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?

WetlookWasp you haven't necessarily done your DD a diservice.... if she has an EHCP/Statement that puts her at a higher criteria and her SEN will be taken into account.

Get some specialist advice.

Hoping / thinking Cherish was taking the piss....

My friend only put one choice on her application and then airily told everyone that of course she'd get a place as they'd have to allocate the only school she'd chosen. Next time she brings it up I will have to remember to airily inform her that she obviously met the criteria or she'd have been sent to god knows where.

The one thing I was told not to do was list a school where I wouldn't accept a place just to have a 'safe' choice. We always knew we would likely have to appeal for DD's school place and I was advised not to list my closest failing school since I wasn't happy for her to go there and it could be argued that I had listed it as an acceptable option.

I listed the second closest school (our preferred choice) and 3rd, 4th and 5th closest. Then when we were inevitably allocated the closest choice I declined the place and braced for home ed while we battled it out. Dark days.

Basically it's simple:

little rhyme for you all

Choose # 1 that you want, that you really. really want
Choose #2 that is nice and you quite like too
Choose #3 that's a cert and would be better than poo (IE what you will be allocated if you can't understand the very simple process of admissions.
hth

Please do update OP and those 'playing the system'

Indeed. My ex is still utterly convinced that DS1 got into the primary we wanted because ex wrote an essay on the form about why it was the only suitable school due to it being a non faith school! Most round here are CofE or Catholic schools and he vociferously objects to them.

No amount of me telling him will make him understand that DS got in because, despite us living a mile away, there were fewer children who lived nearer who applied there that year (given DS was not looked after, had no SEN or sibling there then distance was the ONLY relevant decider).

No, he knows it is because of his rant on the form (I did not know he would do this when completing it ). And he tells everyone this. Sure they had a good laugh at the council when they read it though.

Ah, thanks for info on tiebreakers! (I've never actually used the admissions system, I'd like to think I'd read up about it if I was going to!)

The one thing I was told not to do was list a school where I wouldn't accept a place just to have a 'safe' choice. We always knew we would likely have to appeal for DD's school place and I was advised not to list my closest failing school since I wasn't happy for her to go there and it could be argued that I had listed it as an acceptable option.

I realise this probably worked out for you because you would have been happy to Home Ed rather than have a school place, but is terrible advice for most other people.

Listing your closest school of the list will have no bearing at all on any appeal case or any options. Your appealing for the school you want not against the one you have been given. And most reception appeals can only be won in a very limited range of circumstances.

You were 'lucky' enough that your closest school was one of the schools with places so your child was allocated there anyway. In many areas even the failing schools will be full and people who don't put the closest one may be allocated one up to an hour away.

If parents turn that place down because they can't get to it the LA have met their legal requirements and no longer have a duty to find another place for that child.

the higher up the block of flats you live the further you are from the school in this area. so our downstairs neighbours would be higher on the list than us.

I was sick of trailing round secondary schools, but we are happy with any of the schools on our list. We should get in at our first place, unless there has been a massive uptake in people going to CoE church. or someone has fucked up and lost the supplementary form. we are almost guranteed a place. still filled in all the boxes though just in case.

I am not familiar with the system in this country. What happens if a child is not allocated a place? Whose responsibility is it to find a place and will assistance be provided to transport the child?

Scotland is very strict on class sizes too, 25 in p1. If there's too many catchment kids then they do a bulge class, which can involve team teaching, extensions, portacabins...if a school is likely to have an ongoing capacity issue then they also look at redrawing the boundaries of the catchment.

It won't work

I've only experience at Primary, where I'm a governor, but schools set their own admissions criteria so some may prioritise sibling link (most do), others won't (but I've never actually known a school that doesn't have sibling link as one of the top criteria). Normally children who are in care are top priority, regardless of any issues of faith or location. In the case of our school, we have been known to have to consult various sources when we have got to the stage of deciding which of two addresses is closer to the school, but generally speaking, the admissions decisions are all very clear cut, and are easy to work out according to the strict and published admissions criteria. The council are responsible for gathering and administering the applications and then the governing body are responsible for allocating the places. As governors, we don't know which of the applications have requested our school as a first choice/second choice etc. This has always galled me because given the choice, I would rather accept children who had expressed a strong preference to attend our school rather than wanted it as a second or third best option, but ultimately there are criteria, and having the criteria in place ensures fairness. After the offers have been allocated there is generally a frustrating and for parents, stressful stage of movement as parents reject their place in favour of another.

