What info can education department give out on primary school places given?

[KATC2010]

I think I recall seeing a post previously whereby you can request info. on the allocation of the previous years admissions to a particular school, such as the furthest distance away from the school and other basis of allocation such as church places etc? Is this correct?

I am due to apply for a place for my DS in the next few months for 2012 admission but the 3 schools that I want are all oversubscribed and not in my catchment area.

I would be interested in finding out this info. if it is possible as it may help me to refine my choices in the hope of getting one that I want.

The info. that they print/have online tells you the PAN, people who put it down as 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice and number of places allocated/appeals and outcome. Is this the only info. that I can request or can I request the additional info?

TIA!

There is no reason why you cannot ask the admission office under which admission criteria the last place was offered and the distance this was from the school. They should supply you with this information.
The other thing to say is that if you do not put your catchment school down as a preference (assuming that being in catchment is an admission criteria) then you run a risk of not getting an offer of a school if your prefered schools are oversubscribed.

My authority will tell you verbally the distance of the child at the top of the waiting list for the previous years allocation ie in the April when places have been allocated but wouldnt say the distance of the last child to get a place!!

They also emailed me when requested the distance of a number of postcodes from the school as they measure it which could have been used for renting or buying the nearest property though I was just interested on what my distance and my friends were compared to the previous years cut off.

Thanks for replies.

I think the 3 that we are thinking of applying for are 3 of the 4 closest schools to us except the catchment school which I do not want to apply for due to a TERRIBLE experience with my oldest DS. I realise this could end up with no place but I would genuinely rather no place than the catchment school.

As we are quite rural once you omit the local catchment school all of the village schools are all over 2 miles away. BTW they are all faith schools which is the basis for our application. The catchment school is a community school.