Hi i would appreciate any comments or advice please on my current dilema!
We currently live in a village with only 1 catholic primary school. This has a terrible reputation and i was not impressed during a visit.
Last year i sent my DD age 5 to the catholic primary school in the nearby town (only one in this town too) as this was the next closest one and excellent. We were lucky to get in as we are out of catchment slightly. We chose this school as these are the only 2 catholic schools and both feed to our local catholic high school which we love. My DD loves this school and we do too.
In previous years, this school has been oversubscribed (by about 8 places usually) - their criteria are:
Catholics in care
Catholics in catchment
Catholic Siblings
Other catholics
Non catholics in care
DD2 is due to start in september 2012. However this year the admissions procedure changed. In previous years people applied for one school and if your didn't get it the LEA chose another. This year everyone got 3 choices and i have just heard that 6 siblings didn't get in because people listed it as 2nd and 3rd choice and got in ahead - even without siblings as there were closer. So this is the dilema - we can pretty much guess that as the procedure will be the same next year, we won't get DD2 in - should we risk it or move into catchment? My DH is not as keen as me and financially it will be tough (plus we LOVE we were are). What would you do????
I'm angry as using the old admissions procedure we would have expected to get in as this is the first time siblings have been split!