To wish people wouldn't be so naive?

[Enchilada81]

I'm talking about the whole "starting secondary school" thing and particulary the parents.

Why do people rely on what "Joan at school" or "Claire who lives down the road" tells them rather than official information? I find it so annoying.

When we got the booklets explaining the admissions process it clearly said (more than once!) not to put the same school down 3 times as it does NOT increase your chances, it just wastes two of your choices. So I was talking to my friend yesterday and asked if she'd heard what school she has allocated. She said "No, but it will be 'GirlSchool', I know for a fact it will be because I put it down for all three choices".

Surely she must have read the booklet?? but because "Phoebe's mum" told her it would work, she did it.

Another friend of mine moved her DS out of the primary school just at the start of year 6 to another primary school near a good secondary school. She was told by teachers, council officials AND a social worker that this would have NO bearing on his chances of getting in that secondary school ... but "Leila who lives at No. 8" told her it would so she did it.

Now last night, I was speaking to another mum and asked what schools she'd put down. The first school she chose is over-subscribed and out of catchment area and although she was told by the council that her DS wouldn't get in, she put it down as first choice anyway because "Bradley goes there."
Her second choice is a school which requires a test to get in. The tests were done at the end of last year (I know because DS did it) and on the letter we received it clearly stated that if you did not turn up for the test, they would assume you no longer wanted to go there. So I asked her "oh, did he do the test? I didn't see you there when we went ... "

She replied "no, Camerons's mum said they'll still let him go because she knows someone who went there without doing the test".

Why do people take the word of people who blatently know nothing rather than the official line? I find it so frustrating! Especially when they then come to me and say stuff like "why don't you try ... (some old wives tale) ... Becky did and it worked for her!"

I don't know why it bothers you-it means that those who do their homework are more likely to get a place if others are wasting their choices!
If you read the official booklet you can work out your chances-they have the same booklet. They may well be naive if it is their first, but they will fnd this out in due course. Some people only learn by their own mistakes.

But the first woman I was talking to has already had one child in secondary school.

I know I shouldn't let it bother me but when you're going through your contact list trying to get in touch with people to find out if they've heard from the council yet ... and all you get is a load of people that havn't even filled the forms in properly it's so frustrating!

If she already has one in the school of her choice she is increasing her chances of getting her second into the same school. I still don't really understand why you need to find out what others are doing.

No the other child isn't at that school anymore.

The reason I was contacting people was to find out if they'd received the email we were supposed to receive yesterday as mine never came through. I was panicking. (still am)

I know.... It bugs me no end. All my friends are like that! I really need to make more friends...
I have learnt to just nod and smile...

If you haven't got the email wait until 9am and phone direct and ask about it. I have never had that problem-they are very clued up in my area and tackle it with military precision!

Parents like this are thick as mud.

I have to go through the whole thing next year with DS2, a lot of people say oh DS2 will be going to xxxx where DS1 goes, and when I say I don't know they look at me odd, but....

1} I want DS2 to go to the school best suited to him

2} DS1s school has not done well in the last ofsted report

Your lucky to have a choice we have one high school unless you want your child to travel a minimum of 8 miles on rural roads.

When my ds1 went to secondary I chose an oversubscribed one in a different area (I had it on good authority hed get in but thats another thread ).

Some Mother in the playground told me very loudly that her ds would have more chance of getting in as they were a 4 car family .

I still dont really get her point- however ds did get in and her ds didnt until year 9.

Then when ds2 was due to go he had been H.E due to ill health,school had already said they would take him before applications were sent out and the amount of people who said 'he wouldnt get in' was unbeleivable.

Nickschick - did you ask her where on the form it asked how many cars the family has??

YABU to be as sweet as to call them naive when the words you're looking for are "thick as mince".

I don't think it is just secondary schools. I know someone who has an oversubcribed, good ofsted school as their catchment school and put that as their second choice. She applied for an oversubscribed school out of catchment and has wondered why she has ended up with the "worst" school in her area that wasn't even one of her choices.
I just don't think people really know what they are doing or that there are other people applying as well as them.

Sirius, shouldn't she have got the catchment school anyway, if it was second on her list? round here anyway, the order of preference only kicks in when you meet the entry criteria for more than one on your list. If she didn't qualify for the first, she ought to have automatically been given the second?

Do you have to put down your preferences, even for schools in the catchment area? I live in Glasgow and my DS has automatic places in the catchment area schools, I just had to turn up at the preferred one to register her.

Maybe, what the authorities should do is use this as a filtering mechanism - if the parent is too dim to read and fill in the form properly, the child automatically doesn't get into the first choice. Harsh, but just have a couple go through that, and they'll stop being so dim pretty quickly.

Au contraire serenity - if the parent is too dim to fill in the form correctly then the child will not be getting assisted with its homework and ergo should be judged on its own merit. If it is found to be intelligent it should get first choice.

Or, it could be genetic and there's no hope

enchilada - why are you contacting these people to find out if they've got their email? What you want to know is where your email is - don't you need to contact the Council? Or the first choice school?

Where we used to live, it was made abundantly clear, both in the paper work and at the meetings for parents, that if you didn't put your catchment school down as one of your options, and you didn't get any of the options on your list, you wouldn't be guaranteed a place at your catchment school - you'd be left with whatever school had spaces left after the allocations process.

But every year there were some parents who didn't put the catchment school down even as their fifth option, and found themselves left with the only undersubscribed school in the borough - which was coincidentally, the worst school in the borough!

And then they complained about it. I did feel so sorry for their children, who ended up travelling right across the borough to go to the worst school where they knew no-one, when they could have ended up in a better school, far closer to home, where many of their previous classmates were going - all because their parents didn't read the paperwork properly, or listen to the advice they were given.