Is it okay to only list your 1st preference in the secondary school application form?

Agree with tiggytape. They must use the same panel for all appeals. The panel will be very unhappy if the school starts presenting radically different cases in different appeals. The only way they can say these things is if their independent appeal panel is not independent at all and just does what the school tells them.

As it is an academy it is overseen by the Schools Adjudicator and the Education Funding Agency. I would report this to both of them. Either the head teacher is lying to make sure the school continues to have a long waiting list, or they are guilty of multiple breaches of the Admissions Code and the Appeals Code. Either way they need to be brought into line,

Mandolino: worse and worse

I would be reporting this Head to the Schools Judiciary Thingummy.

I strongly suspect that there are Academies that obfuscate the admissions process and influence the intake, but they don't usually brag about it the one with the suspicious lack of FMS / lower attainers that we visited didn't, anyway

The trouble is people are told these lies, get a place anyway and continue to spread these myths.

On my FB a friend had said they really liked school A and wanted to put it down for all 3 choices. I chipped in saying why that was a really bad idea. But then someone else came on saying 'well I put it down 3 times and my child got a place so do it'

She didn't seem to grasp he got a place regardless but happily tells everyone he must have got a place because she only put that school.

I only put one school for my youngest primary place, figuring if for some really strange reason she didn't get in it would be unlikely she would get into the other school in the area either. (Would be full of the other people who didn't get into the school but live closer to the second)

This same head also told us, 'If we want your child, we'll give him a place,' which sounds as if they are using the appeal process as a backdoor form of selection – in other words, if your child as special needs or is not academic, they won't offer them a place.

I was wondering whether they are trying to get enough through on appeal that they can put a whole extra class in place, rather than just a few children squeezed in to existing classes. So de facto increasing the PAN, without it being officially increased, if that makes sense.

Odd boots you're right of course.

Mandolin - my dd would have been EXTREMELY upset if I'd promised she was going to a certain school and then had to tell her she wasn't. This is clearly something that needs to be communicated to head teachers.

PRH47bridge, it's an academy. They are very sought-after and over-subscribed, so I really don't understand why they have to lie to get people to put them first. They could more than fill all their places while being straight with parents. We didn't like the school much, anyway, so we're not putting them first, so in our case it's academic, but I worry that other parents have been fed a bunch of lies and children's hopes have been raised.

HSMMaCM - I imagine there'd still be some turnips putting the same school in every box.

Odd boots they could say in grey writing 'send me to a dreadful school, perhaps 50 miles and 3 buses away' and then maybe people would replace this with a school they might actually consider.

Mandolin - that's awful! At the mass appeal I went to, the first thing they did was apologise on the headmasters behalf for telling everyone they would get a place.

That is not a mistake. That is a straight lie. There is one appeal process that applies to all appeals. They cannot have one process for a first appeal and a different process for a second appeal. And if he is guaranteeing that an appeal to the school will always get a place he is saying that the appeal panel is not independent, which is a breach of the Appeals Code. This needs to be stamped on. What type of school is this? Community, VA, VC or academy?

The head who told us to appeal twice, said that the first appeal was to the Local Authority, who would turn us down, and the second appeal was directly to the school, who would definitely offer us a place. We're a long way from this very sought-after and oversubscribed school, so I was sceptical we'd get a place and questioned him several times about this, but he repeatedly assured us that this was the system (in the presence of about twenty other parents, so lots of us got the wrong message).

GU24Mum - I wonder how differently the forms would be filled in if the boxes came pre-filled with 'Don't mind' instead of them being blank until they were filled in.

In my area two villages fell outside the area of the school everyone went to one year because there was a subtle change to the wording on distance. They had to introduce a bulge class, and change wording because children from those villages had no alternative that was both easy to get to and any chance of fitting more pupils in.

Agree with the others: the HT isn't correct! If you leave any spaces, then effectively those choices are "I don't mind, just put me anywhere" so then you'll have been given one of your choices! As the others have said, you get allocated the highest preference school which can offer you a place (based on their criteria).

at those Heads, Mandolino.
I suspect Heads are incredibly ignorant of the Admissions process, but I think it is also true that heads love an over-subscribed school and the competitive interest that gathers around it.

In urban areas, everyone is suspicious of an undersubscribed school, the school with places left at the end of all the other allocations. And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. On the other hand aspirational parents, vying for places, especially if some selective aspect has been introduced (for exactly this result) such as a music or sports scholarship eventually alter the demography of the school. I think some Heads may well deliberately sow the seeds of misinformation with this intent.

Another thing that is annoying is, when parents making an in-year application visit the school and are told by class teacher or head that," Yes, there is a place in Y3", without being told there is already a waiting list and the place will be filled from that by the time the parents have applied. We seem to come across this quite often at appeals.

You also have to look out for bulge years if feeder primaries get priority. This problem meant that living in the priority catchment area stopped guaranteeing a place at our catchment secondary.

I'd be furious at a Head spreading misinformation. It's great that you've learned otherwise from the knowledgeable people here.

Mandolinoparadiso - As I hope you've understood from this thread, both heads were wrong. The LA will not "shuffle people around". If you qualify for a place at your first choice that is what you will be offered. That sounds like a head who doesn't understand the system.

The second head is more worrying. He is out and out lying. If someone names that school as second or third choice, qualifies for a place and doesn't get one of their higher choices they will be offered that school. If you appeal it makes no difference whether or not you named the school as first choice. You are only allowed one appeal per academic year, so the idea that you can get a place by appealing twice is wrong, unless, of course, he means going somewhere else for Y7 then appealing for Y8 - not that a Y8 appeal would be guaranteed success. However, he has given a hostage for fortune by saying that you would definitely get a place if you name the school as first choice. If he put that in writing that would be evidence for an appeal if you did name the school as first choice.

It seems really odd that a school would go from "everyone always gets in" to "nobody gets in". Unless "something" had changed in the area that would have been known about - high birth rate, large new building development, neighbouring school going downhill etc ...

I'm also in the "everyone always get in" category. I've only put catchment school on the form because I don't have a genuine alternative - the only schools that DD would otherwise get into are the 3 undersubscribed ones that are equally inconvenient and equally not wanted!

   Obviously there is a statistical chance that DD will not get in to the catchment school, but I've worked out the scenarios that would mean this wouldn't happen and they are so perverse (and would indicate that there was a major schooling crisis in our town) that I am happy to disregard them.

I know lots of places where "everyone always gets in from there" becomes suddenly only siblings have got in.
In fact my road has apparently been that in some recent years (and if applying now I would have to use the religious card to hope to get my DC into the least worst school as a back up).

When we looked around our two local secondaries, the headteacher of one told us that we should put it as the only choice, because if we didn't the LA would do some 'shuffling around' and we might get our second or third choices.
The headteacher of the other school told us that if we want a place we had to put it first, as they never offered places to second or third choices. He said that we would definitely get a place if we put it first, despite the fact that we're way out of catchment (he said we may have to appeal twice, but we'd definitely end up with a place).