Primary school places !!!

[Mrsmost]

Is anyone getting nervous for the primary school places next week? It's all I can thunk about now , the 18th simply can't get here soon enough , I would be happy if my DS got any of his 3 choices but does anyone have any idea of his chances if getting in one of them if they are all within a radius if one and a half miles from our home. My ideal choice would his first choice which is a catholic school which is 0.6 miles from home but is always oversubscribed, we attend mass every week and had all forms signed by the priest etc but don't know how much of a chance he has if getting it , any advice would be great as am worrying alot now the date is getting nearer.

Thanks for reading and sorry for rambling xxx

I think Essex have sent their out already. I'm not sure how I'm going to cope until 5pm...

gaggy whereabouts in South Devon Roughly?

We heard on Monday and DS and his friend have their places, phew!

wigglesrock - my dd school the same - parish before siblings and we are out of parish :( good luck!

Essex do seem to be very on the ball this year. Website was available for checking from midnight and my email was sent out at 1:16am.
It so frustrating waiting. Finger crossed for you all.

mammanetta As far as I know its usually distance here, there used to be millions of schools, I honestly never heard of anyone not getting their primary school of choice (obviously they are still mainly split on religious lines) but thats all I've heard for the past two years of intake. It was worse with nursery school places last year.

Dd1s primary school has rocketed in popularity the past two years, she's in P3 at the minute and they were practically throwing away places when she started, I applied late for her and had no problem at all.

The postman is really taking the piss now

Our results were last Wednesday. We get two choices, both of ours were massively oversubscribed, apparently brilliant schools. For our first (Catholic) choice, the criteria is RC exceptional need/circumstances children in the catchment first, then baptised siblings, then catchment.

Slightly amazed that we got our first choice. The school's just at the end of our road - we're very, very lucky. I enjoyed the buzzing of texts all morning from other mum's as we all opened our emails - happily, everyone got the places they wanted.

Our email came at 12.30 a.m. I wasn't in too much of a pickle about it to be honest as either school would have been fine I think. I feel horrible for a friend who lives on the 'wrong' side of the 'right' road to be catchment for her preferred school. She moved for school reasons and was gutted to find out.

Good luck everyone, I really hope you get the places you want. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Good luck everyone getting their offers today!

I see wiggles that's tricky then...hope you get the school you want!
Has the postman arrived yet? Holy crap, it's like waiting for exam results at school all over again

Still waiting to hear...I am willing my e-mail to ping...oh dear...

Has anyone heard already today, and if so, was it good news???

I am waiting too....so nervous....we are in a horrible position catchment wise, have no siblings, no other criteria to put move us up on the lists...I fear that we will be one of those families given a school outside of our 6 choices on the other side of the borough.

I may have to start selling my belongings to fund private school.

im in essex and got my email this morning. dd got her place. I only put down one choice

We are in camden London so we have to wait to 5:30, fingers crossed.

We have to wait until the end of the month to find out which school we have a place at. Last year was horrific -many many people didnt get the 1st, 2nd or 3rd choice of school and were allocated schools across the borough purely on the basis of there being a spare place. So am hoping there isnt a repeat of that.

Apparently there had been a large number of sibling places taken, other selection criteria coming into play, so many schools, even the double intake classes, had only a handful of places available for 'new' children starting in September. We had many tearful parents outside nursery on the day the letters came out as there were cases of one person getting a place and a neighbour not getting a place - the boundaries were so tightly drawn. Even a number of cases of people with a sibling not getting in and having to go to appeal/look at the possibility of moving schools so children were all at same school.

Schools and LEA all amazed as this had never happened before, usually people have been offered their second choice if first not available, very few had an offer of third choice as they have generally managed to accommodate everyone with first or second.

We don't find out until "evening of 18th", via email (and text?). I have no idea what constitutes as evening so will be online from 5pm on the dot!

Poor DD doesn't have a clue what's going on so I will have to be very careful to contain my anxiety all afternoon once she's home. Wish it would stop raining so I could take her to the park later...

Gosh - we must have been one of the earliest ones to get our info then - on 4th April!

