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.

It is very area specific surely.
Here in London you put down your choices and then many if they do not get their first choice in early March, start planning appeals and get themselves on numerous wait lists all over. And plenty end up moving their kids to different schools up to early October and perfectly prepared to do just that.

There are other ways to completely fail at trying to game the system.

You could also have put the one school down in every place on your list 😉

It still shocks me how many people think that the council have to give them their first choice if they only put one school. Or if they refuse their allocated school then they will be given a better (or any alternative). Sometimes this is naivety or ignorance, but for some despite reading the really clear admissions criteria, process etc they do it anyway. Why?!

No, it's not random. There is always a process. My guess is the distance one impacted you here. Often distance can be closer for someone that actually lives further away becuase the criteria for distance can be a bit odd - eg straight line from Gate 3, even if you live close to gate 1 or whatever.

I am constantly surprised by how many people do not take the time to properly undrstand the rules in their area.

My other (slightly mean) frustration, is the many many parents around here who get themselves completely worked up when they are guaranteed a place at their preferred school. I remember a friend, who I do love dearly but who baffles me sometimes, getting herself into a complete state that her youngest wouldn't get into the same school as her oldest. Even though siblings are at the top of the criteria list. And she kept telling me that it MIGHT be wrong. She wasn't the only one (but she was the only one I was able to forgive her silliness because she's normally rational! )

Around here, there are three main high schools. two are more popular (although that's changing) and they usually have a smaller catchment zone (distance criteria) than the 3rd. I'm waiting for the howls of horror on the class whatsapp later as I know a few did the "we'll only put one down and then they HAVE to give it to us" strategy.....

As I have already said we lived further away from the school and got in, other children that lived in the same road or round the corner didn’t get in. It wasn’t the straight line distance either as we lived nearly 4 miles away.

I understood the rules perfectly fine thank you, we took a gamble and got lucky. That really is it.

Still would have been wise to use all your choice, even if you were unlikely to need them. The school you don't want thats 2 miles aeay is still better them the school you don't want thats 10 miles away.

Kids who have been in care or have EHCP's naming the school are usually given priority over kids placed based on distance, so if there was a year with an unusually high amount of these it could change the catchment significantly.

I put 6 choices and they are my 6 nearest schools and I may not get any of them. I wish we had a proper catchment system like Scotland. At least then people would have some certainty.

@Mayflowerz I get you believe that but honestly, if you did "get lucky" then there's actually a huge problem in your area that probably needs sorting. More likely there's something else at play. And the straight line thing can impact 4 miles or 4 metres. Probably more over longer distances actually.

Either way, I'm glad it worked out for you.

Nasty!

Do you really think they look at your one school and think "well, this kid doesn't meet the criteria as much as other kids, but he only has one place.So we definitely better put them in this school."
I do sometimes worry about how little comprehension people have about how systems work.

If your local school is a dead certain though, why would you waste the LAs time having to email 4 other schools to cross check lists to see if you would technically meet criteria? And then have another person have to do the same back at your LA. If it is 100 per cent guaranteed, then you are doing them a favour and not wasting time aka taxpayer money.

That's not how it works

Not sure that’s a wise move. I was advised if I didn’t complete other selections I could not appeal if I didn’t get my preferred school.

There's not a person sat scribbling on lists, and emailing around. All the school places are worked out by a computer algorithm, then the LA send the school a list of names. It takes no more or less man power

1. always put down as many choices as your LEA allows
2. NEVER turn down all the schools you’re offered unless you are certain you are going to go private. If you do, the LEA no longer has any responsibility. Accept one-then negotiate from there.

Does it not save admin time if you only put one choice down? I totally understand and agree with the explanations regarding this not being a slam dunk for getting your school btw. But I only put down one school for my DC3, we live in a rural area with undersubscribed schools (I look at the applications data every year - even the school in a nearby town that was oversubscribed 10 years ago is now admitting to children out of catchment as numbers have dropped) & he has siblings at the school. Why waste my time adding extra schools to my application & presumably incurring some admin time at the other end?

Well electrical power then these days. I said if it is 100 per cent certain what school you are going to - why waste time, computer time, electricity etc just because you can?

Read sprogonthectyne post above. That explains how it works. No it doesn't take more admin time. They ask you to fill in 4 schools for a reason

You may have been super lucky and had this work out for you. Presumably you just met the criteria for that school and would have got a place either way.

It is really bad advice to others.

Putting only one school doesn’t give you any better chance of getting that school. It gives no advantage at all.

It just means that if you don’t get that school, the LA allocates you an under subscribed school - usually one of the “worst” / least popular in the area. Rather than going to your second, third etc choices.

No really. If you don't get our local school from where we are, you don't get the next nearest one to as it has over-subscription issues too. You get the one ten miles away anyway because of unusual location issues and unusual entry criteria for the nearest two available schools. There really isn't a choice unless you actively want your child to travel.

This has its own frustrations for people who suddenly work out the local school perhaps isn't the one they want their kid to go to, as they are between a rock and a hard place in terms of choices.

How hard is this to actually understand?!

It is a slam dunk here. As long as we'd got the application in on time if DS hadn't got the local school, the LA would have failed to apply the application criteria fairly and we'd win any appeal if they allocated an alternative school. So why bother with a second option? Any other allocation would result in a successful appeal.

As I say it's an unusual situation but this reflects the importance of reading the criteria in the first place too. As it goes I'm fairly sure we will hear from someone later today who didn't understand they aren't standard here and has got firmly caught out and I'm dreading it because that's going to be pretty awful for them.

As I said to begin with, not all school entry criteria are the same. There are some very unusual areas which have very different issues which require you to understand the system some time before you get to filling in that form to understand where you are likely to end up.

It doesn't save admin time, no. Theoretically, if you've understood the admissions criteria properly and are 100% confident that your child is therefore guaranteed a place, only putting that school down is fine. The problem is, as shown on this thread, lots of people misunderstand the criteria.

Also, in our area, the one oversubscribed school usually has a distance of about 2km or so. For whatever reason, a couple of years ago, this dropped hugely to 1.4km. It didn't impact us but I know a lot of families were caught out as they assumed becuase they lived 1.7km (or whatever) they were guaranteed a place based on the allocations of the past 5 years.

Similarly, when DD got into primary school, she only got in as a sibling. In her year, we live NOTABLY further away than all of her class mates (except other siblings!). In that situation, it was becuase it's a small school and as it turns out, almost half her age group were siblings, which meant the distance criteria shrunk hugely. It went back to a wider distance in the following years.

It didn’t work for you.

You would have got that school whatever you did.

It’s the absolute worst advice you can give someone.

Sorry if I’ve missed this but doesn’t this just mean the school has spaces? I’m in Hertfordshire (just north of London) and some schools are undersubscribed. You could get in from Yorkshire if so inclined!

anyway, already 2 people in our class WhatsApp group have rejected spaces. Allocation only came out at 10am 😭

In year admissions are fairly common. I work in a very popular school and we get a fair amount of students turning up half way through the year. I feel sorry for the parents having to get two lots of uniform because they have had no choice but to accept the school their child first got into. Equally, we have students leave because they were on the waiting list for other schools, not loads, but they make spaces available for those on waiting lists, so I guess that's a way forward.

This is what it’s like in my area too. Whatever you put down, you are 99.9% likely to be given the local school.
Sadly for us, that school is shit 😂