Does being offered a preschool place at my preferred school guarantee a reception place???

[misspollysdolly]

Have found just the school for DS. Applied for a nursery place for next year - given pretty solid assurance by school secretay over the phone that this place is fairly secure (not a huge waiting list, etc). Now I'm not sure if this is in any way a guarantee of a reception class place the following year.

Does anyone know whenther nursery/preschool place = reception place...???

It's a small city centre school and I imagine could get easily over subscribed. I think I still need to go throught to huge LEA application process, but hate the thought of DS doing a preschool year here only to be given any old school place the following year when 'real school' begins.

Would appreciate any thoughts or experiences you have had. Thanx.

Generaly not.

Have a look at the schools adnissions policy and it should tell you there. May be on their website or on the LEA site.

and the answer is.........
NO.

I doubt it would guarantee a place for school. But will probably help.

No.

Check the admission rules on-line. It usually says a nursery place is no guarantee of a reception place.

Nursery places are allocated by the school.
School places are allocated by the LEA.

nursery place for sept 2009?

we apply to the council here for nursery as well as school admissions so the school would be wrong to offer a place if it were my local place.

nursery place unfortunatly doesn't mean reception place and you will have to reapply for that

No but I would imagine that it would if only in a non official kind of way.

As what MOM said.

Thanks for the immediate answers - I love MN!

Will speak to the school secretary when she contacts me re: nursery next. My suspicion was that it wasn't a straight forward guarantee but kind of hoped...

Thanx

no it doesn't as my sister found out. she applied for places at the school her twins nursery was based in and they didn't get the places. she was quite annoyed until i pointed out that when she sent them to the nursery they did tell her there was no guarantee of school places there.

Voluntary-aided and foundation schools allocate their own nursery places.

AFAIK, places for reception are given on a strict postcode basis first. So it makes no difference where they go to nursery, if you don't live within the postcode area, you won't get the reception place.

When you apply for a school place you can choose your top 3 schools from the ones you are eligible for but they are allocated by postcode first, so if your first choice isn't your 'nearest' (according to their computer) you may not get it.

Priority is also given to children in local authority care, children with SEN statements, children with siblings already at the school and something else which I can't remember off the top of my head.

It's a nightmare, tbh!

I based my answer on experiences in a church school so it may not be applicable for other schools

No.

There are a few faith / voluntary aided / foundation schools which have an admissions policy which gives status to nursery children, but in an LEA admissions process, nursery attendance has no bearing on Reception attendance at all. Even before the LEAs centralised the admissions process, nursery gave no advantage towards admission in reception.

In the area where I live nursery and reception places are allocated by the LEa according to the same criteria.

However some parents choose not to send their child to nursery meaning that a non nursery child could come higher up the list than a nursery child for reception.

DD goes to an independent school and she only got into the reception class because she attended the nursery there on at least 2 sessions a week.

being friendly to the school sec won't help
nor will going on the pta

at all

they take the school - do a radius until they fill their places and anyone outside this circle goes on a waiting list

butkin - independent schools write their own rules