How to get into state school after private?

[Fossie]

I have taken my 2 elder children (girls) out of their private school after it was taken over and has changed so much we no longer want to continue there. We have a son at private school and a 2 year old. I want to find a state school for my elder two, keep my son where he is and get my youngest into the same school as elder two. But, all the decent schools have no places. We are not even top of a waiting list for our closest school and they have been on that waiting list for 10 months. The council say we have to find a school ourselves and can recommend ones with places but these are either far way or poor or both. I am now home educating. How can we get them into a good school? Hope someone has some good ideas out there.

Fossie - what has changed about your DDs school so much since it was taken over?

Can you not find another fee paying school nearby if you do not like the state school offering?

That you are sending your child to a private school and have to drive there will have no bearing on any appeal. Why would it? You are choosing to send him there as you said.

Perhaps a better option would be to send all of your dc to a primary that is further away (that has spaces) so although you would have a long journey it would be doable.

You have to identify grounds for appeal that address the school's admissions criteria and mark you out from other parents who want their child to attend that particular school. Rubbishing other schools won't cut much ice - you have to identify positive reasons for needing a place in your preferred school, rather than criticising other schools. Likewise, saying that you have to take your son to another school won't cut much ice - the school, the LEA and the appeal panel are all likely to take the view that it's a parent's job to get their child to school on time and choose schools/arrange a lift share accordingly.

Picking up Justabout's (I have to say) very fair point about your apparently reckless behaviour in taking your daughters out of school without first finding places in other schools for them, I think you are on shaky ground in trying to get into your first choice school on the grounds that they haven't got places in any other school. That does remind me a bit of that old joke about the man who murders his parents and then asks the court to show mercy on him as he is an orphan.

Lastly, I have friends who live in Croydon and the penny has just dropped about which girls' independent school you might be talking about. Is it really going to the dogs? If I'm right, the takeover is quite recent and surely it's too soon to tell.

Have you looked at the ACE website? They can provide advice.

I still don't get why the OP did not move her DDs to another independent school rather than pull them out with no plan.

Croydon High School is a private girls school in the GDST. Just the place for 2 bright girls and fees are very reasonable - seems the best alternative rather than reluctantly be forced into home ed.

So many questions to answer! Yes I am in South Croydon. We have financially sacrificed lots of things to stay in private school this long. The DDs school has been changed for a whole year now and there are lots of things I don't like about it. I can't justify spending ££16,000 a year (on just them not including my son)if I don't think the school is any good. DD1 not bothered about her work anymore. We stayed when the school changed as we hoped it would retain some of the original character and we only live around the corner from the school so we were reluctant to change the schooling too hastily. Because they have already been in 2 school situations I was not happy to put them into any old school that had a place and then change them again if a place came up at a prefered school. This time next year I wil need to apply for DD3 for her reception year. Our nearest school did not have space for our son (which is why he is now in private school, the school who's previous head has just been murdered sadly). So I have little hope my youngest will get a place there. Did I point out that this is my nearest school? If I have at least one daughter in a resonable school she will get in as a sibling. I do not mind home schooling as I taught for many years though not so much at primary level. I think it would be good to put them back in school next September but I think an appeal could take a number of months so I am starting to think about it now. I don't think I have been reckless and both DDs think Home-schooling is their first choice (forever) so I am not telling them that I am looking for a school or they will be upset!

Perhaps the OP isn't being entirely honest about her reasons to move the DDs. That's her business, of course. What's got my back up (as a mother of twins due to start reception in Sept 2010, and worrying about the fact that other twins in our LA ended up in different schools from each other last year, due to oversubscription) is the OP's sense of entitlement to a place in the "better" schools simply because she's taking her DDs out of private school. To come on here asking for advice on how to cheat the system is, IMO, outrageous. It was her choice to privately educate her children, and her choice (it would seem - if she was finding it difficult financially and was happy to admit that, I might have more sympathy, but the way she tells it, it's because she no longer likes the school) to remove them from the private sector. She doesn't seem to have thought it through, and now wants someone to tell her how to push her little darlings ahead of other kids on the waiting lists, because they are more deserving of a place in a better school.

We don't think our children are more deserving of a good school place. Our DDs have already been in 2 schools and I don't think it will help them to go to another school whilst we wait for a better one to come along and then move them again. This is surely different to people already in a school, maybe one not of their choosing, who are waiting for a better school to come along?

