Advice please - re: admissions

[Eve4Walle]

This has probably been asked before, but here goes...

Our admissions process for DDs junior school is all online this year (as are most others I suspect) and we can give up to 3 choices. DD currently attends the infant school attached to the junior school we want her to go to, both in our catchment area.

My question is, do I have to give 2 more choices or can I leave it? I worry that in the highly unlikely event that she doesn't get in to the catchment school, if there are no other choices listed, we'll leave ourselves to the mercy of the education board.

Your worry is quite correct.
Whilst you have a good chance of getting a place at the junior school I would definitely also put down two other schools that you would be happy with as your second and third preferences.
The LA has a statutory duty to offer a place to your DD. If you only put down the one preference and you do not get it, you will go to the end of the long queue and be given a place at a school that is not full after everybody else has got a place based on their preferences. This could literally be anywhere.

You don't have to give the additional choices. However, giving them will not harm your daughter's chances of getting into your preferred school. Some parents seem to think they will increase their child's chances of admission to the preferred school by naming that school as their only choice. That is emphatically not the case.

If you don't give second and third choices and your daughter doesn't get into your preferred school, you will, as you suggest, be at the mercy of the local authority. They will usually allocate a place at the nearest school with places available. If you give a second and third choice there is at least a chance that you will get into one of them.

I would generally recommend putting as your last choice an unpopular school that you would find acceptable. That gives you the best possible chance of avoiding your daughter being placed in an unacceptable school if you miss out on your preferred school.