS a significantly low birth year after all.

Can someone clarify who makes the decision, please - school or LEA? One HT said he has some influence, other said it was nothing to do with them.

Down here in Somerset we only have 3 choices. I have done as the form said, put my 3 choices down in order of preference. If we get none of them and just a place at local 'not over my dead body' school, I will go to appeal willingly, and re appeal as necessary. We don't have any other options available so I shall just fight tooth and nail to get (one of) the schools we want. There seem to be many variables that we parents have no knowledge about i.e. low/high birth years, how many extra's a school can accommodate without jeopardizing the classes and more. Also a fair bit of chopping and changing seems to go on at the eleventh hour.

'over a mile'

that sounds like a close school to me!

yes that's true, 6 non choices is not much of a choice.

But in London where you get 6 choices you can put down your 6 nearest non-faith schools (because you're not the right faith) and still not get into any of them as the shortage of places is so chronic...

that is a very good way of putting it

our true preference is ''any school in a 7 mile radius that isn't one of the two closest to my house!''

I am still astonished at the school gate misinformation. The number of people who still think that the order on the form matters, or that if they put one school then they have to be given it.

I am jealous of getting 6 choices though. I wish we could have had 4/5 never mind 6.

tiggytape

I agree.
but in our case the 2 worst schools in our city (which isn't that big) are the 2 closest schools to us
So they are the most likely to have places anyway, and they are the only schools I would be 'guaranteed' to get a place in, if I put them on my form.
So in a way we have nothing to loose. If we put them down, we get them. If we don't put them down we probably would get them. If they give us places in another school across town, then that would be a better school than either of these.

The other side of it is knowing your area. This year there are about 170 too many secondary places in our city and the schools have all been heavily giving out flyers and trying to woo parents. This is partly because this year is quite a low birthrate. So we are not in an area with a massive pressure and oversubscription on places.

The schools we have put down as 1, 2 and 3 have all said there is a very good chance that we would get a place. They anticipate people from our area getting places, but no guarantees.

We've done the same thing for dd. Her 1st choice is unlikely to be successful but at least 2nd choice is still good & as her brother goes there she's pretty much guaranteed a place.

blimey threetomatoes, you have 6 choices??? We get 3.

We have struggled with the form, as ds passed for grammar but not enough to guarantee a place (although it is, say 90% likely he will get it)

school 2 is great school, but we are a bit far away, plenty of kids from here go there, but it is borderline. But then again last year they added a class to accommodate all the applicants.

school 3 is also a bit far away, also borderline.

All 3 schools are in different LEA.

Wouldn't touch local schools with a barge pole. We hoping that if we don't get 1 or 2 we will appeal, and should get in to 1 on appeal (fingers crossed) We really worried about not putting a guaranteed school as no.3, but the only guaranteed school is our closest, and any school is better than that.

Can I just repeat again, it doesn't matter which order you put the school, the system doesn't work like that.

The danger of not putting that down as no.6 is that she could be allocated a school just as bad but on the opposite edge of the LEA area you live in...

So awful school with a long journey...

Just read Clay's post, she put it more eloquently than me. I should've just said "uh huh, yes, what she said"

Put down schools in the order of preference regardless of any other factor. They will then look at your application for each school individually and will give a yes or no answer, they then look at your list and offer you the highest with a yes. After that they see which schools have places available and start the process again with everyone who didn't get their first choice and on and on etc! That's why it takes so long to sort out. You won't lose a place at a school closer even if you put it down as third choice if you fulfil criteria better than someone who put it as first. Meaning you have absolutely nothing to lose.

Look at your local authority's rules as you don't always go onto the waiting list unless you specify separately.

I went through all of this earlier this year when my ds got third choice, but I kept plugging away at everything I could possibly do and he eventually got our first choice even though it's not the closest. That said it's still only 1.5 miles away so not a hike, although if I ask ds to walk you'd think I'd asked him to walk to the moon! Lol

LittleSiouxieSue, that's not right. The OP won't jeopardise her place at another school by putting it further down the list. Schools do not look at first preferences, then second preferences etc. so they can't fill up on first preferences.

They look at all the children who've applied for that school equally regardless of whether they've put it 1st or 6th. The preference system only comes into play when a child meets the criteria for more than one school, then they are offered the highest preference school and the application to the other is disregarded. It's perfectly possible to get a place at your 6th choice school while plenty of others who put it 1st do not get a place. So you should put them in order of actual preference not in the order you think you will get into them.

Any school not following this procedure is effectively breaking the law.