WE GOT IN!!!!!!!!!!!

[willow2]

Just had to post to say that ds has been given a place at our first choice of school. Am so happy!

Congrats Willow - I know just how you feel. We found out our dd got into our first choice school which is heavily oversubscribed in March and I still cannot believe it. WOW!!

Awww! Congratulations Willow.

Great news both of you! What a relief.

well I know I've already said it mate, but WELL DONE!!!

Excellent news. Well done

Mine too. It's a huge relief isnt it? I was already planning my appeal speech.

its that time of year isn't it? we had our letter yesterday!!

COngratulations - we got our letter over half term and it is such a weight off my mind!!

Now there is the awful questions from other mums asking whether we got in cause we are the only parents that don't live in the borough the school is in and they think we have somehow cheated!!

congratulations! im so glad it worked out for you.

Phew! It's such a horrible time before you find out isn't it?

I bumped into another mum who used to go to the same toddler group as us and she was asking if we had got in, because apparently the school has turned down loads of people this year. More than normal. Feeling very happy!

I've been worried for years that ds would never get into a schoolany schoolstate or private, because, as an outsider, I did none of the right things: I didn't put him on lists, I didn't convert to Catholocism or the Church of England , I didn't even know HOW to look into local state schools, or how to determine if one was academically strong or full of parents/kids/teachers who don't care. So out of inertia & ignorance, we did nothing until just a few months ago, whichby all advicewas WAY too late. Extraordinarily, ds got offered places at quite a few schools, including what we would deem "first choice" ones. (And almost none were based on "assessments," by the way, so this has nothing to do with ds being some kind of wunderkind, which he is decidedly not. ) So we didn't have to move to the Netherlands (plan B) after all, which is what we had prepared ourselves to do. (Dh was actually making plans to find a new job.)

What I'm wondering is. . .is the hype surrounding the difficulty in in finding a decent school for a child in London exaggerated, or were we just very, very lucky? I'm inclined to believe the latter, but I wonder. . .

I suspect you were just lucky. It can be difficult but it all depends on how many other children apply for places, how many siblings there are, how close first-time applicants live to the school... Great news for you though!

If lots of people put their children down at eg 10 schools does that mean waiting lists have 10 times more children on them than there actually are (IYSWIM)?

Then the anxiety about the long waiting lists makes people more anxious and they put their kids on even more lists?

In Lancs, AFAIK, you can only put your child's name on one list, so the lists are realistic.

OK--So I'll make sure I'm better prepared with dd.

I mean I can see London is different because there are so many LEAs there and some people must live on the borders of several...was it different under the GLC?

Sorry, Janh, don't get the lingo. (This is what I mean )

expatkat, I was sort of agreeing with you about the hype thing (I think...)

There used to be a Greater London Council (abolished by the Tories because it was very powerful and somewhat left-wing) and I was wondering if all the London schools were then administered by it and not by the individual boroughs so it would have been easier to keep track of kids-on-lists.

I don't suppose that's any clearer!

Where we are they've abolished lists, and even applying direct to the schools. From this year you just apply to the LEA for "a place" and they tell you where you've got to go. Which means catchment. Unless there are too many living in the catchment, in which case they take the nearest people and if that's not you then you get the next nearest. Unless that is already full with in catchment or nearer than you, in which case it's next nearest available. And so on. So heaven help you if you live in an area with more kids than places (big new estates, and no new schools) and are on the border between catchment areas.

Batters, lol at the mad cow who didn't put her child's name down at all! Psychic powers failed that day, obv.

Seriously though, how many schools did you put yours down for - and how many have others here put theirs down for? It seems like a completely mad system altogether atm - how did it get like this?

There is a problem around here for secondary places, so that some people who live at the edges of catchment and don't get in tend to be offered a school still in the LEA but 20 miles and 3 bus rides away, but they generally do get somewhere acceptable on appeal. The situation for primary schools in London sounds far worse (and with much more difficult travel conditions).

Should children get into schools on the basis of where they live or not? And if not, what?

Agree with Batters -- with my oldest child we put in applications for several over-subscribed schools out of our immediate area, and were offered places at all but one of them, although in a couple of cases not until after term had started.

Same thing with London private schools -- I've seen from friends that if you make all the right noises and are pushy enough, you can get in, despite all the 'put their names down when they're six minutes old' hype.