For everybody that is waiting for an email that has been told it is going to be sent out at 5pm or whatever... We were told that too and I hadn't bothered looking at mine first thing in the morning as I was still in bed when texts started arriving from 8.30am with 'got place yippee' or 'oh no got xxx' type messages.

This could just be because apparently the council screwed up and according to the local newspaper didn't manage to get the emails sent out for the senior school place notifications, everyone just had to wait for the letter in the post the next day.

I'm guessing they might say 5pm so that if it is a long list of emails that have to be sent out it might take some time to process; they don't want lots of people ringing at 9.01 to say 'where's my email?' - if they say 5pm they can escape home legitimately tell people that ring up earlier that the emails are still in the process of being sent out and to ring in tomorrow!

Oh it's nice to find you all! I barely slept last night, I thought it was just me being silly but obviously it's not. If I can be like this about a reception place, heaven help me when the DCs get their exam results... Basically all 3 of our choices are ok, but my fear is that we won't actually get any of them (in the middle of a triangle of three schools if that makes sense)

Didn't know about the emails not really being evening - now I am going to be checking my emails every five minutes as well.

Oh tell me about it! Everytime my e-mail 'pings', my heart skips a beat...I hasten to add that I have NOT heard yet, hum ho.

Wow just spotted this thread, I heard last week 12th got 1st place. Its never been that much of an issue where i live but those waiting to hear for reception this year have really struggled with 2 of my friends children getting turned down for their 1st choice when their older sibling goes there. MY friend lives 1 mile from school and her little one got turned down (put her name down when she was born) yet someone who lives almost 3 miles away got in (no sibling).
She went in to complain to the school and surprisingly shes now in.

sunnyday123 thank you so much, I will contact the LEA also. All your information has consoled me slightly as I am in panic mode. I would have been eagerly awaiting primary school results from up here but now I feel I have gone back a stage, not even know what schools to look it. You know what they say about new challenges and all that :o

maxybrown We will be living south of exeter, but like I said I am still not sure whereabouts is best really. Do you live around there?

Thanks again both xx

gaggyboots - if you know the area you want to move into and find a school you like which has places left after this months allocation, you can apply now directly from your current LEA from what i've read - even though you don't live near it or anytihng, i believe they cant say no to you if there are spaces (even if you live the other side of the country!)

I'm running out of fingernails. Bedtime is definitely going to go pear-shaped tonight.

I'm really annoyed after finding out last week that I'd been given different advice about applying to what would have been our second choice due to being out of parish/non-CofE to a lady I bumped into in town last week. I was given heavy hints on the phone not to bother applying (so didn't) but she was told to give it a whirl. I really hope I haven't screwed this up for my DD. come on first choice!

Good luck everyone. I've tried not to think about it, but it's what everyone was talking about at the nursery school gate so I'm getting nervous!

Our first choice (by a long shot) is where DS attends nursery now. OFSTED outstanding, over subscribed, 0.63 miles away and 120 places. It's also OH's old school, and MIL lives over the road. DS is doing fantastic in their nursery.

Our 2nd choice, and closest is 0.4 miles away, over subscribed, 90 places, OFSTED rated good, deputy head sends his kids there, and an old school friend teaches there and says it's a great school. OH thinks it's an awful school purely because his colleague's children go there, and there will be a row if he gets in there. I would be happy sending him there, if he hadn't gone to the nursery at our first choice!

Biting my finger nails!!!

I think you have to put down schools where there is at least a chance of getting in, because you never know (there might be a bulge class, for example). As long as you have one where you're highly likely to get a place, the other two/five places should be genuinely according to your preference.

This is going to be us this time next year. The added worry for us is that we will be applying for an out of area place (over the county border). DD was lucky to get a place there as there was a low intake her year. This year the school is full, and I'm worried next year will be too. Being an out of area sibling, DS will be almost bottom of the list for school place allocation. Worried sick. We've been trying to move house to be in the same town but no luck so far.

NoraHelmer - thats me - dd is in Y1 of out of parish school and got in on low birth year. DD2 is in attached pre school and we find out on monday if she has a place - no out of parish siblings got in last year as parish comes first! Yikes....i feel sick!