help needed - voluntary aided primary schools

[bagpussmice]

help - I am distraught this morning as I have received a letter from a catholic school offering us a place by the Governors. this letter isn't from the LEA it's direct from the school.

HOWEVER, this isn't my preferred school. dd is already at nursery at another primary school which is the one I have put as first choice.

our letters from the LEA come out on 31st march. does this mean that the Voluntary aided catholic school is going to be offered as first choice?

have been crying and getting myself into a right state as I desperately want dd to go to the one she attends now at nursery.

does anyone understand the system and why has the school written to us directly offering us a place when it's supposed to be the LEA, and not until next week???

bump - anyone???

Did you have to apply to the LEA centrally, listing several preferences or to each school ? It does sound as if you haven't got the first and the application has been passed on to them though. There is always a chance that you could put your dd on the waiting list at the first choice anyway , in case someone moves or accepts a place somewhere else, presumably they will be given a few wweeks to confirm the offered place.

bpm, if the new primary admissions system works like the secondary one, each school to which you have applied will consider your application according to its own admissions criteria, and decide whether or not to offer you a place. It will then pass that 'Yes' or 'No' decision onto the LEA, who will look at the outcomes of each child's applications, and pass onto you one offer, which will be from the highest ranked school that was able to offer you a place. So if your second and third choice schools were able to offer you a place, but your first wasn't, you would receive an offer of school 2 from the LEA. The offer of a place from school three would lapse and be passed onto someone else.

Does that make sense? So the fact that your 2nd choice school is prepared to offer you a place does not mean that your first choice school isn't. It's the LEA's job to coordinate all these offers and pass the lower choices around so that everybody gets one school place, rather than some people having three and others none. As far as I understand it, the schools aren't supposed to contact parents themselves, to avoid exactly this kind of misunderstanding, but some still have been, as they're not quite used to the new system. Also VA schools are used to doing their own admissions, whereas state schools are used to the LEA doing it all for them.

In summary -- don't panic until you hear from the LEA. The letter you've got doesn't tell you anything about whether or not you've got your first choice.

thanks Frogs - it does make sense adn I guessed that the VA school has decided to do it's own thing.. not that I am happy about it as it is very ambiguous and very confusing.

did you have to fill in the new forms where you put 3 choices in order of preference, including church schools?

if you did, then as frogs said the LEA should write to you giving you one place (hopefully your first preference!)

if you are not on this system but are still on the old system, you could theoretically get offers from more than one place (which was one reason why this new system was brought in)

I am a governor at a VA primary school and we certainly wouldn't have done it like this - all application letters and offers come through the LEA. Try not to panic! You could phone the admissions team on Monday and ask if you really can't wait until 31st.