If we move house to get DD3 into a school next year, we might go to the top of a waiting list for the other two but not actually get a place. In the school where they have been on the waiting list for 10 months, noone has left either class. For this particular school, even friends who live very close to the school have not got in this year. It is not an outstanding school, just a good one, near to us that is small.

We will try out for Grammar schools. We are able to tick the religion box so we also have a good school nearby which we can probably get into.

Fossie, a number of parents have recently pulled out of a small private school which is almost opposite your son's school. To summarise their position:-

Each family looked at local schools which they liked and went on the waiting list. The Park Hill list moves incredibly slowly and the parents on that list have not been offered a place after a year. Schools with larger intakes (eg Ridgeway, Woodside) seem to have more places appear.

Usually once one sibling was offered a place, then the other sibling got in within a term.

The school can breach the class size of 30 for Year 2 provided the breach is for less than a year. However no-one has won a place on appeal other than for SN. If your eldest dd is in KS2 though the 30 limit shouldn't apply. Also more places become available further up the schools as this is when some parents flee to the private sector.

Children from that school have gone to Ridgeway, Christchurch, Woodside, Beaumont, Keston in Bromley and another Bromley school (although the family live close to the school in South Croydon). In many cases these were not the nearest schools, but in all cases the parents were happy with the school.

The LA had no problem with home-edding in these circumstances. No-one got inspected. LA was sympathetic but unable to miraculously free up spaces, but no-one got hassled for not going to the hearest school with spaces. The longest period of home-ed was for just under a year.

"You have to identify grounds for appeal that address the school's admissions criteria and mark you out from other parents who want their child to attend that particular school. Rubbishing other schools won't cut much ice - you have to identify positive reasons for needing a place in your preferred school, rather than criticising other schools."

Excellent advice from MadBad. This is precisely what we did. We also focussed on the grounds for refusal of our initial application - i.e. the school was oversubscribed and could not accommodate more pupils on the grounds of health & safety, and proved that they could and did accommodate pupils over the stated limit.

Unless your children have very specific and demonstrable educational or emotional needs that can only be met by a particular school you are unlikely to win an appeal.

We fought tooth and nail to get DS into this particular school, including mis-selling ourselves as ultra-conservative middle class professional parents with a near-genius (if slightly eccentric) child. We now feel utterly vindicated in doing this because within 2 weeks of him joining, he was referred for assessment by the SALT team and has just been given a provisional diagnosis of dyspraxia/Aspergers.

Neither of his previous 2 schools had even hinted that he might have special needs, in spite of years of being bullied. His new school immediately identified the fact that he is slightly "differently wired".

Should add there is no problem with being on more than one waiting list.

Thank-you LadyMuck. That is very helpful. I think I need to go on a number of waiting lists.

Certainly the appeal route is less likely to be optimistic. Friends appealed for St P's unsuccessfully and went to appeal on the appeal as the appeal panel hadn't been correctly convened.

I think that if you are prepared to widen your commute then you are more likely to get a place certainly at KS2 with any other sibling jumping up the list. Certain yeargroups are fuller than others with current years 4 and 2 being bumper years.

School run for ds won't be a valid reason for appeal I'm afraid. Also if you live in vicinity of your son's school then be aware that there are another 40 or so children on similar waiting lists just fom that one school, so your children are far from being in a unique position.

Do go on the Sanderstead school waiting lists. There has been an influx of children from those schools into the dcs private schools as parents start to consider senior school options.

my son went to a considered not so good primary but has fde onto a good high school

oh and he got all 5s at his not so good school shows long as they want to do well and you support they can and his failing shool now is on of best in the area , dd and ds3 will follow on to

I would go and look around all the "poor" schools.

If you are basing that just on results then you may be pleasantly surprised.

An able child will do well in a supportive school with a positive environment, whatever his or her peers are achieving.

If yr DD got 3s at KS1 then that's good but not unheard of. Lots got it at my DCs' primary.

30 in a class is only a rule for infant level actually. Tho some think it a good idea for all levels . DD's class was 33 in yr 3 which is a lot for one teacher and no TA IMO.

forty I'd pretty much say what madbad said, the best solution to the 'twin problem' I heard on here is to allow the parents to choose whether they wish their children to stay together in their second choice school or to separate them and hope sibling priority helps the second one get in to the first choice school. I think it is a pretty fine line between whether a twin is more deserving of the place or someone with a child who is a year ahead.

