If in London and you got a place at your preferred school via the waiting list, how far down were you and how long did you have to wait for your place?

Exactly, they are locked into the fees! I can see some exceptions to people holding both places, but not the majority who have a lot of money/secure jobs. We were discussing the point that maybe as one or two were holding, it made it more acceptable for the others to also hold their state places. She was explaining to them that they will be depriving another child of the induction days etc. Hopefully they will see sense the closer it gets to these deadlines. Hopefully the secondary schools will be fed back that they are also holding private places as the school will then be on their case as they need their numbers.

I saw my friend today. She works in a school office in the borough of Wandsworth. She said she was appalled to find out that a lot (Ie: majority) of parents were holding offers for private and state, with no intention of taking the state places. Apparently the primary school have asked parents about their chosen school, and the state secondary schools have also sent through a list of children who have places to arrange meetings etc. She’s had to have conversations to persuade them to give up their state place if they have no intention of going. There is a lot of “just in case” responses.

Movement of 20 seems great to me. It’s low single digits in the school I want because they over offered massively :(

We have moved from late 40’s at the beginning of April to late 20’s this week.
Not sure if that’s good or bad!! Hopeful or not!!
Trying to be optimistic, that it’s still 4 months and things can change xx

What’s your rough waiting list position? Do you have any idea from the council how many offers they usually make? I’m going to ask again in a few weeks as almost don’t want to know.

Anyone got any updates? The Surrey grammars are moving, albeit slowly

I know in Richmond, for grey court they have only made about 5 offers in a month. I know this is for one school but the volumes dont’t seem huge/unmanageable.

They also now have primary school admissions to deal with so this must be a quiet time for secondary as they must stagger them for a reason…

@CloudsOverHead oh wow!! 10 days to respond, I didn’t know that.

I can imagine it’s a slow process. I guess they have to contact people to offer, wait for them to call back etc, then I suppose give them an amount of time to make a decision to decline/ accept.
It must be tedious but I guess you have to give people time to respond, I know I would be vexed if I missed a call and then they offer to the next person but I wish it would move quicker xx

🤯 that’s not good news!!

You would think that LA’s obviously would have know that this year would be hard to find places after the primary admissions in 2016 for our kid. I’m assuming the same happened when we applied for primary (although in our area we have a lot more really good primaries than secondaries)

Let’s hope the schools we are waiting for and surrounding ones miraculously put on a bulge class 🤣🤣 xx

This isn’t looking good at all for those waiting then, especially if you are further down the list like me. We were hoping it would follow the same pattern for the last few years but clearly not.

Where I live (South West london) the 2012 birth rate was the peak after which it drops dramatically which I think is the case for most London boroughs. It went up slightly between 2013 and 2014 but the overall trend is a dramatic drop.

Primary schools here are now fighting to stay full. One of our local primaries used to be 4 form intake (120 kids) and has only had 40 first choice applications this year so looking unlikely it will fill even 2 classes.

Our waiting lists for Yr7 are moving much more slowly than in previous years. I've heard for our 1st choice school around half the number of places became available after the acceptance day than they usually see. We feel really fortunate to have got a place in the 2nd round of offers. We have plenty of friends waiting who would have got in in every previous year on record.

Well, that's what I'm wondering- does the population uptick actually make a difference or not?
It's an easy answer but is it correct?

From a 2013 news report on ONS data:

"The UK population has grown by more than 400,000 in a year after the biggest baby boom in 40 years.
There were 813,200 births in Britain in the year up to 30 June 2012, which is the highest level seen since 1972."

news.sky.com/story/amp/biggest-baby-boom-for-40-years-in-the-uk-10437932

We are on a grammar school WL. We can see the data for how quickly that school's WL moved in recent years - and about half the time offers went up as far as our own WL# (mid-20s). Obviously we aren't telling our DC any of this, and are being super-positive about her 2nd choice school.

However: is there evidence that WLs are moving slower than normal this year?
Due to the private school fees hike, the cost of living crisis, and the baby boom of 2012.
Anyone heard anything to support that? Is this the year the WLs dried up???

We are not taking the place but DC was low 20s on a waiting list for a school that takes 70 selective out of 280. DC was offered a place just before Easter.

I definitely don’t think there would be many, but I’ve heard of people keeping their state place “just in case”. I think the vast majority probably decline but there are usually no shows at the start of term that end up being released so….