Secondary application - I don't understand something about the process

who actually checks that students are correctly admitted under the right criteria - the school or the LEA

The admission authority is responsible for sorting this out. If the school is an academy or VA school it is its own admission authority. If it is a community or VC school the LA is the admission authority. No-one independently checks their work. The LA may do some basic sense checking if the school is its own admission authority but they won't go through everything in detail. If a single child has been placed in the wrong category they probably won't notice.

In the scenario you describe, the pupil who missed out on a place as a result of the error would have a good case for appeal provided they had evidence of the mistake.

Lima; you could stay in tne waiting list for 1. but ask to came off the waiting list for 2.

Most LAs tell you you have a waiting list place and give you a few days to accept or decline, but a few just automatically re-allocate you a new place if a higher choice comes up, so worth checking what your LA does.

Ok what about this scenario - we get offered choice 3 on our list on offer day but stay on the waiting list for choices 1 and 2. By this point we’ve changed our minds. We no longer want choice 2 as we’re happy with 3 but would hold out for our first choice. Would it be possible to hold onto a place at 3rd choice school. Reject an offer from choice 2 if it comes further down the line, but stay on the waiting list for choice 1?

Soontobe if you are in England or Wales what you are suggesting happens would be illegal, does not happen, you do not understand the system, and if you are telling this stuff to parents you are very seriously misleading them. Quite frankly people who spread misinformation are a menace in schools admissions.

OP:

1. Every school ranks every single applicant in order of how they meet the published admissions criteria. Every applicant, no matter where on the list they placed the school. The school sends the ranked list to the LA, telling them which applicants they could admit.

1. The LA checks each applicant, and if an applicant gets an offer from more than one school, they allocate the applicant with the place that is HIGHEST up tne it list. All the other offers go back in the pot.

So: the school does not take into consideration where on your list you placed them, only how you meet the criteria.

You will be offered the highest school in your list that could fit you in.

This means you are safe to list schools in the exact order you prefer them.

You will not stand less of a chance at a school just because you put it at the bottom.

The only things that would stop you gettungbthst school (if it can offer you a place) is getting an offer from a school you like better, higher up the list.

This is law, throughout England and Wales. It is called the Equal Preference System.

The deadline is tomorrow.

This thread just helped my penny drop too

I have a really important question though... is the deadline midnight tonight or midnight tomorrow night?

If what you say is correct, how come time and time again, children who don't put the most popular school down as their first choice end up not getting a place over others who live further away but did put it as first choice? I've taught enough year six classes to know this is what happens, every year!

This apparently happened in dc’s year.

In reality, what had happened was child wanted to go to school a. Mum wanted child to go to school b. Mum filled out preferences school b first choice, a second, but didn’t tell child.

Child gets school b. Mum has to say they didn’t get school a.

If you apply on time, there are really only a couple of situations where you wouldn’t get school B. The first is if you are offered a place at School A which is your first preference.

The second is if you don’t get A and wouldn’t have got B anyway. Where you put them on the lists makes no difference unless you are in a position to be offered more than one place. The LA are only able to offer you 1 place so they use your preference list to decide which school to offer a place at and which one to remove you from the list of.

"Say I don't get a place at School A because others live closer than me. Couldn't there be now be a situ where School B places have all been taken up i nthat round by people who put it as their 1st choice, so I get School C? Or does it not work like that? Sorry, I'm trying really hard to understand but it's been a looooong week :D"

No. The way it works is that the computer looks at who is successful at gaining a place at all the schools. Then it looks at preference. So it will take out all the children who put it as first choice and were successful in gaining a place. Then everyone else moves up the list. School B could only be full of people who were higher up the list than you and had it as a higher preference. In which case, you would never have had a chance anyway.

OuiOui No, there is no situation where you would get School C because School B was full with first choicers.

The only reason you would get School C would be if you didn’t come high enough up in the criteria for A and B (e.g. others live closer, are siblings etc).

