Not allocated preferred primary school even though we fulfill admission criteria.

[kimpam]

Our house comes in the catchment area as per allocated admission criteria. Max distance where the admission was allocated is 364 m and my house as per the county website is at 332 meters but still we were not offered our first choice school. We were instead offered our second choice school considering its near our house as per straight line measurement.

The first choice school is nearest by walking distance, the secondary choice school though near by straight line distance is across railways tracks and its away walking/driving wise.

We will be awaiting the letter to see the reasoning behind not getting allocated our first choice. Did anyone else had similar situations ? Can you please provide us guidance on what to do know ?

When you say the maximum distance on which an offer was made was 364m was that for THIS year or was that a previous year's figure? If you haven't yet received a letter, I am assuming that you don't know the distance for this year so it may have changed? How does your LA measure distance - by straight line or by walking/driving? If you are measuring in one way and the LA is using another method, you will a discrepancy.

What are the admissions criteria?

You say that the last place was awarded at 364 m and you live at 332 m but are you sure you are comparing like with like? Are you sure that the child living at 364m was not (say) in a higher admissions priority because they were a sibling?

The letter from the LEA should help clarify whether your application has been considered correctly (ie your application was placed in the right admissions category, the distance was measured correctly etc). If you can show that a mistake has been made which deprived your child of a place, the LEA ought to offer you the place straight away (although many LEAs will require you to take the matter to an appeal).

There are lots of threads now about primary admission appeals. Read them for more advice and tips.

don't panic, there may still be a chance of a place. ring up and make sure you are on the waiting list for the preferred school, and also where you are on the list. school places change more than you'd think ime, people move, go private etc. dd was 9th on the waiting list and got a place in the end.

Good point from annh. The LEA has been very quick off the mark if it has already published this year's distance at which the last place was awarded, so is that last year's distance? If there isn't actually a fixed catchment area but places are simply awarded on distance, then that distance can change a lot from year to year.

Y1 furthest distance allocated at my DC's primary school : 1.65 miles
YR furthest distance allocated at my DC's primary school : 0.36 miles.

Why the difference? Y1 had just 10 siblings in an intake of 60, YR had 45 siblings in an intake of 60.

It can vary by HUGE amounts each year depending on admissions in higher criteria.

Thank you all for your replies the distances I have mentioned are from this year and the max distance allocated is based on rule 5 i.e. straight line distance from school to home.

I have received the letter from LEA today they have applied rule 6 for my first preference school and rule 5 for my second choice school. What perplexes me is that all my neighbours children go to my first choice school.

How does LEA decide which rule to apply for which school. How am I to know if my house is almost equidistant from 2 schools.

So what is rule 6, which they applied to your first choice school? Do they consider that you are not in the catchment area? I'm not sure how else there can be a rule after straight line distance from the school.

Rule 5 is nearest community school and Rule nearest school by distance I am not sure why its Rule 5 one school and Rule 6 for other.

Could you identify the LA involved and I will try to make sense of it for you. PM me if you don't want to post the information publicly.

are they both not just another way of saying 'distance' category - but some schools have more categories than others e.g in dd school distance comes 9th but in a friends school distance if 6th?

If I were to guess without seeing the admission criteria I would say that the first choice school was your closest community school but you missed out on distance (i.e. rule 6) but you missed out on your second choice school because it was not your closest community school (i.e. rule 5) and the school was full up with children for whom it was closest. They could make the explanation clearer, though.

I think prh47bridge is right.

Not all LEAS have an additional rule about 'closest community school'. Where they do, it's intended to give children a good chance of getting into at least one school but it's never a guarantee - if there are more applicants under this rule than there are places, some will still lose out on distance, even if it is their nearest school.

But didn't you say, OP that you DID get offered a place at your second choice?

You system sounds similar to the one here (Herts). My interpretation would be:

School 1 (ie your first choice) is not your nearest community school because they measure the distance as the crow flies not as you walk it. Therefore your application to them is assessed under rule 6 - how far away you are. They first allocate places to all those with older siblings (rule 4) and then those for whom it is their nearest community school (rule 5). The max distance this year under which people in this group got a place was 364m. BUT you were not in this group as it is not your nearest school. They may or may not have allocated places under rule 6 too, but if they did, only people who live less than the 332m you live away, as by then they'd run out of places.

School 2 (your second choice) - this is your nearest school, so you were assessed under rule 5. You got in because you live within the max distance under which a place was allocated under this rule, this year (don't think you said what this was).

Does this make sense?

Basically, if a school is your nearest community school you get allocated a place ahead of someone who lives nearer to it than you, but has different school nearer still.

This is how it works in Herts, though of course might be different if you are not in Herts too - though from what you say, the system sounds very similar.

Thanks for your reply, the 2012 admission rules for Hertfordshire are mentioned as under

SEN (Special Educational Needs)
Rule 1: Children In Public Care
Rule 2: Medical/social
Rule 4: Siblings
Rule 5a: Nearest C / VC School, Multiple Birth
Rule 5b: Nearest C / VC School, Not Multiple Birth
Rule 6: Nearest To School

All the distances and allocations I have mentioned earlier are as for September 2012.

