Parents who only put one school choice down

[womblesofwestminster]

AIBU to wonder why some parents only put one school choice down when they fill in their primary school application for their child? I've heard several parents claiming to do this. Why put all your eggs in one basket?

Are they that confident their child will get it? Why risk it?

I think next year will be interesting round here, there are a choice of two schools for people moving on from primary level - one has a reputation as being the school to go to and is seen as a 'safe, middle class school' (not by me) and the other is seen as the 'less desirable working class school' and some people are shocked that we've opted for that school due to 'the type of people that my DC will mix with'

Guess which school has just been put in special measures by OFSTED and guess which school has just been judging outstanding and has the best exam results? I think it'll be harder to get in next year....

We only put one choice down for DS1. If he hadn't got into that school, he wouldn't have got into any school other than one of the two equally bad, fairly local ones - our village has been in a school black hole since the village primary closed down a few years ago.

We were too far away for any other school within travelling distance, so our only other option would have been for me to give up work and ferry him to an ok school in a village in completely the wrong direction. Which he would have got into anyway because it's always undersubscribed because of its location.

Fortunately he got in, which means DS2 will get a place too.

btw I put down all 6 schools within 1.5 miles.
all are hopelessly over subscribed. 2 schools are having temporary classrooms installed. it also doesn't help that a couple of very large developments are nearly complete to add to that pressure and the council is blocking a few new schools 'just because', or so it seems like.

Wow you have 6 schools within 1.5miles. Our nearest is about 2miles away and the rest are 5 or more.

In our old London house we had 4 schools within half a mile. Three of them good/outstanding. And we would only have stood a chance of getting into the (awful) one at the end of our road. It was a big part of why we ended up moving...

Tiggytape has been posting good advice on this thread. And I share her outrage that some schools are still telling parents they won't get a place unless they name the school as first choice.

I see a number of posters saying things like, "I only named one school because all the others are unacceptable" or even, "I told them that if I don't get this school my child won't be going to school". None of this makes any difference at all. Either you qualify for a place at the school using its admission criteria or you don't. If you don't qualify you won't get a place. And if you respond by refusing to send your child to school you can be prosecuted (unless, of course, you HE or go private).

The only thing that guarantees a place at a school is having a statement of SEN naming the school. The school then has to admit your child even if they are already full. If your child is a looked after child or previously looked after child that comes pretty close to a guarantee. After that it depends on how many applicants there are in higher admission categories.

I have seen some comments on this thread saying that if they don't get into the school on their doorstep they won't get into a school further away. That is not true. The school further away may have a higher admission number resulting in it taking children from a wider area. The local school may get a huge influx of siblings while the school further away might not get any. The school further away may open a bulge class or may simply be unpopular this year. If you don't name that school as one of your preferences you go behind everyone who has named it in the queue for places.

Every year I advise parents on appeals where they only named one school and didn't get it, instead being offered an unpopular school miles away from home. I have to tell these parents that this does not give them any grounds for appeal. In a minority of cases it is possible to construct a successful appeal for a secondary school place, but if they are appealing for a primary school place I have to tell them that their chances of winning are pretty close to nil in most cases.

But prh, when we put down a second and third alternative that was held against us because it was seen to prove that dd's disability was not real. That was the very reason stated by the LEA for not giving us a space at the school with disabled access, that through our application we had made it clear that we didn't actually need it. Fortunately the panel believed me when I said I had felt pressurised to put those other alternatives down though they were physically impossible.

And I can see their reasoning: if you claim your child is wheelchair bound and then go and apply for schools which are clearly without disabled access, then you have pretty neatly undermined your argument and shot yourself in the foot.

Of course I see that this is not the case for most families, but I do think there are cases, a very very few cases, where you have to be prepared to sit down in the middle of the road and say "this is impossible, you sort it out".

^Me above: Better not to take up an offer that they weren't going to use and someone else might want.
LIZS: The system doesn't work like that though . You would get an offer from somewhere unless you live in a very densely populated area.^
To answer LIZS point from right up the top - but if my friend hadn't got in to her first choice they would then have been lower in priority for any other school than people who actually applied for them. So yes they'd have been given an offer, but not one anyone else wanted. And while the offer would have been passed on in the end, we all know the anxiety of not getting the offer you wanted first time round and having to wait and wonder whether to appeal etc etc.

So yes, if you're definitely not going to accept any offers other than your first choice, and have an option B home ed/private, I think it's kinder to other families just to apply to one. You'd have to be very sure of your decision though, and that nothing in your circumstances might change.

oops, was trying to italic the quote, hope that's legible.

cory DS2 has the same condition as your DD so we're going to have problems when he goes to secondary. The catchment school is wheelchair accessible thank goodness but don't know how I'm going to get him there as I can't drive and will have 3 others to get to primary school too.

Think it depends where you live. There is a falling birth rate where I live and noone applying to our lovely local school has failed to get in in the 10 years it's been on my radar.

I only put one school down for both of mine, the school was under subscribed the year my 1st got a place, over subscribed for my 2nd but he got a place due to the sibling rule anyway.

Will do the same for secondary, but only because we only have the one choice really.

Depends where you live. We're in a village. Our school is our catchment school so we only put that down

cory - I understand your position but I think your LA was wrong assuming there was a category for medical needs. If it had gone to the LGO I hope they would have been hauled over the coals for such a ridiculous interpretation.

"I am not sure from your post if the school in question had a medical category and they discounted you from it as a punishment for naming other schools (which would be totally wrong as it is judged purely on the medical evidence you provide attached to your application so no wonder you won at appeal)"

The LEA did have a medical category, but cited our naming of schools b and c (without wheelchair access) as evidence that dd could not, in fact, be dependent on wheelchair access- because if she was her parents couldn't possibly go and apply for non-accessible schools. Which is the point of my argument: this was actually used as evidence against us.

We did get a sympathetic hearing before the panel and dd did go to the school which was our first choice, but it took a lot of pleading.

The other thing that complicated matters was that the school we had put as our first alternative was not listed by the LEA as disabled access either- because it did not have suitable support for the visually impaired!!! (dd has normal eyesight). I think the sheer idiocy of this helped us with the appeal panel actually: the LEA was seen to be so obviously unreasonable.