How do kids get Secondary places?

[KateJohns]

My kid is going into year 6 in September, last year of her school.
She asked earlier who decides which secondary she goes to next year, I had to admit I didn't know.

Do the council just sort it all or do I have to be pro active and apply for places etc?

(These are things grown ups should know... Probably.. but I'm only 43, not grown up yet..🤪)

You have to apply for a place. Same as primary. The deadline is usually much earlier though (October).

You have to apply for a place online via schools admission (on your council website). There should be information on your council website with instructions etc. Deadline is usually end of October and secondary schools usually have 'open evenings ' for you to look around with your child in September - these should be advertised on their school website.

All of the information about how the schools allocate their places should be on their website and labelled 'admissions policy'. Usually it includes priority to Looked after children, siblings already at the school, distance to the school etc

Look on your council website - there will be a school admissions section. There will be open evenings at local secondary schools you can attend and the closing date for admissions is around the end of October.

As above but you will be able to get all info from primary in September. Our council gives all yr 6s a booklet with all info in. 👍

You apply for a place online via your LA.
You will be given 3-6 choices.
Put these choices in your true order of preference, but make sure you put one school on the list you are pretty definitely guaranteed to get in.

The admissions criteria are published for each school, and admission data on who got or missed out in previous years.

Very roughly it generally goes something like:
EHCP (only a few)
Looked after, adopted (only a few)
in catchment (if a defined priority area is given) siblings
in catchment other
out of catchment sibling
out of catchment other
Within each criteria things are done on distance.
Some have no defined priority area in which case just distance.

Some schools have complicated rules such as fair banding tests, or music aptitude. Brighton has or used to have a lottery kind of system. Faith schools can prioritise faith above others. Also grammar schools ...

Get onto the secondary education board here on MN.

If you 'qualify' for more than 1 school on your list, you get the one you put highest.

Do go and look at the secondary schools when they have their open evenings too.

Make sure you use all your choices. Just choosing one will not ‘force’ the local authority to give you the one you like best.

Depending on where you live you may have genuine choice, as in more than 1 that you can realistically qualify for, or there may only be 1 in which case it's all a bit moot.

You need to make sure you understand the system OP. It's actually quite straightforward but at the same time easy to get wrong! And people tell all kinds of tall tales about how you can trick the system but you can't. Do your research, not only on the quality of the schools but on how likely you are to get a place, then list your preferences in your genuine order, make sure you have filled in every piece of information asked for and hope for the best! Don't do things like only listing one school thinking the council are then forced to give you that - they aren't.
Assuming this is your first child, apart from a few specific circumstances it will probably come down to how far away you live from the schools as to where you get a place. So if you are in an area where lots of schools are oversubscribed make sure you put at least one option that is acceptable to you and close to home. If you don't qualify for any of your preferred schools all the council is obliged to do is offer a place at the nearest school which has spaces left after everyone else is placed. So don't fill your form with schools that you have little chance of a place at or you may end up with the school nobody else wants on the other side of town.
So basically, look at all your options carefully and be realistic and honest when you complete the application.

Assume you are not in a grammar school area with 11+? Otherwise you probably will have missed registering to sit the test. Application deadline for year 7 is in October.

Are you in England op ? The advice may be different if not .

if your in England You will get open days to local schools early in the year .

after you need to apply as previous poster said . Use all options you won’t automatically get first option because you only put one down

I think it depends where you are. If you are over 3 miles away from your closest/ catchment high school it’s worth considering that the council will pay for transport. We are rural so DS gets picked up and dropped off at the foot of the drive. Makes life a lot easier as I work in two different towns over the course of the week neither of them the one he goes to school in.

You apply just like primary. Although there is usually less choice because secondary schools are bigger and there are less of them. In my dc primary school most years they all go to the catchment school but sometimes 1 or 2 will have parents who move heaven and earth to get their child into a different school, usually moving house temporarily to get their eldest in and then moving back again. There are usually a few in our town (not usually from my dc primary school) who manage to get their dc into a school in a village a few miles away, and then complain on facebook that there is no transport.

Thank you everyone. I shall get on the council sites and get looking and researching.

I've not been through this before as a parent so it's all new ground. 😁