School choice for an 11 year old

[Fifichef]

Choice is the name of the game according to this present government. How stupid I was to believe such rubbish. With my son(age 11)I made a choice of 3 possible schools for him to join this September. A letter dropped on the mat this morning with not one of these choices!!
I have no idea what to do as I'm definately not accepting the decision made for us. If I don't accept the place offered I'm not sure what will happen!

The notion of choice is nonsense. You may express a preference, but the choice is not yours.

Round here, a clever, hermaphrodite Catholic with a home close to the county boundary might have a choice of up to 6 secondary schools, but the majority are sent to their closest high school.

What we need is 'closest' schools that everyone can feel confident about (this is a general comment, our local schools are mainly good), not an illusion of parental control over the allocation process.

Sorry, I have no practical advice - I'm sure more helpful people can suggest what you should do next.

Going thro the same thing myself at the mo, you will possibly need to appeal, but unfortunatly this doesnt mean to say you will get your preffered school!
We had litrature with ours, to tell us how to go about this, if you havent got this I suggest getting in touch with your LEA, and asking what to do/what happens from here.
Sorry not to have been more help.

You can appeal. You can go on waiting lists. You can look at any other schools which have places and which you hadn't considered before. You can (in theory) go private.

But at the end of the day, if you don't accept any place they offer you, then you will have to arrange education for your DC "otherwise than in school" - ie Home Education. The LA don't have to keep offering you different things until you accept one. They only have to make one offer and if you don't like it then that's your problem.

"Choice" is a strange label for this system!

You can try to appeal, but in reality there is no choice.