If you don't get in any school, can you choose among the undersubscribed ones or must you accept what the council chooses for you?

Although this isn't a guaranteed way of working out chances...

How full is your child's year currently? Are there spaces in other local schools in the year group?

Birth rates have fallen, plus people moving out of Central London, so theoretically admission distances are increasing and under subscribed schools becoming more under subscribed.

I would suggest that it is actually a good idea to see what schools you are likely to be in catchment for and opt for at least one or two out of the six options than rely on there being space post allocation in March. Why are you choosing 5 schools you don’t think you’ll get?

Thank you, that makes sense.

No, you've misremembered and mixed up two different things. Schools aren't allowed to use borough boundaries to define their oversubscription criteria (known as the Greenwich Judgement). However (and paradoxically) all local authorities are still responsible for placing all the children from their own area. If some children can't get a place at a preference school, the LA needs to allocate them to the nearest school with a space within their own boundaries. They can't allocate them a non-preference place in another area (unless they have some sort of agreement in place with the other LA of course).

It's a long time since I had to get to grips with school admissions but I thought this was outlawed decades ago.

There is a second round of allocations and waiting lists you can be added to. Accept the place you are given though - you can give it up again if you find a place you'd prefer.

If a school has places you can ask to go there yes

Are all 3 in your borough?

we have around here 2 underscribed schools in different boroughs and they will always allocate to the one that it is your council

often then get filled and the council will want to prioritise its constituents

I applied for 6 schools, at the time we didn’t get into any of them we were allocated the closest school with space. I did ask if we can choose another one - recommended to accept the place you had. Reapply and then on the second round if a space was available they would let you know.

Luckily we got a space from the school we wanted as eventually we moved up the waitlist!

@PForParent I'm in London too. If you name your borough you will get more specific advice. Either way, I recommend you look for your council's press release from National Offer Day this year. You might also be able to find the text from their offer letter online too or ask a friend with an older child to show you it. If either of these say that some families were left without places in the initial offer then that is a big warning sign. It means that there were more applicants overall than places and the LA is relying on movement to the private sector to create the additional spaces it needs. This happens every year in my borough. The families who are left without a place are usually the ones that didn't put a realistic final preference. You can be sure that they won't get their preferred "unsubscribed" school because the schools are only undersubscribed on applications, not on allocations or final acceptances. Don't get caught out!

You can, but in some areas undersubscribed schools will have filled their places with people who didn't get any of their choices by offer day so it would be a case of going on the waiting list. I think it is getting better but for my son's year my borough didn't have enough places for every child in the borough so some didn't even get an offer initially (they eventually found some between the natural movement and adding a bulge class somewhere).

You're welcome, and I agree it's an important thing to keep in mind. This is the School Admissions Code's section on waitlists:
Waiting lists 2.15 Each admission authority must maintain a clear, fair, and objective waiting list until at least 31 December of each school year of admission, stating in their arrangements that each added child will require the list to be ranked again in line with the published oversubscription criteria. Priority must not be given to children based on the date their application was received, or their name was added to the list [emphasis added]. Looked after children or previously looked after children allocated a place at the school in accordance with a Fair Access Protocol must take precedence over those on a waiting list.

So if you have your DC added to a waitlist on national offer day they'll be ranked on the list exactly as they would have been if the school was on their CAF originally.

Yeh agree with @GravyBoatWars - put the likely and most often undersubscribed school in sixth place on your form. Are there actually five other schools you might get into which you would like your DC to go to? Can you tell I don't live in London haha!

Six preference slots is nice anyway – where I live you get four. But that's fine as tbh there are only four secondary schools that are a reasonable commute (walkable or a short/medium walk and a short bus ride).

Unless you feel that all of the undersubscribed schools are equally awful and you don't care which you get assigned to, I would use your 6th choice to select the least worst option from them, especially if the one you find least awful is not closest to you. It sounds like otherwise you're basically looking at putting down six choices where the most likely one is still only a 50/50 chance, and I wouldn't want to do that. I would actually consider removing one of the first four choices and adding both of those schools you're deliberating between in 5th and 6th.

Keep in mind that once initial offers go out and schools turn to the waitlist to fill places when offers get declined there is no advantage between students who put the school down as a choice in their initial application and students who applied to go on the waitlist after national offer day, so any hopes of getting in to an oversubscribed school through waitlist movement aren't based on what you put on the CAF.

@PForParent what about the other 5 choices? Do you have any other schools on your list that you think your DC will definitely (or as close to definitely as possible) get into and you will be ok with?

How under subscribed is the under subscribed school? As usually it's best to put a school you'll definitely get into down as last choice, but if

1. Your under subscribed school is really under subscribed and you expect it to be so again this year (no local schools closed down or anything) and
2. You and child can cope with being "unplaced" for a day or two while you get a school sorted out

Yes, exactly.

Undersubscribed schools must offer places to every applicant (presuming they're the right age for that year, obviously) without regard to any oversubscription requirement, and schools must offer up to their PAN if there are applicants for those spots. Schools cannot hold empty places for later applicants per the admissions code. So if you don't apply to a school in the normal admissions cycle then the students who do apply will have priority before your child regardless of whether they live much farther away (or whether your child has a sibling there or any other criteria).

Are you thinking of not putting a school you want in your six choices? I'm curious what the reasoning behind this query is.

@PForParent yea exactly as you post.

That’s right.

After Allocation day you go on the waiting lists for any schools higher up your preference list than the one offered, and if not offered any of your preferences the LA will offer the closest school that can admit.

You can then go on the waiting list for any other schools you would consider, whether you applied in the first place or not,

But at that stage everyone else without an allocation, or a preferred allocation, would be doing the same.

With 6 preferences to list I would always say put a school you feel confident will admit you as a ‘banker’ in last place if it is your least preferred.