Wandsworth Primary Schools - Anyone else not offered a place?

[DastardlyandSmugly]

Hi - I'm wondering if there is anyone else in the same position as us on here. We applied for four of the five schools closest to our house, including our closest which is approx. 550m away, and we haven't been offered a place at any of them. We are 7th, 23rd, 53rd and 59th on the wait lists. The other school in our locality, which we don't want our son to go to, also has no spaces available anyway. As it stands all we're being offered is to submit a late application to one of the schools that do have open places - all of which are prohibitively far from us.

Is anyone else in a similar position?

Thanks DMF. Not sure I can cope with the stress until the summer though - although the Head mentioned people not getting places until mid-Sept!

I don't want that for him though - I know it sounds pathetic but I want to get him excited about his school, choosing his uniform etc. He already thinks he's going to our closest school as he came along to the open day and we were so sure he'd get in we talked to him about it. He's such a lovely boy - they should be begging us to send him there!

I know. In my letter to everybody I can think of I've stressed that the process is definitely flawed. It's OK checking that no-one gets offered more than one place but how about ensuring that no-one gets offered no place? When we first rang the council about it they were really proud of their process - we were gobsmacked.

Another thing that really pisses me off is that people who have been offered a place at a school further down their preference list are still placed on the waiting lists for higher preference schools above DS if they live closer, even if he doesn't have a place anywhere. How can that be right? And if distance is 'king' how are siblings that have moved out of the area a priority over him? It just seems that he misses out every which way because we chose a house on x street rather than y street. We never thought we'd be in this position when we were moving because we're so close to so many schools.

Plan B - well it's going to mean all kinds of problems for us but we'll have to suck it up. DH has asked for the list of schools with places so we'll have to apply to some of those (although we have no guarantee of an offer there either). If not I expect we'll have to consider private, moving out of the area or keeping him in nursery and hoping a place comes up before he turns 5. None of them are ideal.

It's appalling isn't it? How can this be fair and equitable?

Bribing the headteacher has crossed my mind believe me.

I've thought about the renting thing but with two kids at nursery costing >£2k per month we are pretty much stretched without having to find rent money. It's wrong though isn't it? It's not as if our house was cheap either - it was bloody expensive.

I just think it's fundamentally wrong that you only have access to local schools if you live within a few streets radius.

Anyway we had a chat last night about Riversdale. We really weren't keen on it but, after your comment yesterday, we're going to go and have a look and maybe put in a late application. It's not ideal but at least it's reasonably close.

Does she have an e-mail I could write to? Feel a bit weird ringing someone up out of the blue.

The latest OFSTED looks good but some of the comments are a little worrying.

Just been having a think in the loo at work (it's all I can concentrate on at the moment) and the woman I spoke to this morning said that she was spending time today chasing round secondary offers which suggests to me that my DS hasn't just gone down one place, he's gone down more but these extra people have been slotted in at the same time as people have been offered so it looks as if he's only gone down one place (iyswim). This makes me worry even more that there is just no chance of him getting into this school

Yes I called this morning to ask about distance for offers at Riversdale and Earlsfield schools. Earlsfield is a definite no but we might get into Riversdale. She told me her plan for the day was ringing round secondary offers for an answer.

I told her how awful this has been for us and asked her who I should write to about the process, outside of the personal stuff for my DS. I really feel the need to feedback on their process and tell them how it impacts parents. If it makes them think twice about it for subsequent years I'd be marginally happier.

Thanks will e-mail. Are you sure she won't mind?

Thanks. Have e-mailed you and I won't mention Mumsnet. Thanks again.

Hi Dastardly,
Been away for a week's hols and since I had no email access and no mobile network coverage, I'd actually managed to not think about the whole school thing for a while. But now I'm back in the modern world I'm back to stressing.
I checked with the council and we've moved up the Belleville list to 4th so we're getting closer. Still only 20th for Honeywell and 21st for Wix's so little hope on either of those two.
You're right about the process being awful and I really think the council need to do something about it. Are all our councillors up for re-election on May 6th just like the MPs? If so we should really be on at them to try and get a commitment to look again at the process which seems horribly unfair in a number of ways.
I'm still waiting for the FOI data from the council - did you get yours yet?

Hi mumtocandc glad to hear you had a nice break away from all of this. We're away at the end of the month for a few days and I cant wait. I feel so stressed out by the whole thing.

I wrote to my three councillors with a similar letter to the one I sent to the MPs. I got an e-mail back yesterday from one of them saying that his colleague was arranging to come and meet with us to discuss finding a school place for our DS.Hopefully it's a positive step forward for us but it may be that she'll just pay lip service to our concerns. We'll see. Agree re. trying to force them to change this though.

Have't got my FOI data yet. We need to complete our appeal forms this week so we're going ahead with that without it but hopefully it will help for the actual hearing.

Congrats on moving up the list. It sounds really positive for you. Wish we could say the same

Hi mumtocandc my councillor is coming this evening! Will let you know how it goes.

I think I'll have to follow your lead an badger the councillors too. They should be responsive at the moment given they want our votes!!!
I wonder if we could set up some sort of 'pressure group' to try to promote change in the application process. There are so many aspects that seem unfair - the siblings issue, the lists issue, the lack of sufficient places in the borough, and so on.
I think the FOI info will be really useful in that respect.
Good luck with the meeting tonight - I hope you receive more than platitudes.
And all the best with the appeal - apparently if you can show they've made a mistake (like miscalculating your distance from school) then you have a better case.
Bye for now.

Hi mumtocndc councillor was lovely and knows some of the same people as us but really she can't do anything. Was here to offer sympathy rather than anything else. She said we're the third set of parents she'd been to see. She did give us some good contact names - including one of the governers at the school we want to get DS into who lives on our street!

Agree re. the pressure group. No-one else should have to go through this.

I did speak to the appeals lady yesterday and apparently because the 30 children limit on clss size is a legal thing primary appeals are very rarely successful. We have to show that the council have behaved unreasonably but when I asked what the criteria for reasonableness was I got a very vague 'it's a legal term' response, so now I need to try and get to the bottom of that.

Hi mumtocandc - any update?

We sent our appeal in yesterday so now waiting for a date.

We're also visitng Riversdale School on Thursday to have a look around, although they were really puzzled as they have no places, but we would have got in if we applied there so think we might have a good chance if we like it.

I daren't phone about the waiting list after last time.