Secondary school place allocation - 1 March

When admissions say it doesn‘t matter what positions you list the schools because you are considered equally whether you put the school 1st or 5th, how does this work in practice with schools that use a lottery system?

@Nicky198 when the criteria is distance from school, someone has to be the last house. I’m in London and when I did secondary school applications we had the exact same thing. On the edge of the furthest distance offered from a few secondaries so a neighbour would get in and the one next door or a few doors down wouldn’t. No mistakes made, just if there’s 250 places the last place gets offered eventually.

It’s been particularly challenging recently as schools that used to be unpopular so gave to almost everyone are suddenly becoming popular and now people aren’t getting places. You wouldn’t realise it if you looked at past offers so some people have been caught unawares.

It can be literally that that was where the line was drawn.

One year I knew someone whose neighbour one side got into school A, other side got into school B and the person almost exactly opposite got into school C.
They had schools A, B and C on their preferences, and got none of them.
The good news was they were 1st on the waiting list for two of the schools and second for the other and they were offered all three before June at various points and ended up going to their top preference.

Definitely check what distance they have you from all the schools and the last distance @Nicky198

Saying that, it was extremely common for kids in the neighbourhood I grew up in not to be able to get into the 7 or 8 closest schools.. they went to one a good few miles away instead. They built an extra school a few years ago, but it took ages to get the planning permission as there were so many objections.

Yeah it’s odd - ours were all in our borough and within catchment but they placed us to an unsubscribed school out of our catchment -my instincts tell me they have made an error

What those two families I know had in common is that they selected all 6 school choices from a neighbouring borough. They got zero offers from here but they got unexpected school from their own borough.

Agree re public transport. Might you know anyone through school or cubs or
something who goes to that secondary, who could buddy up on the journey?

I'm only saying the response you are likely to get from admissions or an appeal panel. Unless you have medical etc evidence to back it up.
They will expect them to do a journey on public transport.

it is harsh. all kids are different, and even if there is no SEN there could be other reasons why a child is anxious or insecure on their own.

Thank you. Of course we are going to do practice, but it would have been better if it was a school we felt was worth all this hassle. As it is, its just a basic school but miles away.

@localnotail he'll be expected to develop those skills in the next 6 months along with millions of others. Unless he has SEN. I'm an august born and did that type of journey 35 odd years ago on a public bus and walk. With no phone.
I may sound harsh but that's reality.
High school kids are expected to get themselves to school and back & stay home for a couple of hours alone if needed.

Thank you - we are also in London. Just hoping we can maybe have some luck on the waitlist but I will also appeal due to other personal circumstances and see if we have any luck - fingers crossed 🤞

Make sure you are on waiting lists (and consider appealing if you can identify other reasons to do so) and hopefully you’ll have a closer school by then.

In the meantime, get practicing with the bus - do bus journeys together, talk through how it works, what you’d do if you missed your stop or it didn’t turn up, get him to take the lead with you there, get him to catch it alone and follow on/meet him at the destination. There’s months to build it up. Even if he gets a closer school, it’s not a bad idea to start building more of those independent skills.

Would he be able to bus to the childminder?

@Nicky198
non of our options were taken into consideration
it wasn’t a human decision as such it was just a simple case of you not meeting a high enough criteria in terms of the admissions criteria for each of the preferred schools. These could all be different, assume you checked them all out before you put them down?
authorities don’t “choose” a school for individual children it’s essentially a computer programme that has to take into account all the varying admissions criteria for the different schools. It’s extremely complicated but in the vast majority of cases the rules are followed and it’s all done fairly (even if sadly some kids end up in very tricky situations).
Very rarely, mistakes are made. It happened with another mnetter yesterday and is now resolved. If you don’t get a letter explaining you can call your LA Monday and they should be able to explain why you didn’t get places and also your chances of getting into the school your neighbour got into. As others have said, chances of movement on WLs is very high.

@Nicky198 you would have been considered for each of your choices but presumably failed to qualify high enough to get a place at any of them, hence the one further away. Ask LA which category your dc was placed in for preferred ones, the distance calculation used and furthest offered. You may find your neighbour was the furthest and you might be high on wl, they may have qualified in a higher priority criteria, or maybe a mistake was made for your dc. It does not matter you placed it third if you had qualified for a place within the PAN.

I really feel for you and I know it’s tough, but it isn’t that someone chose this school for you. The admissions criteria of the schools you listed will have been applied by a computer and there is no logic or a person considering individual requirements. It does sound like you have a good chance on waiting lists though and there is often a lot of movement, so fingers crossed you will get one of the schools you listed before September.

An EHCP is a legal document that sets out what a child's SEN is, what provision they need, and where it will be provided.

If the allocated school is more than 3 miles away then the LA will have to provide transport. Sometimes that can be a bus pass though.

What is an EHCP out of curiosity? I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle here and can’t believe that non of our options were taken into consideration, there are so many close to us that were on the list, yet they chose the one undersubscribed and the furthest. Can’t seem to understand the logic, despite me having 6 choices- just seems so unfair

I know two people with exactly the same predicament and they are from London. They got an offer from a completely different school far awayfrom where they live. And that school is Below Average results-wise ( not a common case in London).

The reason why it happened is that they applied to several schools with the very small catchment and they are nowhere near these schools. One of them applied to an oversubscribed catholic school...not being catholic.
I think that one of them will get one of the schools from they list but as a result of waiting list. Historically, a lot of kids went private from that school and the offer including waiting lists was 14 km in the end.

So you are not the only one..It is quite common

35 minutes on the bus plus walk.
not bad at all. Many kids commute for 1h-75 min one way

Your son will have buddies that will go via bus with him

35 minutes on the bus plus walk. The problem is my son cant use bus by himself. I was hoping at the beginning of the year (when I made the application) that he will get to the point of being more independent, but he just cant do it, he's not mature enough. He can walk if not too far, but cant be home by himself or cant use the bus.

Transport arrangements are very weak at appeal, unless they are truly unreasonable. How far is too far? What’s public transport like?

Yep, that’s also something I’ve come across and also find very frustrating! It misleads people even more as of course people will understandably trust what heads say. I think sometimes what they mean is that if you put another school first you are saying you prefer that school so will get offered that if you get in rather than their school, so if their school is your favourite you should put it first (very badly worded but hopefully you can follow what I mean!) but it isn’t clear at all!