Made a stupid mistake

@Tissunnyupnorth what she said ! Could have been way worse !

There is likely to be a lot of movement still, I know several kids who are now turning down highly sought after schools having gotten into a public school. Lots of people use the LA schools as insurance option in case the kids don't get into the school they want.

1. Remember that the application process invites you to express a preference, not make a choice.

1. Accept the place you are offered, unless you intend to home educate or have a guaranteed place at a private school. The LA only has to offer one place, which it has done.

1. Make sure you are on the waiting list for every school, whether you applied for it or not, that you would be prepared to accept over the one you have been given.

Pupils move house, get accepted for private school places, get places at their higher preference schools, so a place may become available. (Places are allocated according to the admissions criteria not how long you have been waiting - so a child in a higher admissions category or in the same category but living closer who joins the waiting list later would be given a place first).

1. If a mistake has been made in the admissions procedure or new information comes to light that would have affected the decision then you can appeal. e.g. a medical need not taken into account or twins being given split school allocation.

Obviously this is rare, so very few appeals are successful as most should be dealt with via the waiting list process.

1. As parents, you have the greatest influence on how well your child succeeds at school, not the presence of a handful of looked-after children or unhelpful comments from other people. If the one you have been offered turns out to be your child's school, you need to work together positively if you want the best for your child.

Remember, you did the right thing by putting the "banker" school on your list and your brother is talking rubbish.

There’s a town near me (Middlesbrough) where 100 children have been offered no secondary school at all because all the secondary schools in the town are completely full.
Good grief, that's shocking.
I thought councils had an asset officer and part of the job was to predict number of pupils wanting a place at school. There was a thing a few years ago about Bulge classrooms when there was too many children for places.
What is the councils duty to the pupil if there are no school places?

If you are only a small distance from the furthest allocated place you stand a good chance if you go on the waiting list. There's always a bit of movement due to successful applicants taking up independent places, grammar places, moving out of area etc.

None of this explains why my dd didn't get any of her choices at all. We put 4 schools all of which she was happy to go too and she didn't get any of them.

Some areas are very oversubscribed.

There’s a town near me (Middlesbrough) where 100 children have been offered no secondary school at all because all the secondary schools in the town are completely full.

It just means the most direct route looking at the distance from the sky rather than road route IYSWIM.
To answer another question- you can absolutely ring up schools (or the LEA in some incidences) that you haven't listed in your original 3 preferences and ask to go on their waiting lists. Not just your 2 top choices.
Do you have grounds for appeal?
Is there anything medical or something that the top 2 choices provide that your child needs and the offered school doesn't?
I've read nationally 29% of appeals are successful.

Straight distance between two points on a map ie. Not necessarily along roads or footpaths.

If it makes you feel any better, OP, dd's friend's parents decided not to put a third choice on the form, because they only wanted one of two schools and they were concerned that putting a third option would damage their chances of getting into one of the first two.

It didn't help them at all. They didn't get into either of the first two anyway, and spent a very anxious period when their dc had no school at all, and they didn't know where she would end up.

In the end, she was allocated a place at the school which they had chosen not to put third on the form. It didn't have a good reputation at all, and they were really concerned. As things have turned out, though, the dc is now a few years in and she seems to be doing really well!

@Ratatouille76 your DD must have been further away than the furthest admitted applicant at each of the 4 schools. Did you put your nearest school as one of your 4 choices?

None of this explains why my dd didn't get any of her choices at all. We put 4 schools all of which she was happy to go too and she didn't get any of them.

unless a mistake was made then that means that all four of those schools had more applicants than there were places and the children who got places were higher up on the admissions criteria than yours was.

In a few weeks once places have been accepted the local authority will publish a lost showing the number of children admitted in each admissions category and the last distance admitted in each criteria (as distance is usually used as a tie breaker)

There’s another thread here.
Exactly same situation but from perspective of aunt really angry with her sister on her nephew’s behalf

I totally dismissed it. It’s a small school and has classes of 16.

If it makes you feel better, there are parents who would bite your hand off to get a place in a school like that!

Also, and I cannot stress this enough, don’t just go on hearsay on the suitability of a school.

You yourself admit you haven’t visited it and your DS likes the look of it online. Every year, parents are pleasently surprised by the school they have been allocated, once they get to know it better!

Reputations of schools are hard to change, even once a school has improved and vice versa. So many outstanding schools haven’t been physically inspected in up to 10 years, for example!

Hope it all works out for you and your DS, OP

Basically if you can show the school can meet child's needs more effectively and demonstrate the school can manage with admitting extra child you can be successful at appeal!

Technically that's correct, yes, but the reality is that it's very, very difficult to win an appeal on this basis. And there is nothing in what the OP has said so far that would indicate that she has a strong case along these lines.

I don't want to be discouraging to the OP at all, but there is no point in pinning too much hope to the appeals process, because realistically, the chances are very slim.

OP look at the criteria for your preferred schools - they too have looked after children at the top.

@Adizzzy, just to reassure you:

"Looked after children (in Public Care).
Kids who have problems etc. So the school has an issue with behaviour and attendance."

The law states that all schools must accept any child who has been Looked After by the Local Authority (fostered or Adopted), without question, which is why it is number 1 on every admissions criteria for every school. Similarly, every school must accept any child whose EHCP names that school, which is why it is criteria 2 on every admissions criteria. So every school will be the same, but the numbers of children will be relatively tiny that this applies to.

Regarding appeals - you can appeal for your preferred school regardless of why you made your choices. You don't even need to say why you put school 3 on the list in the first place.

I agree with others. If you hadn’t put school 3 on your form then your application would be put at the bottom of the pile so to speak and your child would have been allocated a place at whichever school still had places once everybody else’s choices had been allocated.

So you could have ended up with an even worse school miles away.

I feel so sorry for the people who work in admissions. If you put a school down on your list, then yes they are likely to give you that school! It's really not that difficult to work out...

JiltedJohnsJulie I don't get this- the OP would have been allocated any old random school in that instance, could be miles away?

If there weren't places at school 1 and 2, not putting down a school 3 wouldn't make any difference except you would get whatever the LA allocated you instead of a local school.

Your DB is wrong- if you had not put down school 3, you would have had a school 4 or 5 that might be very undesirable for different reasons.