Haven't received email for school placement - in Oxford

[sootie]

Weren't Oxford County Council Admissions team supposed to email school places today? I haven't received my email and am a bit worried now. I applied online on 29th December and have the verification and everything.

Tried phoning but they;re shut. What to do?! Anyone else in the same predicament?

I didn't get an email, but info will be there if you log onto the admissions bit

Here you go..

admissions.oxfordshire.gov.uk/admit_transfer/at_welcome.asp

THANK YOU!!!!

DD got a place in school we wanted outside catchment area!!! yAAAYYY!!!!

Wooo!

woooot

Woah...got a little over excited there .

That's one less thing to worry about in my life now!

Yup. Us too. Their email delivery system must have crashed. Nice of them to put up a notice about it on their website, wasn't it?

Unfortunately, we can't log on to see what DS1 has got. We tried having the password resent because our log in wasn't working, and the system then refused to recognise us via the security question. Have tried, on and off all day, to contact council about it, but of course it's been jammed solid.

Really crappy show, Oxfordshire County Council! I suppose I'll just have to pin our hopes on the 2nd class letter we're meant to be getting to confirm. Assuming nobody got lost on the way to the post office.

Oh sorry, congrats, Sootie! I'm glad you got the place you wanted. I'm just a tad stressed and pissed off about this, can you tell?

Reshape, did you put your maiden name or your mothers on the resend password bit?

I'm sorry you're having a hard time about this Reshape - I thought it was just me who hadn't received the email, but obviously not! Hopefully your DS will get the place you wanted, but I can imagine how stressful and annoying this is for you right now.

We finally cracked it! Worked our way through various possible permutations of the password and email, and got in. DS1 has got the prefered choice, so we're happy.

Sootie, I don't think I know anyone who's had an email, so it must be a general delivery problem.

I think there were a few problems in Oxfordshire. At my (VA) school, we had parents arriving at drop off who had received e-mails and parents phoning up during the morning who had not, wanting to know if they had obtained a place. Sadly, we, as the school, had not received the list! It duly pinged in our in-box at around 1pm. I then needed to tell one parent, that, despite her having confirmation from the LA of receipt of postal application, she didn't appear on either our acceptance list or our rejection list, and indeed, hadn't even appeared on the long list in February when we as a VA school did our ranking. I think she has rather a fraught weekend ahead......

That is terrible for the Mum small, If she has the receipt then hopefully she will be able to win at appeal and show that the LEA have made a mistake depriving her child of a place they should have got (providing she would have got a place had they not make this error!).

We are also Oxon and have not received an email, nobody I know has, we have all had to log on to get the results, as expected we got our fantastic village school as we are in village and dd is in Y2 there.

I don't know about the rest of the county but for our village it is actually a lower birth rate year, a friend and I sat a while back and worked out all the children who will be going up to school in September including the out of catchment siblings (who come after catchment) and couldn't fill the 20 places on offer, there will likely be one or two children who live in the surrounding (catchment) area who go to private nursery who we don't know but even that won't get us past about 18! In the last couple of years our school has, with arrangement with the EA taken a few extra children due to there being a shortage of places on the Oxford area but I am wondering if that would be the case this year or not, does any one know what the general look of the ara is in regards to how many children have not been awarded a place at one of their preferences? I have heard of one or two but they have been the opposite side of the county to us and would effect us.

Just to clarify, in case anybody reading gets their hopes up in error: if the LA make a mistake with your application, the best you can expect on appeal because of that error is to be reinstated where you would have been had the error not been made. In the case above, I also had to explain to the mother that, even though there has been a mistake, she is likely to end up third on our waiting list, as there were two children nearer who were rejected.
From talking to other Oxfordshire heads, the feeling is that there are many children who did not get their first preference, and quite a lot who did not get any (eg there were two who applied to our tiny school who ended up with none of their preferences). Don't forget that there is always a shuffle of places (we have at least three allocated to us who put us second who may end up getting in at their first choice, thereby creating spaces, and the children who take those places create vacancies elsewhere, and so on). We have already agreed to take slightly over our normal number and may well yet take a few more.
(PS In case it's any consolation, we can't get through to the admissions team at the moment, either!)

I thought Oxon were advertising a really high rate of 1st choice preferences this year?

Well, we are in North Oxford and didn't get any of our three choices (let alone the first preference). I have joined the waiting lists for two of them but am a little confused: should I reject the offered place or not? I have no intention of sending our daughter there but keep reading that I should not reject to make sure she stays "on the radar"? We have a back up place at an independent school.

Roadkillbunny - that's interesting about the low birth rate. I was told by the head of one of the schools I visited that this was a very high birth rate year in Oxford city and it was going to be hard trying to accomodate all the children born in 2007/2008.

We got our admissions letter in the post today! I just filled out the acceptance form and will wait for school to contact me by post now. Apart from the email hitch, this has been pretty straightforward, thankfully.

ubwlondon - If you reject the offer, you will need to give a reason why and what alternative arrangements you have made or else they won't take her name off the list. However, if you don't accept the offer before 8th May they may allocate your daughter's place to children who are on the waiting list. I wouldn't reject the offer until you are sure that your daughter has a place at the independent school or other school. I think you can go on the waiting list for up to 3 schools.