Pre-school admissions

[Rosebud05]

Had a conversation with someone yesterday that I'm still a bit perplexed about.

Her dc attends play group which she's happy with, though as an afterthought decided to put his name down for nursery in local primary school. She was advised that her application would be treated as late (as it was) - she was fine with this. Her dc didn't get a place though she was told that she hadn't been treated as a late application, as she'd only submitted it a couple of days late that they'd processed them all together.

She's now worried that he won't get a reception place there next year - she would have been well within the catchment this year.

I know with schools a form even a day late (without extenuating circumstances) is late and places allocated after all the on time forms. Is this the same with nursery or would the LEA been able to process her application with everyone else's, hence meaning that the catchment has shrunk very dramatically this year?

TIA to anyone that got through that!

I am a bit perplexed too!! Round here at least, getting a school-based nursery place is no guarantee of getting into the actual school anyway. It's a separate admission process

Yes, it's a separate admission process and no guarantee of getting into the school. Her concern is that if her dc didn't get a place at the nursery, he'll definitely be too far from the school for a place there next year.

In a nutshell, is it possible that a late admission for nursery attached to a school would have been treated as an on time admission, or would it be unlawful to do that, as it would be with reception admissions?

I don't know how it works, but maybe the forms were processed on the same day, but that hers was still dealt with after the on time forms. So it was processed at the same time but still treated as late IYSWIM.

If that is the case, then maybe a lot of people further away than her put their child down for the nursery in the hope that they would then get into the school. She can just apply for the school and hope, I think!

I was applying for a school nursery palce this year and the way it works here is that when it comes to nursery places it is the primary school (headteacher) that deals with the admission (they are only using the council system to measure the distance from house address to school), so in your friend's case maybe the headteacher started dealing with applications few days after the deadline and decided to process the together. When it comes to nursery admission the headtechers can use their discretion. It's completly different than reception admission.

Also I would suggest that your friend ask wat is her current place on the waiting list, how many places nursery had to offer and how many of them went to siblings (which in most places are first priority) - this would give her some idea about the chances for geting reception place. For example my local nursery at primary school had 52 places (and 46 went to siblings) therefore only 6 places were considered from school-home distance. However this school has 90 reception places and person who is number 20 on the nursery waiting list has a good chance to get considering that its usually the same people applying plus/ minus some movement. Hope that makes sense!

Thanks. I was thinking afterwards that, because places aren't centrally allocated like school places are, there are probably a number of people who put their child's name down for a few nurseries and will choose one and hence free up places. It's a 2 form entry school but tbh, I'm not sure how many nursery places.

She's 17th on the list, which seems very far down considering admissions to the school, but it would make sense if there were fewer nursery places and/or people had applied to more than one nursery.

Where I live we have 3 outstanding schools, all with attached nurseries almost next to each other so as most places anyway go to the siblings, everyone else applies to all 3 schools. There are also 2 faith schools in the area with attached nursery. Overall most people here would be on 3-5 waiting lists.

Thanks - it will be interesting to see what happens over the next few months. There are 60 places in the nursery, same as reception, so it's strange that the distance cut off for reception seems to be so much smaller.