to complain to the council about this

[fernie3]

we moved house before the summer. 10 weeks ago we sent off the forms we needed to apply for a school in the new area. We still havent got a place, we have phoned multiple times only to be given various excuses including (the school are not answering their phone and the woman who deals with it is on holiday). I know it has been the summer holidays as well but it the form was sent of before that and we were told at the start that this wouldnt affect the applications anyway.

I KNOW the schools we put down dont have places - I called them myself in the space of about 20 minutes (it really wasnt that hard) but we were told that we still needed to put these down as our choices rather than try and find a school with places as it would affect the "process" we keep hearing so much about. We also cant organize it ourselves as it aparently HAS to be done via this form we cant deal directly with the school.

My daughter will be six in a couple of weeks so its not the end of the world but to be honest she bored I am trying to so a bit of reading etc with her at home but with three younger children it often turns into "sit down" "wait your turn" "OUT of your mouth" rather than anything useful for my oldest.

I think that 10 weeks is ridiculous for sorting this would I be unreasonable to complain - oh the woman is still on holiday so god knows when she will be back...

Are you good at these things. I ma fab
I am persistent-de-la-persistent. I ask who is in charge, who i need to speak to, who i need to speak to to make a complaint.
i am calm. but i don't get fobbed off.
Get going girl.
use all the words :
unacceptable, unprofessional, incompetent etc etc.

And e-mail. rather than a phone call. Then its all in written word and can not be denied.
write out a long document today. then phone up, find out who to e-mail it to tomorrow, and off you go.

But emails can be ignored, or a reply can be fudged with a bland "we're dealing with your case," or "we're sorry you're unhappy with our service, now piss off and stop bothering us."

Perhaps both?

Actually, it would probably be better to complain to a local councillor rather than the council staff .... he is more likely to kick some ass than some disinterested administrator

So you've applied to three schools that don't have places? Do you know which schools do have places? Could you ring those schools?

comp I called the schools but other than saying yes or no to having a place they wont deal with it they just say we have to apply to the education authority - they dont seem to be able to allocate the places themselves at all. When we filled in the form we were told to put the schools we ideally wanted (so we put three within walkign distance as we dont have a car) and then if there were no places there they would give us a place at the nearest school that did have a place.

Maybe you're in one of thse areas I read about where there are massive shortfalls of primary places this year. Lots of London boroughs, for example. Brent, I believe, has 210 four year olds without a reception place at the moment.

So, it may be that this long delay is not just the office being incompetent, but that there really are no places to allocate.

Shite situation, however. Good luck tomorrow.

I sympathise majorly - when we moved I got told by the person answering the phone that they don't have access to a computer but can pass my details toa colleague who can ring round the schools for places. I politely (ahem) informed them that I had already done that.
Are you near their offices can you turn up with up there (with daughter) and also ask for a letter for the EWO when they ask why your child isn't in school. Is there any other phone number or e-mail address you could try??

yanbu to think you should have a place by now, schools have summer holiday but surely the council doesn't so the 6 weeks shouldn't have made a different

but

sometimes places become available in the first week of sept when people have moved over the summer unexpectedly or simply dont take up a place - this could mean that a place suddenly becomes available at one of your 3 chosen schools so it would then be worth the wait.

Hoep you hear soon.