Secondary school place allocation - 1 March

We are also in a busy area and live in a bit of a dead spot between secondaries, so we aren't close enough to any of our local schools to have much hope of a place tomorrow.

There are a few schools further away which have admitted all applicants for the last few years so we have put one of them as our "banker" in 6th place. Of course they are less popular for a reason, but we chose the one we liked best after trawling them all.

I am hopeful that we may get a waiting list place at one of our closer schools further down the line.

Feeling very nervous even after all the rationalizing about likely outcomes...

Basically they have two catchment areas and children in area one get priority over children in area two

May I join please? I don't know what time the emails go out here so I will be checking all day.

In our area this is definitely a bulge year, a lot of families didn’t get any of their primary choices.

we’ve put a catchment school as first choice but we’re unlikely to get in because it has a two tier catchment. We put our nearest school as second choice and then the least worst option out of the bad schools as third as advised by the council. Unfortunately rumour has it that our ‘safe’ third choice is oversubscribed for the first time ever this year so I’m panicking we’re going to end up either miles away or at the really bad school ( the opening line of their latest ofsted is ‘pupils report school is not a happy place’) I’ve already filled in the waiting list form and started work on my appeal

Thanks both. It appears that jt def can be a thing. I don’t think it really is in our area despite what parents say though. We just have catchments and usually kids go from the local primary to the local secondary however there are always exceptions

Our first choice has 5 feeder schools that get preference...after EHCP/kids in local authority care/parents working at school/catchment with sibling/catchment without sibling/sibling and feeder/feeder and then lastly distance.

Are “feeder” schools an actual thing or is it just a way of describing when both a primary and secondary are in the same catchment

people tell me that our primary is a “feeder” for the local secondary but that term is not used in any of the council literature. “Feeder” suggests that everyone from the primary gets a place at the secondary but of course it’s not that straightforward

I was told 2012 was a baby boom year when mine couldn't get the redbook straightaway after birth. But this current cohort only starts from birth from September 2012...

And I recall seeing the statistics 2012 was the peak and then it slowly dipped...

Someone told me that 2012-2013 wasn't a boom year too, which I'm holding on to - feeder + sibling but not catchment for an over subscribed school! Sitting here sweating...

@LilySLE yeah where we are is def a non-boom year we think which helps. Last year was an unusually high birth year which caused lots of kids to lose out.

We’re in Devon and the website says from 10am on the 1st. But when you log in to the portal, it says decisions released on the 2nd. 🤷🏻‍♀️

A bit anxious here too. We had three choices and put our catchment school (closest as the crow flies by about 4 miles too) 3rd as we really don't want it at all but we're strongly advised to include it in the 3. The one we would like the most is furthest away, smaller than the others by a third or more and this cohort was apparently a baby boom year... So not holding out much hope.

Not waiting up to check the portal as won't sleep at all if it's bad news.

Hi all,
Just wanted to let you all know - last year my daughter got her 3rd choice place and none of her friends were going there. It’s an outstanding school but we were very upset.
She did evantually get offered her first choice place (where all her friends were going) in about May but she decided she wanted to stick with her original offer.

One year on, it was the best decision she made, she’s absolutely thriving, made loads of new friends and hasn’t looked back.

I just wanted to reassure you all, it all works itself out but I remember what a horrible time it was waiting for that email.

We’re in greater Manchester . Yeah pretty nervous. When it was primary allocations def got the emails 9/10pm on the Thursday night. But it seems to be a new system. Emails are sent in “batches” but I presume logging on to the system first thing, or possibly after midnight, is worth trying

In Scotland/Edinburgh, pupils go to their local catchment school (non-dom or Catholic) unless you go private. You can make an out-of-catchment request for a non-catchment school but due to all the new housebuilding, schools are full and to my understanding, requests are now rarely granted. You can appeal.
Catchment maps are on the Council website as are all the dates for applications.

It’s because I live in a densely populated area. We don’t have “catchment areas” - priority is based on LAC, children of teachers, siblings and then finally distance. 3 years ago when I applied for my daughter, my son would have got into our 1st choice which is also the closest secondary my son could go to (our closest is all girls which is where his sister is) but the year we applied there were more applications closer to the school and we missed out, so ended up in our 4th closest school (we put them in order of distance). All his friends got the closest one as they either had siblings there or EHCPs (which trump all criteria if said school is named on it).
It is such a stupid system - because of where the schools are located there are children who live on the doorstep of my son’s school who go to our nearest school because they live closer to it as the crow flies than we do. Doesn’t matter that we are now forced into a car every morning to get him to school.

I remember with primary school it was 2am I received an email. Not going to be able to sleep tonight. Our first choice is only a slim possibility we get it as it's always oversubscribed. It's only a walk away and all her friends are going. 2nd choice is never oversubscribed but is two busses away. We've got everything crossed for first choice!

I'm waiting. It could be a big issue, it could be no big issue.

Fingers crossed everyone gets their first choice...