To expect my son to get into a school less than 50m from me

[Rumpleteezer]

When I know all the places will go to siblings in September 2018 :(

We have the same. Two hours driving a day to get to it. There’s a good kindergarten about 30m away. Frustrating

Lots of LEAs don’t have catchment areas and haven’t done for decades they use distance as the crow flies from a specified point.

Exactly the same situation happened at DDs school a few years ago. When they dropped the bulge class the next year there were forty siblings applying for thirty spaces, cue lots of sad face stories in the local paper.

I don’t know what the answer is, however you arrange it someone loses out. What I will say is get yourself on the waiting list ASAP, you might have to start out at the further school but with luck a place will come up.

They are at the end of 5 years of two form intake, having to stop as it's a listed building and they can't continue (though arguably they shouldn't have continued for so long having created a massive sibling problem).
Isn’t that in itself a good reason for winning an appeal? An acquaintance of mine won a place on appeal at our nearest high school (walkable distance for them) three years ago precisely because the year before they’d accepted a greater number than their PAN. The appeal panel upheld that they should do so again and on balance the child would ‘suffer’ more by not getting a place than the school would by taking them. Was a secondary though so maybe different criteria applies. I understand sibling rule but I don’t see why, year on year, it can’t be a sibling rule applied in conjunction with the distance rule, there could be a caveat for those who have not actually moved house since the first sibling got the place to account for that, but unfortunately plenty of people will have moved further away and are just travelling a distance because they can

It will only continue to get worse as the population grows.

Families who move away should not maintain their space. Pretty common sense, so why have you not been petitioning your LA to update their policies?

It won't win an ICS appeal. Appeals for high school are very different. The 'balance' argument doesn't apply.

In this case it would probably go against you given the number of bulge classes the school have taken. It would be quite difficult to argue that a school that has 150 extra children has the capacity to take more.

*The trouble with that is - how do you define catchment area?

Maybe when their Year 5 child got accepted years ago, they lived 700m from the school but that would now be far too far away for a non-sibling place. The family haven't moved but they are well outside current 'catchment' for their youngest child.

And that rule also disproportionately disadvantages children of parents who rent and who can be forced to move on next to no notice. There isn't always the option of finding another house to rent very nearby.*

I see your points tiggytape and definitely have more sympathy with those who were in a catchment that has got smaller.

Where I used to live in London I knew of 2 families who owned a house near ish by but has deliberately rented within the catchment of what would have been our local school until we moved, they were open about what they were doing. It is this sort of playing the system I disagree with and would have been really annoyed if one of those families got a place over my dc. Luckily we are not there now.

I take your point about disadvantaging families that rent but the school would have to make a judgement on their local housing stock, in London there's usually lots of rental availablity.

There's no way of making it fair for everyone I guess when demand outstrips supply.

That's a really close distance, so it's unlikely there's going to be many non-sibling applications that are closer than you.

Given that, you will probably be the top of the wait list if you don't get your first choice, and so only need one family to move to get in.

That depends how many children with siblings didn't get in. It could be a few.

true! There might be siblings who don't get in.

Is there a lot of capacity at other schools in the town? Surprising move to drop it to 1 form entry if there's consistant demand for places.

Manchester doesn't have catchments and has such a shortage of places in most areas of the city that moving within the city boundaries will not guarantee you a place at a closer school unless you are moving to Wythenshawe. In year applications are really under pressure as well as the kids due to start reception in 2018. There's 100s of new arrivals to the city every term and there just aren't the places needed despite increased PANs and new schools opening. I know of families who are bring offered 3 different schools for 3 kids all in different directions and appeals are being heard 2 or 3 days are week every week. There's no slack in the system and it's even worse for kids who need special schools

Siblings come the lowest priority here...move out of catchment , sibling wont get a place unless there is a space after catchment kids.
ofsted outstanding, 30 places per year - defined catchment.
Makes sense - who really wants to be driving to the next school along?...

I appreciate its frustrating but if my 2 DS hadn't got into his sisters school ( which I doubt he would have without sib link) it would have been really really difficult to get them both to school and he would have been absolutely heartbroken not to go to the same school. He had been visiting with me almost daily for 4 years before he started and knew most of he teachers and plenty of pupils.

Sorry to hear so many of you have been in a similar situation, it's incredibly frustrating.
Two of our neighbours got places at the nursery (same site as school) so I'm assuming they are above us and even less than 50m away.

The current criteria is:
Looked after children
Children with special needs (currently 6 at the nursery apparently)
Children with siblings less than 800m away who haven't moved since Sept 16
Catchment children
Siblings out of catchment

I think I need to give up hope now! Seems pointless arguing with council to repeat the 60 intake when there's no space, though they've continued it each year while that has been the case.

I think emotions are high as I've recently found out I'm expecting #3 in July and the thought of 8miles walking a day is very unappealing.

I feel for you OP. Where I am you would have priority over siblings out of catchment. It is made very clear (and has been for years) that if you are out of catchment, or move out, any sibling may not get into the school. If you’re out of catchment it’s a risk you take.

It sucks, doesn't? We have some Schools in our LA that even had to put siblings onto waiting list one year!

I understand your frustration even though I have opposite problem. Had DD2 been due to start school in September 2017 she wouldn’t have got into the one DD1 goes to even though we are 250m away and have to drive past the school to get out. This is because in our LEA catchment takes preference over siblings and we have the most ridiculous catchment areas for our schools. In fact our catchment school is the 4th neatest school to us (1.6 miles).

I will be crossing everything come April that last year was a freak birth year and we’ll be ok! I don’t know how I’ll manage with two in different schools.

I feel your pain OP. We are a couple of years away from this yet but live on a new build estate. They built a primary school on the estate but didn’t build it big enough for the number of houses they built. It has an intake of 60 but for the last 3 years siblings within catchment have taken 35-40 places, leaving 20-25 for non-sibling catchment children of which there are generally around 60 each year. Last year, the furthest distance from the school to get a place was 0.2 miles. We live 0.35 miles away. We could be lucky with a low sibling year but I doubt it ... going to be a nightmare having to drive DS somewhere across town and try and find a local childminder or breakfast club ...

Our school does
catchment kids with sibling
catchment kids
Out of catchment kids with sibling
That's how it should be in my opinion.

If you want to live out if catchment then you have to accept that you shouldn't get a monopoly on school places within catchment.

Live out of catchment and want all siblings to go to thr same school then use your local school.

I can't help but think more people using their local school would be a damn sight better for schools and communities than people trying ti send their child to one 20 min drive away because it's 'outstanding' and the other isn't.

The problem with that is, if you live in an area where you can't get your child into the catchment school because you are right on the edge of the boundary, then you lose sibling priority through no fault of your own.

You need to have an additional policy which allows for some out of catchment children to be considered as in catchment.

Moving kids to the outstanding schools seems to cause a lot of problems. I was in a situation where DC1 out of catchment got in the outstanding school (that's not why I sent her) the catchment school was good. A few years later the outstanding school was rated satisfactory and the catchment school which was good got an absolutely brilliant offsted report, outstanding but it was raved about. So all the people who went out of catchement to get in the first outstanding school ended up with siblings in a satisfactory school and the people who just went to their catchment school ended up with siblings in the school with a brilliant offstead report plus they were local. Then people started taking kids out of our school to go to the outstanding one, the roles reversed people in the catchment for school one then started trying to get them in school 2

That's interesting tiggytape I'm glad that councils are aware of the problem and are clamping down on it. However, it worked for one of the families I know of who did this as their dc is now at the sought after school.

The craziness of both state and independent schools in London is one of the reasons why I am glad I don't live there anymore.