On the issue of it not being fair for faith schools to insist on church attendance, or for people who don't subscribe to a faith having less of a chance of getting a place, the church provide a huge chunk of cash to run the school, and so in return will prioritise families who support the church, via regular attendance. I hear a lot about about there being a legal requirement for faith schools to allocate a proportion of places to non faith children, but I've never come across this in practice. We have a number of non faith children in our church school, who are not regular church goers, but this is only because there was availability of places after all the faith based applications had been given places.

I'm not sure there is a better system really but it is certainly sophisticated enough to not be manipulated by people who cite reasons such as commute time. I know the LA just get frustrated with forms such as these because they end up wasting a lot of time as the parent inevitably is unhappy with the place they are allocated and want to go the road of appeals etc.

I agree that the current system is deeply flawed but the idea that everyone should go to their nearest school doesn't work either because the fundamental problem is that the distribution of school is very uneven - the distribution of schools of quality at least "good" is very uneven, and so is the distribution of children in the right age cohort.

There is no good and fair system. Typically the homes that aren't near good schools are less desirable to families than those that are, so they are cheaper, so poorer families live there.

If schools have set catchment areas this can be mitigated by giving each naice school a slice of the difficult area in their catchment - but that can cause it's own problems.

Most people would agree all these are desirable:

Keep sibling groups together at primary level at least.
Give underprivileged people a better chance of winning a place at a good school.
Avoid a situation where child A passes child B's house en route to their school near B's house. Then child B passes child A's house en route to their school near A's house. Cos it's silly.

I don't think that this is achievable.

I did something similar. My nearest school was in special measures and then best school was religious but we were not churchgoers. I refused the local school and hung out for my first choice. My twins started two and a half weeks after everyone else but I got them in. Holding out is not for the faint hearted but it's not unheard of.

KC you were very lucky. My friend appealed and said "Well you HAVE to offer them a place!" and the authority said "We did...you just don't like it"

So she had no choice.

All the schools (other than faith) have the same admission criteria in my area:

1. looked after children
2. children from some named schools (think they have closed some down)
3. siblings
4. closet (straight line from centre of school to house)
5. preference

the only way to cheet the system is to lie about where you live, it's rife up here people doing this, but on few get caught..

We are in catchment for 1 school, couldn't live the futherest away from it though, literally on the boarder line. Only 6 people got into the school last year meeting criteria number 4, rest was sibling criteria.

We have 5 "choices", so put the nearest 4 schools down, and one village school (3.5 miles away that was undersubscribed last couple of years) we will see what we come April!

.if a school is likely to have an ongoing capacity issue then they also look at redrawing the boundaries of the catchment.

This happened when I started school. Our school was totally random to where we lived, but in that case they bus you.

The Scottish system is better imo because you don't have the uncertainty. It's not perfect though, it can have random catchments when new houses are built and composite classes are much more of a thing because of the necessity to take the 52 P1's.

The upside to the Scottish system is that your child is guaranteed a place if you move mid year, however that can also be a downside if you have a child already at the school whose class ends up getting shuffled around mid year because twins want to start and that takes them over numbers and a composite class is needed.

My old school had 5 P1 classes last year (or maybe the year before) :) The reception teachers here would have been horrified at that idea!

My post will probably out me but we had a horrendous time of it a couple of years back. I put 3 choices but was convinced we'd get our first as it hadn't been oversubscribed before. We didn't get any of them. I appealed and had a letter from my child's nursery and doctor explaining how damaging it would be for him to be separated from people he knew based on issues I won't go into. We also had a referral to PCAMHS. We failed. Apparently emotional needs ranked lower than someone who couldn't walk far so couldn't walk to another school which pissed me off as the school was not at all wheelchair accessible and we couldn't walk to the school they gave us either (sure that will make me unpopular). The appeal was a joke, we were told we had to argue they could accommodate us and I successfully did so only to be told 'it's not up to us to tell the school how to organise itself'. The fact you cannot physically get your child to another school also counts for nothing. JabetBatersby- the reason your friend was successful was it wasn't an infant class size appeal, they can easily increase class size if intake is 15 and they physically have room, if the intake was 30 she wouldn't have been. I even sought legal advice but was told I didn't have a leg to stand on

Actually worked out good for us in the end lol but worst few months of my life. I'm also not convinced there wasn't some dodgy going ons too as some people who got in I don't believe met the criteria but that may just be the suspicious side of me!

I'm 99.9% sure my second will get in to son's school but we still put 3 choices down just in case

The Scottish system works only up to a certain population density (and isn't it right that it's beginning to creak in Edinburgh and Glasgow?)

English urban population densities are way higher, and in some London boroughs are amongst the highest in the world.

Schools were built decades ago, may not match where today's residential areas are, be unable to expand (lack of or cost of land), so new schools may not be in the best location, just the least worst.