Wow this is a huge projected sibling intake

[listsandbudgets]

Has anyone come across this before?

My friend has just bought a house (at huge expense) and moved into the catchment area of a school she really wants her DS to go to in September 2015. She went to visit today and has just rung me up in a panic saying that the head teacher has warned her that the projected sibling intake for September 2015 is 26 and that's before taking into account any children starting reception in September. The school only has 30 children per year group so friend now convinced she won't get her son in. I'm feeling rather sorry for her right now :(

The reason for this is that there is massive housing expansion in the South Cambridgeshire Fringe area and if you waited for Free Schools to piddle about you'd actually have up to 3000 kids being bussed up to 50 miles each day to other local authorities, or something, which is just insane.

This can happen anywhere. When we lived in the states we applied to our Catholic parish school where our DD was attending the pre-school and out of a class of 30, 29 were siblings! The one spot left went to the dd of the new principal who was a single mother. We were living in the suburbs of a city which has seen a big population increase and many Catholic families moving in. The school was private (church and state are separate in the US) but affordable for most families and also offered tuition help to families who needed it. The school could easily double it's intake and fill the seats but obviously doubling the size of a school takes time and lots of money.

We had been in the parish for seven years, all our children were baptised there and we were heavily involved in parish activities but that's just the way it goes.

We are now in Germany and have the equivalent of four Grammer (Gymnasium) state (no tuition) schools within a short bus or car ride. If you want to send your child to any of them you can, although they prefer a teacher's reference as children not in the top third are likely to struggle. The system is quite ruthless here, a child can be told they have to leave if their grades are low in even one subject. You don't just make the cut once - you have to make it every year.

One of our junior schools gives priority for siblings, including the siblings of children who have left within the last two years!