To think this amounts to a monumental reception place fuck up?

[DelphineCormier]

Parent only wants DC to go to the nearest outstanding school. School is a religious school, prioritiss kids of same denomination and is in an area with a place shortage. It is oversubscribed by kids who meet the religious criteria every year. In area as a whole there have been cases the last few years of kids getting no place at all. Lots go private. Family is not religious at all, let alone this denomination. Parent therefore puts down this school in every option box on application form, adds in additional comments box that they work full time and can't home educate because DC would be at home alone all day. Needs this school because is most convenient for drop offs and child is exceptionally bright. Parent isn't worried about allocation day, thinks they have it sorted. Aibu to think no council is that stupid?

I'm in Scotland, and although it's far from perfect our system makes yours look totally fucked up. What you are having to go through to select a school is completely, utterly insane.

My friend did this. Only put one school down and of course child was offered place at failing school 8 miles away. She was flabbergasted even though I had warned her it could happen.

Cross-posted with Mycats!

This will out me! I had one DT get into the local very good faith school and other DT get the failing school no-one wants, that was an interesting time

Mycatsapirate - how did you not meet the criteria? Was it a faith school or had you moved after places had been allocated?

I do always wonder how the Scottish system works with boom years - we've had 3 new classes added in our town (3 schools adding an extra full class on) but still there's issues each year - there's enough places across the whole town, but no, not everyone can get in to their 'catchment' school - would they really put another class on in Scottish schools if another school in the town was half empty?! (seems a bit wasteful!) or are they more relaxed about class sizes? The angst here does seem to be because they can't go over 30 in a class.

(Actually thinking about it, the biggest problem in this town is areas where people traditionally would privately educate now don't in the same numbers, so there's not enough state school provision on that side of town, no space to build a new school and so it puts pressure on everywhere else)

To the PP's talking about the 2/3 choices, don't they use tiebreaker principles too? Eg. If there is 1 place left and 2 applicants don't they look at application date?

JamDonuts - not in our county - late applications are treated differently, but if you apply on time, then no. I know in one school near us 2 years ago there was 1 place left and 2 children who were exactly the same distance from the school - they put their names in a hat! (Previously they just put children the same distance from the school alphabetically on the list, this was considered unfair). The other child who's name wasn't drawn did get a place on the first round of 2nd places though - someone declined the place as they'd decided to go private.

No they go on distance from the school as a tiebreaker

Only if someone applied AFTER the cut off date would that come into play - everyone who applied is given places according to criteria and then any leftovernplaces are given to late applications

For normal admissions rounds e.g. YrR or Yr7, date of application won't be taken into account at any point as long as you have applied before the deadline. Applications are either on time or late.

Different places/schools have different methods of figuring out a tiebreaker but they wouldn't be allowed to go on date of application.

sashh - Birmingham have changed what they do now - the grammar results are out in October and school choices are submitted after that. Think that will have reduced the number of people assuming they will definitely be awarded a grammar school place and increased people making more realistic choices.

Why? Why does someone (presumably multiple people) do this EVERY year?

InvisibleKitten I'm in Scotland and the schools near me are having this sort of issue. The two newest schools have had extra classes formed to cope with the intake, even though there are schools in the town which are under capacity. But unless you do a placing request, your child will pretty much just go to your catchment school.

England's admission system is insane in a lot of areas.

But parents like the one in the OP don't help themselves by thinking they know better than what the councils advise!

I just put one school on my application for all three of my children. I live in a village and the school is very oversubscribed. I just read the admission criteria, because we live so close to the school two of my children were the closest child to the school in their year, one had one child applying who lived closer. The only way they wouldn't have got a place would have been if 28 Looked After children had applied and I thought that very unlikely.

I do find it odd that some people don't read up on it.

A friend's ex husband was convinced that all faith schools had to take some non faith pupils. When he was told by the LA that they only had to if they had empty spaces ( school massively oversubscribed with Catholics) he said that the school did have this policy, but the LA and school had to keep it quiet

MummyMoan you've got to wonder what on earth the person doing the allocations was THINKING there! How stupid of them.

In Scotland though, what happens if the school nearest to you is awful and you don't want your child to go there?

The 'closest' schools to my house when I went to secondary were:

• Appalling, kids set fire to art block three times in three years
• Terrible record for bullying
• Also terrible record for bullying and a lot of the kids from my primary who bullied me were going there
• Faith school in same group as the one I went to
• And finally, the school I actually went to.

SO glad I didn't get forced to go to a school just because it was close!

TheCuriousOwl You do a placing request to the non-catchment school you'd rather your child went to, and if they have a space for them they go there instead. If it's a non-catchment school you've requested I don't think all councils will provide free transport though. E.g. My DS is due to start primary 1 at our catchment Catholic school in August - the catchment for this school is HUGE, so lots of pupils live more than a mile away/qualify for a free school bus. If we sent him to our catchment non-denominational school, we're closer so no transport. If we did a placing request to go to a non-catchment school (faith or not), we'd have to find our own way there.

BUT there tends not to be as big a focus on school quality up here as there is in England. Our inspectorate doesn't give schools a general rating, which most people aren't too bothered by, and people tend to just send their child to a catchment school unless there's some sort of extenuating circumstance. My town has a lot of primary schools due to new housing developments, and school nurseries aren't bound by the same catchment rules that the schools are, so while my son goes to the nursery attached to an out-of-catchment school, the children from his class are going to be moving on to 4/5 local primaries. People just get on with it, really.

DidYouMean: it's not all that insane, and not all that much different from Scotland. Basically most people get a place in what is described as 'catchment ' school, the one they get in in distance.
Everything else is driven by what in Scotland is called placement request, I think?
And I gather these requests, which represent the choice that everyone on the thread is talkimg about, and causing more angst?

A few years ago, I chose a leafy overscribed school and said convenient as on husband's route to work and my son was allocated said school.

Cherish. you are a total idiot if you think you got allocated it because it was on your husband's work route. You got allocated it because you met the criteria. They do not take that into consideration or everyone would cite those reasons.

The lack of education on this thread is staggering.

MummyMoan you've got to wonder what on earth the person doing the allocations was THINKING there! How stupid of them.

It will have been done by a computer program, there was no thinking. Until very recently that's the way that school admissions worked if you had twins that fell either side of the cut off point.

These days the 2nd twin can be admitted as an excepted pupil, increasing the class size to 31.