getting into school slightly out of area

[Eve34]

I don't know if anyone can answer my question. The nearest school to us is 0.5 miles away. The second nearest is nearly a mile. THe second school is the school my child minder does the school run too/from.

How likely are we to get a place at the second school. I work 3 long days and would hate to change the child minder. DS has been going since he was a year old.

We will be apply in Sept for 2011 intake.

Many thanks :-)

It all depends on their capacity

You can put that one as your first choice and see. You dont have to put ypur nearest school as first choice. Do you know if they are usually over subscribed?

Thank you for not. I am not sure of thier subscription. Just going to have to keep everything crossed.

Look on yr council website - it should tell you a) how many the intake is (30, 60, 80 etc) b) how many applied this year c) the furthest distance for an accepted application.

This will give you an idea. For example, my DCs' school takes in 80, typically has about 90 or so applying (not always tho - DS2's yr is under numbers) and the furthest away is usually at least a couple of miles, sometimes more.

Obv what happened last year may change for this year. You can find out from playgroups etc how big yr child's year is expected to be. HTH

You also need to look at the admissions criteria and see if you have anything that could boost you up the list. Have you looked around both schools?

Also how over subscribed schools are varies massively around the country. Some areas still have falling roles, and you would have no problem getting in.

I am assuming in my post that the nearest school is actually your catchment school if the admission authority runs an admission criteria that has catchment as a priority.

All admission authorities have to work under the equal preference scheme for admissions. This in effect means that when you make 3 preferences for different schools then they will all be treated equally to start with when deciding what school place can be offered. Only if 2 or more schools can be offered will this be taken into consideration.

Therefore the best proposition would be to put your preferred school as first preference and then the most local school as second preference. This means that if possible you will be offered a place at your preferred school and if not hopefully you will still get a place at the most local school.

Obviously if the schools have different admission criteria this will massively alter the chances of you being offered either of the two schools.