Got last choice secondary school, hate it, - turn it down?

[TeenToTwenties]

Click bait sorry. I haven't got a child starting secondary. I only have a lay interest in this from reading the boards over the years.

Of course I and anyone else would be totally unreasonable to turn down my offered school unless I already have a place at a private school or I really would be willing to home educate

Accepting an offered school does not impact your chance of a successful appeal.
Most areas you automatically go on the wait list for higher preferences but check rules for your area.
You can get appeals advice on the Secondary education board.

I don't object to the point that it's not a good idea in most places. What I find objectionable is those jumping on saying it's stupid. It really isn't in a lot of cases.

For DS not to have got in, the LEA would have had to have failed significantly on two criteria. For other kids I know it's three.

We had fuck all chance of getting into a school of choice anyway. It would have been bargain basement allocations that no one else wanted regardless.

The whole system is stupid as fuck.

It really does depend on area. My local secondary school A has a PAN of 330. It's a rural town. The next nearest schools B & C are in more 'towny' towns and they are oversubscribed. Bottom line, you don't have a choice. If you live in our town, you go to school in school A, or you apply to a far away school that is unsubscribed and transport your child there yourself. B is only an option for about 10 houses in the very edge of the town, which sit on the border of the catchment area. C isn't an option for anyone. So parents can put A B C, B C A, C B A.... It's irrelevant. They will get A.

However, school A also takes a lot of children from a town that didn't have a school historically. . Those children could go to schools A, D, or E. Parents didn't like schools D & E so they chose A and put on a private bus. If they only put school A down, they are playing with fire, because school A doesn't have enough surplus places to accommodate all the applicants from that town.

I wouldnt be recommending people do this. Putting only one school does NOT guarantee you that one school.

It didn’t work for you. You simply got the school you would have got had you put 3 choices down with that school in 1st position.

If for some reason you hadn’t been allocated that school you would have got the next nearest school with a free place rather than your 2nd/3rd choice.

There is not a single scenario where putting down 1 school can ever leave you in a better position. If you read the rules you’ll see this clearly mentioned multiple times.

You clearly don’t understand the allocation system.

To all the people slating someone putting 1 school down…. We did that for our secondary school too. Why?

There is only one secondary school in our town.
the next nearest schools were all over 10 miles away and equally as good. In our county, there are only 2 secondary schools with a third right by the border that falls under the county school district. We live a 5 min walk from the school, so we’d have been highly unlikely to not get a place based on the distance criteria (in all previous years, everyone from the town who applied on time got their place, it was those that lived in villages that weren’t guaranteed), and once our eldest got in, the younger 2 qualified under the second criteria - sibling at the school.

if we hadn’t gotten in, the only other 2 schools available were the other options we would have put down. Both were equally inconvenient and we had no preference over which if it came to that. So in our circumstances, there was no need and point to putting down the other schools as there was no danger of being offered something completely different to the ones available.

I swear some people on here forget that not everyone lives in a huge city!

It's not a good idea to put only one school down unless, barring incredibly perverse statistical anomaly, you are sure of getting a place there.

We only put one school down for DD. The order of admissions were: SEN, looked after children, sibling at partner school living in catchment. DD was a sibling at partner school in catchment.

If every single child at a partner school had a sibling at the secondary school and lived in catchment closer to the school than we did and there were 61 children who had SEN or were looked after, then we wouldn't have got a place.
In reality we could list off at least another 60 children that weren't ahead of us on the admissions criteria, so there would have needed to be over 121 SEN/looked after children. We discounted this as reasonable possibility.

Putting down one school, saved us time in viewing other schools etc. Especially as we realistically had no chance of getting into anywhere else other than the unpopular school that was miles away.

To reiterate what others said, this approach will however not get you a place unless you satisfy the admissions criteria anyway.

It didn’t “work” for you. You just put down the school which was the one you were most entitled to get. You are crazy if you believe your “tactic” worked. You actually think that the decision making people looked at your application and thought “oh, this family only want this particular school, so we will give it to them on that basis”?

That’s not what worked for you. Your dcs got places because there were places. If the school had been oversubscribed, you would have been given the nearest school with places, regardless of your preference.

In general people need to understand the allocation process because that's what explains the reason that only putting one school is a bad idea.

• The LA gets the CAFs. If the LA is the admitting authority, they deal with it. If not, they pass the details through to the admitting authority (e.g school).
• Every child that has listed a school on their form gets ranked in order against the admission criteria. If a child is ranked above the limit of the PAN and has listed the school as preference 1, they are put on the list of successful applicants.