And of course if it was my place you were gaily handing out to twin two I would certainly feel diferently

Out of interest is your school a hyper popular measures it's catchment in cm massively oversubscribed in London (or whereever) borough with lots of children without school places one or just a school?

mad havn't we 'talked' about my appeal before? Ours was run by a 'branch' of the LA supposedly separate from school admissions from the way they were discussing things in front of us I suspect they share more than a photocopier was my panel independent of the LA? don't make me laugh, was there more than one thing in my appeal that was legally, morally or ethically correct? I'll have to get back to you I can't think of one right now. The chair was very nice in person but it was clear she was no expert on the 'law' (not least because she kept having to defer to seek advice/clarification)

(as an aside am a school gov too!)

patelly I agree with you that the system is incredibly unfair, I'm just pointing out that so are lots of others.

like ud says you want places keeping for people who might move house or come from abroad, but how many house sales have you seen collapse recently? how long should they hold them? suppose people don't come from abroad? suppose twice as many do?

why should I accept that although I live in the area and apply on time and pay tax I can't have a place in any school because it is being held for someone who might move into the area?

(I am curious as to how they do it in the States, do they have class size rules and space rules etc etc which are so rigidly applied? I know space wouldn't apply in many US schools but some of the inner city ones must simply have no room? I also expect they have less of an issue (in general) than the peculiar London obsession with 'good' schools!!)

I think that it is completely rubbish that so many dcs in London got nothing this year, the stress levels round here were unbelievable, people were talking about little else at nursery events but I actually can't see many people agreeing that places should be kept for people who might move (be it house or from private to state)

However it was clear from LA website that they knew very well they were going to be short of places and had done so for some years yet did nothing about it, that is unacceptable IMHO

The thing is, if the OP is, at this stage, still a long way down the waiting list it means that she is, almost certainly, too far from the "good" schools to have been offered a place in the initial round.

Sorry, OP, but that's the harsh truth.

So, while there is an issue about lack of school places in some London boroughs, this isn't the case here.

In this case, it's more that there weren't enough places in the "more popular" schools to go round.

OP - go visit the "poor" schools. I can guarantee that there will be dc like your own and parents much like yourself at those schools. And yes, quite a few of them will be on the same waiting lists your dc are on.

I can see why your incredulity is coming across as sounding like a sense of self-entitlement. There is something amazing about the disparity between what is available in schools in the state school system.

I have enormous respect for people who send their dc to the local school, irrespective of whatever, and I do understand how some of the disparity arises, and I realise that some of the criteria on which people judge a school to be "poor" or "good" is (imo) extremely questionable.

But that said, it sometimes is quite a shocking experience to go visit a variety of schools and just be amazed at what is provided in some and not in others and to realise, with shock, that access to excellence is not uniform and not a given in a state comprehensive system that most people, by default, have to send their dc into.

good post cherry

when people moan on about lack of choice, not being able to get a local school, schools not catering for the full range of abilities, schools not socially/ethnically representative of the local area etc. Can I remind them all that is exactly what we had 30 years ago and parents then moaned about it and lobbied for choice. I spent my first year in a grammar school which turned comprehensive in my second year. The school's catchment area included some of the wealthiest and poorest areas of the city and you were not given any other choices. If you wanted to go elsewhere it was a long drawn out process and only for exceptional medical or social reasons. Needless to say hardly anyone could opt out. The children were all put into sets with 3 top, middle and bottom sets. Some of the parents whose children who did'nt get into the top sets complained about this and made a fuss some, did'nt want their children mixing with the "rough" kids and ethnic minority children. In the late 80's Kenneth Baker the education secretary gave parents a choice of schools because thats what parents told him they wanted and 20 years on we are still think the system is unfair.

Fossie Can I ask why you are abandoning the private sector altogether for your girls ?

Are they no suitable alternative private schools ?

I live somehwere rather small market-townish and even we have 2 local private schools to choose from.

Agree with LadyMuck that you should consider going on the waiting lists for the Sanderstead schools - specifically Atwood and Gresham as these are feeders for Riddlesdown. If your children don't get into Grammar schools then it is a good alternative.

When you say that you tick the "religion" bos, please beware if you are RC. The boys' RC secondary in Purley has just changed its admissions criteria to introduce feeder primaries (all RC naturally) and there is a risk that Coloma will do the same. If you are CofE then you are on safer ground with Archbishop Tenison's.

bos? box!!