Primary school office staff searching children’s secondary applications

[NosyNoraInTbeOffice]

There have been emails from the woman in the office today stating she can’t access our children’s secondary school applications, saying we all need to get our applications in asap and requesting that we contact the council to rectify the situation. She said she was unable to see any of the applications.
The council has been inundated with parents emailing and phoning worrying that their child’s application hasn’t been received. The council have reassured teachers parent that the applications are being processed and that their is no problem.
The class WhatsApp group has exploded with parents unhappy that she has been searching for these and annoyed they’ve had to contact the council.
Is it normal for office staff to do this? I wouldn’t have thought it was any of her business but I don’t know how these things work.

Sounds like something has gone wrong somewhere. In our area when it gets near the deadline the LA do let primary schools know which child doesn't have an application in and asks the primary school to chase the parents. So primary staff chasing this is a thing I think, it just sounds like they haven't checked correctly.

Yeah my LA do similar to the above - we often have parents who haven’t applied for places so it means we can chase before applications are late and children get allocated a school they’d never be able to get to.

As far as I know, we don’t get to see the actual application - it’s just a list of applied/not applied.

It wasn’t phrased as though she was looking to see if people had applied but rather than she was looking at the applications themselves. Perhaps it was the wording and there’s nothing untoward. She’s known to be unprofessional so it wouldn’t surprise me if she was trying to find out details but hopefully this isn’t the case.

Why would it matter if she found details? School will be in contact with their secondary schools when they get their places anyway

What information would the application have on it that the primary school wouldn't already have?

Seems she's just trying to catch the useless parents who might miss the application deadline

I don’t think there is any new information for a school on the application so even if the staff are able to view it, they won’t find anything that their own computers don’t already have on record.

Exactly, seems a really weird thing to be worried about. The school will always know where the child is going to.

They’ll be checking that an application has been made - they won’t see where you’ve applied to. Otherwise some families forget or are unaware of the process and it takes a huge amount of time to rectify this after 31st October.

Trust me, the office will know where your child is going as soon as the offer is made next year.

They still shouldn't be seeing the actual application. It could have lots of information that the primary school doesn't necessarily know about - e.g., details of older/half/step siblings that might not be the same as when the child jointed primary; changing addresses because parents are separating; applying for a school further away because of a planned possible move or a separation; applying for a school based on the results of a selection test; social/emotional/physical needs that weren't so relevant at primary but are now important in choice of secondary; social/physical needs that potentially involve parents that primary doesn't need to know about but some places might accept as reasons for choosing a certain school; whether they are or aren't able to get a religious form signed; even just something as simple as which school a child has put first, because they don't want to be with some of the same children as the primary or they don't like a school that the primary works with/feeds into, etc etc.

Obviously they'll know the final decision once it's been made, but the parent might not get the first choices and the primary doesn't need to know where they might have been trying to apply. Not everyone has good relationships with the primary and/or the office staff, and I can see why parents might want some of the information kept private!

So while it makes sense that office staff at the primary could find out if applications have or haven't been made, I don't think it's unreasonable for parents to worry if they think the staff are looking at the actual applications! (I suspect they probably don't have access, and it was just badly worded in the email, but I can understand the worry).

Perfectly normal, we used to check the portal to see if an application had been put in when approaching the deadline. It was so we could remind the parents who hadnt applied anywhere that they should do so.

You don't see the application forms, sounds like she may have worded the message badly but she's not doing anything we didn't.

Also schools will know where the children are heading once they have their places as they send the new school their record from the primary MIS.

I not sure what IT system your school uses but I know when my children were moving from primary to secondary we had to let them know what secondary school they would be attending. Every time one of ours was moving up to secondary we had to wait for exam results to see if they were going to one particular school instead of the catchment school and I got harassed by the school every year to let them know for the school IT system. It was to do with transition to secondary apparently. Could it be a glitch in their systems?

Why the false naiveté:

"Is it normal for office staff to do this? I wouldn’t have thought it was any of her business but I don’t know how these things work".

Perhaps it was the wording and there’s nothing untoward"

She’s known to be unprofessional so it wouldn’t surprise me if she was trying to find out details but hopefully this isn’t the case"

You think she a nosey gossip, not sure why you're telling us. I bet youre doing the same on the whatsapp group

My husband works in tech support for schools. The primaries would normally have access to whether the child has a secondary application in, if that isn't showing for everyone it's understandable she is concerned as that could mean people haven't applied or the system isn't working properly. If she actually wants all the data, that is untoward, but I'm don't think you can be sure that's what she meant.

I’d be interested to see a copy of the actual email that has been sent out.

Councils advise schools via SAM of pupils in Y6 high school application status. Primary schools are asked to chase up families who have not applied for high school to ensure the receive a preferred place.

Avoids dozens of queries after places allocated from prents saying they aren't sending their child to the allocated school / dont want their child going to a school miles away but.... err didn't submit an apucation. Often bellowing at primary staff that they need to sort it out (happens every year)

Yes it's normal that office staff can check on who has / has not applied. Sounds like their system is down so they can't tell.

So, you don’t like her and you are hoping that you have caught her out doing something she shouldn’t have done.

But you haven’t.

Why would she give a fuck which school the kids are applying to and so what if she finds out, she will have access to all sorts of personal info anyway in her job

It literally shows the parent / guardian has applied online with the council and the maximum three choices of high school in the application.

Plus, even if there were personal circumstances affecting a child and their households (again, there isn't, it is literalluly justvthe above) I'd be really concerned why their existing school wasn't being made aware of it for potential pastoral and / or safeguarding issues.

Primary schools don't go looking for the information it is shared by the council withthe current and primaries are told by the council to chase up non applicants.

Primary schools don't care what school pupils apply to: they care the application has been made then spend many many weeks liaising with high schools to do a handover, as wll as a data transfer at point of end of school year to ensure children are fully supported with the step to high school. Post SATs Year 6 can be exhausting for some children as they see high school move closer and cope (or not at times!) with move in dfferent ways. There is a lot of hard wrknby school staff at end of Year for year 6 students. Accessing basic application data is part of a basic task.

She’s been asked to chase parents who nearly always need chasing as they didn’t know - also known as didn’t read the letter.

I doubt she cares - why would she? It really isn’t that deep but maybe if communication went via the witch hunt of WhatsApp, parents wouldn’t need chasing as they’d have read it!

This. Primary schools keep track of who hasn't applied and send out reminders. The LA asks them to do this. After allocation, the LA send out allocation details to the primary school. So primary schools find out which school each of their pupils are going to. They would need to anyway in order to transfer their files etc. So I'd concentrate my anger/annoyance on something/someone else, they are only doing their job.

You're obviously determined to be right in your speculation that she's nosy

You are not right. This is completely normal....but also you do need to accept staff in schools, medical offices etc can of course see lots of personal info. This is because they need to see it to do their job, not because they give a shit about having a nosy in your business. You are less interesting than you think.