Is it too soon to start a 1st March (secondary school allocation day) support thread?

That's annoying. Why have you had to give it up though?

Long story short we have just give up on the idea of a great Catholic secondary school (that my dd was practically guaranteed a place at) for a so so community high school on our doorstep. Don't get me wrong my dd is happy to go here as she can walk to school and she really liked it when we visited it, plus most of her friends will be going but I'm gutted after years of wanting her to go to the other high school we've had to settle for somewhere else.

Sorry. I think people have misunderstood me. I was trying to be humourous and thinking back to being first pregnant.

slinks away to the corner

Two week wait sounds lovely! This 6 month malarkey is tense to say the least. Still, only 9 days to go.......

I think that the other thing that counts in Herts favour is that in general the schools are good. Certainly there are no dreadful schools near us just ones that we don't think would be as good for our DD. We are actually in a reasonable position. Having said that I really want our first choice...

It's nearly as bad as the 2 week wait all those years ago.

Wow JustEatYourDinner that's super organised. Are you certain you won't get your first choice?

I've started making notes for appeals based on tips I've read on here. All my friends and other school parents all say we live close enough to be a sure thing but I won't feel a bit confident until I see it in writing. I've never wished the days away so much... 10 days to go.

I manage to forget about school allocations then it dawns on me suddenly that it is so close and I get panicked. I have our appeal documents ready already (long story) so at least I can submit them as soon as I get the notification and we can hopefully be one of the first cases heard.

I don't know how I am going to cope another ten days. I get nervous toilet when ever I think about it!

Our random allocation school has an inner catchment and an outer catchment. Places are awarded proportionally. But all the areas also have another catchment school. Apparently it was previously a Catholic school which may go some way to explain the unusual system. Not everyone in the area falls within the zones and it also covers part of a neighboring authority.

It's a real gamble to get a place. You also have to sit a test and they then allocate places based on that as well. (Not a pass/fail but one so they admit across the board)

@Trb17 I couldn't agree more I think a job in school admissions must be pretty tough.

I would note that even in Herts the majority of schools don't have random allocation (at least in our area)...unfortunately or maybe fortunately for us our preferred school does.

I also think that as long as the catchment area isn't huge or includes areas (such as villages) where the children will have to travel whatever school they go to random allocation is the fairest system and has least impact on house prices / selection by money.

As to odds the "success" rate of children in our parish has varied from 66% to over 90%. I don't think that those odds are too bad and I am hoping we have a reasonable chance and that it will work out over CI and we'd maybe appeal.

The random lottery thing interests me as we don't have that here. However I feel that by using the lowest number it's a bit unfair. As once your child has a number assigned, their number could be very high and they are stuck with it and therefore no chance of it ever being the lowest. To be truly random perhaps each child should be assigned a consecutive number and then just use a random number generator to pick the lucky number out? This would even out the chance every time.

Additionally in my area, the area around the best schools isn't the most affluent. This means that kids from poor to average incomes still get in the good schools because they live close. However the distance rule means some kids on the outskirts of town, and therefore too far to get in on distance, end up passing their actual nearest oversubscribed school to go to the undersubscribed school they ended up getting a place at. Frustrating I would think.

I know one thing... I think it must be complicated and possibly stressful to work in school admissions!

I'm not sure the number allocation system is fair, actually. Say there were 50 children on the list. Numbers from 1-100, lowest number wins. Child 1 is randomly assigned and has 100 tickets to choose from, with no possibility that the 'best' ticket is gone. Child 2 has 99 tickets to choose from with a 1 in 100 chance that the best ticket has gone. Child 3, 98 and 2/100.....child 10, 91 and 9/100 chance that the best ticket is gone... and so on. So the children don't have an equal chance of winning because the winning number is fixed.

I guess in some areas it might be better would stop selection by postcode/money.The school that does it is an over arching school so there is a catchment school in the area as well. I didn't like it enough to be my 1st choice (or really my 2nd) so it was bumped to allow me to put my least preferred banker in 3rd place.

One of our local schools is allocated by random allocation (after sen, looked after, siblings etc)I didn't put it as it seemed too much of a gamble. plus the bus fare to get there is really expensive

@trb17 yes it is very complicated but part of me prefers a lottery as it helps to dilute the house price differential you get with distance to the school gate. However it makes it very hard to predict if we'll get what we want though.

@tiggytape thankyou so much for taking the time to explain. I actually think I understand how it works now and it seems fair. Herts does have quite a few lotteries and yes we are after a single sex school. I'm pretty sure the school we want runs the random allocation the same way as Verulam, county run it and I can't see them doing if differently so I won't take up more of your time.

Wow random allocation like that sounds very complicated. Here it's just distance. I wonder how many LA's use distance versus random lottery methods and which is harder to administrate.