-As those preferences are locked in, they will get removed from the list of other schools on their form, and every applicant below them will 'move up the bus'.

So for four applicants, the process might look like:

School A

1. Preference 2
2. Preference 1
3. Preference 3
4. Preference 1.

School B

1. Preference 1
2. Preference 2
3. Preference 2.
4. Preference 2.

School A can take applicants 1-4. But they will take applicants 2 & 4. School B can take applicants 1-4, but they will take applicant 1. They might take applicant 3, if their first choice school can't take them.

It's a massive shuffling exercise.

If you only put one school, and they can't take you, then you'll be admitted to the nearest school that has a place.

People talking about one school should take heed of this post, it just shows how risky it is as a strategy even if you think its guaranteed

And, returning to the point of the thread, given that the forms were completed months ago.

Accept the offered school .

We did the same. We were lucky we got what we wanted.

Leaving aside all the ‘well, it worked for us when we put down one school’ and the anomalies that some rural areas have, the OPs first post is and remains important. Accept the school you’re offered, even if it’s not one you want. Stay on the waiting lists for the schools you do want.

I also got lucky and got the school we wanted. Difference is I used all 4 options just in case we didn't get our first choice. Someone down the road put the same school as us but didn't get the first choice, it seems we where the last place given out. We came so close to not getting the place. Just use all the options, you don't lose out when you do, but if you don't you will be allocated a not so good school miles away.

I didn't for my first child, but I did this time. Sibling and in catchment of a massive school so there was never any doubt they would get in. We still visited some others though, just in case a disaster happened, so they wouldn't be going into the unknown.

The whole thing baffles me. We were further away from the school and got our only choice yet ones who lived nearer to the school and put more choices then us didn’t get any on their list and were sent to schools further away. Crazy how it sometimes works out.

You must have been in one of the higher up categories than the children who lived closer. The LA won't be bribed by someone putting only one choice.

You must live somewhere with no over subscribed schools. Not the same round here.

I know someone who only put 1 school, didn't get it and was sent 5 miles across town away from all his mates. His mum was FUMING but was told it was her own fault!

No we wasn’t actually in any of the categories.

That's impossible. Everyone who applies is put into one of the categories

Quite.

And they forget that not all schools have the standard entry criteria of entry.

Frankly if you live near me if you havent figured out the complexities of the entry system by year 5 you are already screwed before you even put a school down on paper. This isnt just my county it's the neighboring couple because of unusual systems and strange rules and catchments that include cross boundary admissions.

Unless you look up how the system works by this point you can get royally shafted. I know people who didn't know about entry dates for grammar school exams. Or people who don't know how going private might affect their child. Or how living the wrong side of the county boundary but same primary might have implications.

Just understand the sodding system before you even start.

The kids having most issues where I am are the SEN kids even though on paper they have first choice. That's not true if there's no suitable school places available for them. There were 50 kids chasing 12 specialist places this year in my area. I'm really hoping the kids I know in this situation luck out. One left the country because their parents realised they were unlikely to get it and they were shit out of other options - that the truly outrageous part.

Not everyone has the same choices. The system varies hugely across the country.

It would be wise to remind people of this point just as much as "don't refuse a space" because there will be people with kids in yr5 or even yr4 reading this too.

I am well aware of a close friend who I warned about this last year (her son is a year younger than mine) to start consider and looking around before the start of yr5 for open evenings and entry criteria especially as she was considering moving. I was telling her to get the fuck on and move straight away if she was going to. She didn't, she missed open evenings and it's only just dawned on her that she's got a problem with her location unlike her son's classmates. So she's now in a lottery because she wasn't on the ball to begin with.

That's why I think the whole system sucks. There shouldn't be this much disparity in your options where it's viewed as a complete disaster and the end of the world if you get allocated 'the wrong school'. It's just farcical that it's in this state.

And what about the kids who live in an area where they are only ever going to be allocated 'the shit school'. What do you advise their parents?

It's awful. The whole fucking thing.

Absolutely not undersubscribed! It's going to be a bulge year at the school.

I just can read English. And understand the admissions policy.

The categories are from what I remember,

siblings
teachers children
looked after children
Sen Children
distance

we didn’t come in any of those categories. As I said children who lived nearer than us didn’t get in. We wasn’t the only ones either there was another child in our road who also somehow got offered a place.

It happens.