For my first choice school rule 6 was applied and for my second choice school rule 5b was applied. I can see the school gates for my first choice school from my house but the second choice schools is 10 mins walk away and 0.5 miles by walk as its across the railway tracks. The LEA have applied the rule that the second choice school is nearest by straight line and first choice school is further.The max distance allocated for my first choice school is 363 m as per rule 5b. My house is within that so why not allocate me a place ? Why apply rule 6 ?

Ok, now I understand.

The issue is that your first choice school is not your nearest as they use straight line distance to measure, not the shortest walking route. Therefore you do not qualify for consideration under rule 5 - it isn't your nearest school. Anyone for whom your first choice is their nearest school comes ahead of you even if they actually live further from that school than you do. That is why you haven't got a place there.

milco ^"Basically, if a school is your nearest community school you get allocated a place ahead of someone who lives nearer to it than you, but has different school nearer still.

This is how it works in Herts"^

It used to be. I thought they ditched this rule a few years back. Too many people confused by it.

Clam, it is the rule now too - perhaps they ditched it and then brought it back. I must admit that it has helped us. We don't have any schools really close (they closed the nearest one a couple of years back). Without this rule we probably would have ended up at a really unfavoured school some distance away. But as it is, we got our first choice, because although we live quite a long way away (1.2km) it is our nearest. If it hadn't been our nearest, we wouldn't have got a place.

So for you Kimpam, if school 1 had been your nearest (by their method, not walking distance) you WOULD have got a place, as you would qualify under rule 5b. But because it isn't you CAN only qualify under rule 6, and by the sounds of it there were not many places left over after they had allocated places to people who qualify under rules 1 - 5b. As prh47bridge says...

Complicated, and frustrating for you definitely. Though as mentioned above, there is a logic and does help more people get places near them, though not necessarily the one they would most prefer, distance being no object. I suppose for you its particularly annoying because of the WAY they measure the distance. I think strictly speaking, its about the straight line distance from the edge of your postcode area to the edge of the school's postcode area. Depending on the postcode map, this could be some way away from the simple door to door measurement.

We are also Herts. To walk to our "nearest" school by as the crow flies is impossible. We have to walk within 50m of the school gates of our 3rd nearest school in order to get to our nearest school! We submitted loads of evidence supporting our application but it was ignored and on more than one occaisionally I was told tough luck.
Things have worked out as we are now able to sort out logistics to our allocated school. I'm just grateful for Herts' position on twins as we knew we were guaranteed places at our "nearest" school so a heck of a lot better off than a lot of people here.

Herts don't use postcode area, they use something more bizarre. Our neighbours DD got the school we both put down as first choice and we didn't get it. According to Herts distance calc, we are 30m further away from the school from them. Their house is opposite ours!

I've just had a look at what they exactly say. Yes, it doesn't mention postcode, but talks about address point. Here is the link fwiw www.hertsdirect.org/services/edlearn/admissions/nearestsch/

But I must admit when I was looking in the past (and maybe this is now out of date) I thought there was something that implied a postcode type thing. In our street the houses opposite do have a different postcode (one letter at the end is different) so perhaps I assumed this was what they were talking about when they talked about address points. Then there is something about your house number too, if they have to do a tie-breaker. I know if we lived in the house opposite we would not have a place as then we would have a different official "nearest school". Arghh!!

No, they don't use something "more bizarre". They use straight line distance from the address point of your house to the address point of the school. The address point is determined by the Ordnance Survey and will be somewhere on your property. If your houses are opposite each other and theirs is on the side of the road nearer the school I would expect them to be at least 20m closer to the school than you, so Herts figure does not seem unreasonable.

It gets better now Milco. If children live in a block of flats, the ones nearer the ground floor are deemed nearer than those living on a higher floor.
Our road has just the one postcode for all 50 odd houses

By bizarre, I mean it is not postcode area, it's not OS either, it is a tool which doesn't appear to be publicly accessible either. Anyway, we're now happy with the places we have despite it originally being second choice.

Glittertwins - Herts use straight line distance so I'm afraid they are right. The fact that the shortest walking route is longer and takes you close to another school is tough luck, I'm afraid. Straight line distance is used by many LAs as it is less likely to be challenged than shortest walking route or similar. It may be that your closest school by straight line distance is the other side of a river or some other major obstacle that you have to go round but that doesn't enter into it. Straight line means exactly what it says.

Milco - As per my last post the address point is determined by the OS and will be somewhere on the property. It is more accurate than the postcode which is shared by a number of properties. The house number thing comes into play if two applicants can't be separated on distance, which would usually be because they are living in the same block of flats. In that case the child with the lowest house number gets priority.

I know they are right, it just seems odd that when it is totally impossible to walk or drive anywhere remotely resembling a straight line, there is no second layer of logic applied. It is a lot easier to put a pin on the map and draw circles/lines for distances and avoids a lot more problems than it causes.