Equally, if you didn’t come high enough up the criteria for School C either, then you would get none of your preferences and would get offered a place at the nearest school with places after everyone’s preferences have been taken into account, i.e. whatever’s left. This is the only point where you can be disadvantaged by not listing a school in your preferences, but it is about having listed it as a preference at all, not whether it is your first, second, third etc.

A pipe-dream first choice with a realistic second choice (and presumably a back up third choice?) is a sensible approach!

The simplest way of looking at it is, if you don't get your first choice, your second choice automatically then becomes your new first choice. It's called 'equal preference' and they're are lots of examples online.

OK, let's say each of those schools take 200 pupils and have 300 applicants. Here's what happens.

All three schools arrange ALL the children who have applied in order from 1 to 300 according to their admissions criteria. Then they send the list of the top 200 candidates off to the central computer. Maybe at this point your child is in the top 200 for school C, but not for A or B.

The central computer has the information for all three schools. It can see that there is a child X who is in the top 200 places for all three schools (eg a child in care which is usually a priority admission), so it allocates that child their first choice and removes the child from the lists for the other two schools. Then it sends the shorter lists back to the schools, with some children such as child X removed from the lists. School B now has only 180 children on the list, because of the 20 who have been removed as they got on to the list but put other schools higher. School B sends back its new list of the existing 180 plus 20 new children (nos. 201-220 on the original list of 300). The central computer again compares lists and removes the children who appear on more than one list (again due to having got into a higher ranked school on the new set of lists) and sends the lists back to the schools, again with some places free at the bottom. This process is repeated again and again (maybe about 12 times) until there is no more movement and the lists can be finalised for each school.

The important bit is that you will never move from your original position in the ordered list of 300 children who applied to School B. You will always be above a child who put school B first but lives further away (because the 300 children are ordered according to the admissions criteria, with no consideration of where they ranked a school). The thing that changes during the process is the cut-off point in the 300 of which children get a place at that school.

So the hypothetical child who lives further away from School B but put it first will never be allocated to it ahead of your child. In the first round of "accepted" lists they would either be allocated to a completely different school or to no school at all (if they are below the 200 cut-off for all of their choices). But hopefully they would have got a school by the end of the process.

Does that make sense?

Errr because they get a place at the one they put as top preference...

Watching with interest

Soontobe the only way this can happen is if they are offered a place higher up their preference list.

Otherwise it’s illegal. It’s literally all done by algorithm.

Soontobe I agree with Titchy. You are not more likely to get a place if you rank a school higher.

soon to be if this is happening in your area, then something is seriously wrong. The School Admissions Code expressly forbids 1st choice 1st as a way of allocating places.

Titchy
If what you say is correct, how come time and time again, children who don't put the most popular school down as their first choice end up not getting a place over others who live further away but did put it as first choice? I've taught enough year six classes to know this is what happens, every year!

People in the LA rarely know how it works, neither do school staff. Often the only people who understand the process work in admissions or are on Appeal Panels.

It's like a giant game of candy crush

I was told by the LA that they look at first place choices, then if there is still room, second place and so on. So where a school is very oversubscribed, they always get filled up by first choice pupils. If you live right next to a school, you won't get a place just by putting it on the form.

Categorically incorrect and illegal.

It's a fairly straightforward algorithm for a computer. Rank all applicants for all schools in order. Additionally once ranked add the preference position. So Billy Jones, Town High, position 23, preference 2. Billy Jones, City High, position 35, preference 3. Billy Jones, Country High, position 400, preference 1.

Then where an applicant has a place in more than school, save the highest preference and remove from lower preference lists (but keep on higher preference lists). So Billy Jones gets a place at Town High and City High, so comes off the City list, but stays on the Country list. This happens concurrently for all applicants, then once each applicant is on their highest preference list, and removed from lower preference lists, repeat the whole process as the removal will have meant those left move up the ranks. Billy finds after loop 3 that he is in position 100 at Country, so gets a place.

Thanks so much TheFirstOHN, you answered all my questions too, we are filling the form tonight.