Can a school treat pupils differently based on which preference they ranked a school?

The form is on their website. It doesn’t ask this

The school wouldn't know this.

Maybe the school itself doesn't understand the process and thinks the people who list it first will be given places first.

(I only listed one Secondary school... but we live 100m away from the front gate so presumed it was a pretty safe option, especially as they usually take every child who lives in the (defined) catchment are which goes out 7 miles in some directions)

I wonder if they require an additional form when applying to that school? Lots of schools, usually faith ones or ones with criteria that can’t be determined from the child’s home address alone. It won’t be an LA school, that’s for sure.

They may ask this on such a form. I can’t see the LA agreeing to pass on that info. How they prove you actually put them as first choice is another matter.

I pasted the opening words into Google and the school's Facebook page came up as the first result. Looks legit to me. What are MAC pupils?

Edit: I see now, it's multi-academy company.

Where were they shown to be wrong? You are just straight up incorrect about this. The entire system is based on the fact that schools don't know the parents' preferences. Once the applications are in, computers do an enormous job of data crunching. Everybody who applied for School A is ranked against that school's admissions criteria. Same for Schools B, C, D and so on.

Once all the applications are ranked the computer goes through the list looking at the parental preferences. Say Parent X put School A as top preference, School A can take 240 children into year 7 and Parent X happens to come in the top 240, that's that - Parent X will be offered a place at School A.

But if Parent X also came high on the list for School B and had put that as top preference and School A second or lower, the place offered would be at School B. Parent X would be removed from the School A list (and all the other schools they'd applied for) and others would be bumped up a place.

The computer goes on and on repeating this process until all the places requested have been considered, and the vast majority of parents should have got a place at one of the schools they listed. At this point if there are any parents left who don't have a place they get allocated to any school which still has unfilled places.

That's how it worked when we went through this a little over 20 years ago. I assume it's still how it works now.

No… ignore me. Just seen it says every evening. Weird.

I think the post is badly written but it might be being misinterpreted. Could it be about an open day or transition day? I ask because it talks about taking them from and back to their primary school. If it was for a year 7 place why on earth would school transport collect from primary schools? Plus it says the same applies to those on grammar school pathway. If this is a state comprehensive, why would they be arranging transport for children going to grammar school?

I think there is a taster day and they are only inviting those who’ve put the school as first choice. Which is a bit cheek as they’re not supposed to know who put it first, but as admissions are handled at LA level it doesn’t really matter if the school know.

Sorry OP, it's an interesting question and I have no idea. It looks very much against the spirit of things but it's a perk not a place. No harm in forwarding it to LA schools team and letting them judge.

It's quite creative as a marketing strategy. I almost admire them for it. I'd be really interested to know what your conclusion is.

The schools don’t know how you ranked them so I can’t see how they can say this.

I also know someone who did what you did, ended up being in a school an hour away from his house and with no one else that he knew. His parents were just naive and didn’t realise they could/should put back up choices rather than trying to play the game though.

Is your child the one who lives the furthest away from the school out of all of those in the class?

That Facebook post reads really strangely, not at all like a school has written it.

Your local admissions team would probably be interested in addressing this with the school concerned.

I’ve been through the appeals process and I did think the fact that we had been offered our second choice counted against us.

However I think a blatant attempt to try to game the system by making your other choices schools that you have no realistic chance of getting into would gain you no sympathy whatsoever with a panel and is an incredibly stupid idea. Amazes me people still believe that you can cheat the process like this.

Is it definitely the school’s official FB page and not an impostor?

Other people may have been of higher priority (looked after children, siblings, feeder schools, music aptitude, children of staff etc) but it was not because of where they put the school as a preference on the application form

By definition, if it was because of where they put the school in the preference order, then the criteria were not correctly applied.

It wasnt incorrectly applied, other people were just of higher priority than they were.

It can say lots of things. The reality can be somewhat different as I have found it to be. Don't apply to schools you won't attend. It's as simple as that.

Not really no, it's just a FB post.

Here you got, sweetie - 1.9c is the chapter and verse that you need. HTH!

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-admissions-code--2

1.9 It is for admission authorities to formulate their admission arrangements, but they must not: a) place any conditions on the consideration of any application other than those in the oversubscription criteria published in their admission arrangements; b) take into account any previous schools attended, unless it is a named feeder school; c) give extra priority to children whose parents rank preferred schools in a particular order, including ‘first preference first’ arrangements;

If the criteria were incorrectly applied, then they should have won on appeal (indeed, they should have won without need for an appeal)

But I refer you to clary's other point - people on FB don't always give a true, fair and accurate picture of events...

Don't seem to be so far.