Help! No grammar school places allocated in Chalfont St Peter, Bucks

[GXDavid]

Can anyone help? My son passed the 11+ last year. We were advised to only apply to catchment area grammar schools and did so - we have one, Dr Challoners.

First offers have gone out and our son has not been awarded a school place at all. Bucks CC say they looked at all comprable schools which I take to mean non-catchment grammar schools near us. So they went outside the preference we indicated - which is good.

However, they are refusing to allow us to add our son's name to any of the other schools waiting lists until after the all important second allocation.

Does anyone have any advice/ experience for how we might get him added?

Whom could we complain to regarding the fact that catchment areas for three other schools (Royal Grammar School Wycombe, John Hampden and Chesham) all have catchments that go out past us but which cut out Chalfont St Peter.

We have friends up the road in Gerrards Cross who have four catchment area schools. So this seems extremely unfair in terms of allocation of places, access to places and exclusion of pupils.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Regards,

David

So did you only apply for one school? That’s a terrible mistake unfortunately and always against advice I’ve seen and given.

The waiting lists will open after the date everyone has to accept or decline their offers. You can get your son down on the lists then.

Good luck.

Who advised you to apply only to catchment schools?

Bad advice from whoever told you to only put catchment schools down. 66 places at Chesham High went to out of county applicants (mostly from my town). If you had put it on your form then you would have got a place.

Bucks, I believe, has a policy of offering a grammar school place to every child in county who passed the 11+. If you didn’t put any other choice on your form then it wouldn’t be able to be allocated by the system.

I am sure it will all come out in the wash but not good for your piece of mind in the meantime.

If you look at the Bucks LA website you will see that this is the process they follow. I am afraid you have to accept this is the methodology used, they will not make an exception for your child.
I am afraid that this is one of the consequences in Bucks of not putting down three preferences in your original application because you will only be on the waiting list for you preferred school not other potential schools as well in the 2nd round of allocations.

Thanks for your responses. We are where we are now so I want to focus on what to do next.

There is a weird black hole where we live as three other catchment areas have cut-outs for our area so we would like to contest the layout of catchment areas but don't know who to. We know of seven boys from our school alone who are affected. One had four choices put down and is still without a place...

You may also get some advice here:

www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/11plus/viewforum.php?f=12

www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/11plus/viewforum.php?f=35

Thanks

Anything to do with catchment zones or admission criteria the people to talk to are the school adjudicator, though whether they will take up your issue I am not sure.

It is unfair, but I think its very likely that he'll get a place next round. I think you were very unlucky not to get a place this time.

My son is currently in Yr7 at Challoner's all the Gerrards X people I know had a place by July (and they are further out than you).

Thanks Admission and underneath,

I have approached the adjudicator but no response so far. Our local councillor is very supportive.

The worrying thing about the catchment distance is that the first round offer distance has shrunk, as far as I can tell by about 1.0/1.2 miles and didn't expand that much. Obviously this is all as accurate at reading tea leaves so it is a waiting game whilst we try to engage and work with the council to resolve it.

How did it work out @GXDavid?

@Delectable As a result of this tue Bucks catchment maps were redrawn so that each Bucks location has two grammars for which they are in catchment.

There were a lots of CSP children (so in Bucks) didn’t get a place but loads of children in Hertfordshire did. I can’t remember what happened at appeal for all these children but I do know they closed the black hole and protected Bucks school places for Bucks children.

@BookwormButNoTime wow! That's so odd that parts of Bucks so close to Grammars were excluded from admissions. I spoke with a friend who lives in Hertfordshire yesterday. She'd always lamented how although Dr Challoner's was super close her children won't get in. She decided to register her daughter for the exam and lo and behold she did get in. So I'm wondering how this works. Is it that when it comes to distance catchment is somewhat overlooked as what they really use is distance?

A Bucks child who qualifies will, I believe, always get a grammar place over an out of county child. But very few parents could actually get their child to and from school every day for schools not in catchment due to transport logistics so they don’t put all grammars down as choices on their CAF.

This leads to children out of county getting places but it is never a given and some last admitted distances for out of county widely vary year on year so can’t be relied on.

Out of county places for the Challoners schools are very rare.