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Original poster

How many parents don't really have a school "choice"?

58 replies

BedsitBob · 20/06/2014 10:56

DS is in Y5 so thinking about 2ndary school. There is lots of discussion on MN about what to look for in a good school, making decisions between 2 schools etc.

However, the situation where we are is that actually there is no choice to be made. We are in a town with catchment areas with priority given to living in catchment and attending feeder schools.

Considering schools in our town (or reasonable striking distance outside) we have

  • our catchment school (with priority to DC from primary school DS attends) which DS is 99.999999999999% likely to get into
  • about 5 other perfectly fine (at cursory glance) schools, all of which he has approximate 0.000000000001% chance of getting into
  • the town's undersubscribed, badly failing academy which would be a complete nightmare to get to anyway.

I can't see any point in doing other than writing our catchment school for Choice 1 and leaving the rest of the form blank. But apparently that is a huge no-no on MN! Should I really be looking at the no-chance-of-getting-into schools to pick out the one I like best?

Surely we can't be the only people who really don't have a genuine realistic choice?

OP posts:
SmallPress · 20/06/2014 11:44

I only put one school on the form. There was zero point putting any other, because we were the wrong faith/not in the catchement/whatever.

DS got in. We'd have been totally stuffed if he hadn't, but if he hadn't got in there, he wouldn't have got in anywhere. (Which was, indeed, the result for some of his primary classmates.)

I'm in London...

antimatter · 20/06/2014 11:43

don't leave blank spaces because you may end up with place in that Academy
fill in spaces with those reminding better schools with the knowledge that he may get to any of them and you may be stuck

Xcountry · 20/06/2014 11:39

We have no choice either, All the kids go to the village school though this school is closing after the holidays and they will be going to a new school. After that they will go onto the catchment highschool which is the only one in the area.

mychildrenarebarmy · 20/06/2014 11:28

If you only put your first choice down and they don't have a space for your DC then you run the risk of being given the badly failing, awkward to get to academy.

Definitely look at the no chance of getting into schools because if they are better than the rubbish one, and you put them on the list you will at least have a chance for those. The good ones will be oversubscribed. ?

As an indication, where we are there is one good school in walking distance, several good but further away schools, and three absolutely dreadful, failing school in walking distance. All those schools last year had between two and four times as many applications (at all preference choices) as they had spaces. One failing miserably school had less than half as many applications as they had spaces, another had just over the amount they had places for, so everyone who only put down one choice but didn't get it will have been stuck in the worst of them. We put down only the schools we were prepared for DD to go to and got our 2nd choice but today she is 8th on the waiting list for her 1st choice (which is 8 miles away). She was 31st a week after offers. If she had been offered any of the rubbish schools then we would have continued to home educate until a place came up at one of her choices, but that doesn't work for or suit everyone.

It all depends on how much you want to try to avoid your DS ending up in the failing school. From what you say he 'should' get into the catchment school but I know of someone less than 1 mile away from our nearest good school that hasn't got in because it was massively over-subscribed this year.

HouseofEliot · 20/06/2014 11:14

We started looking at the end of year 4. We visited 4 schools. We are catholic and my dd's attend a feeder school which we were guaranteed. In previous years people from our road got into all 4 schools.

We get 3 choices here. We put our choices 1 academy school based on church attendance but priority for Church of England, 2 academy less than a mile away, 3 catholic school.

We got our 3rd choice the Catholic school which has just failed it's ofsted.

We appealed for the church academy but didn't get in.

If we weren't catholic we would have got our nearest school on our road but it is dire. I am glad we got the catholic school over that. Hopefully it will now improve.

Many people do not have a choice. My neighbour a non - catholic is moving as they don't want the dire school.

AtYourCervix · 20/06/2014 11:13

We had no choice. 1 secondary school in this area. Others 10 - 15 miles away in different towns (with crap transport links). Our no-choice school is Ofsted Outstanding and brilliant for D1. For D2 it was rubbish but she had nowhere else to go. So having no choice could be great or disasterous.

steppemum · 20/06/2014 11:05

you are right.

but it is no skin off your nose to write any of the other schools as no 2,3,4 etc on the form.

If there is any possible reason why you don't get into school 1, you won't end up at the failing academy

Youdontneedacriminallawyer · 20/06/2014 10:59

We effectively had no choice for secondary. Only one school near enough for DDs to get to without us providing transport. We're in a small town and DDs could walk to and from school.

All lternative schools are either a couple of bus rides away, and would take AGES (plus we'd have to pay), or in other small towns with a very limited bus service, which would also require several changes (and not at the right times for school).

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