Sorry, I know this has been done a million times before. Admissions rules

[Galena]

Just wondering. One of the schools I'm looking at for DD (Starts school Sept 2013) has a PAN of 15 - although was allocated 21 for Sept 2011 due to a bulge year. It had 58 people naming it on their form, 16 of whom put it as first choice.

Does the fact that you put a school as a first choice mean you are more likely to get into that school? So I guess I mean, since 16 put it as first choice and 21 got a place, is it definitely the case that those 16 got a place? I'm not sure how close the people who got in live to the school, so I'm not sure whether we have a hope of getting in or not. Is there a way to find out? It's Gloucestershire LA if that's any help.

Thanks.

Ok, thanks for that. So really there's not much point listing the number of first preferences in the list... Any way I can find out the distance of the 'last' accepted person in previous years, do you know?

The other thing to bear in mind here is that if the school stuck to 15 admission number then any appeal could be an infant class size case depending on how they structure the classes. Normally this is 15 in reception and then 30 in a mixed year1/2 class.
In you case having taken 21 the school is going to have a real problem on its hands. It is going to find defending a 15 admission level difficult as they took 21 last year (that is not a bulge class, it is just taking more pupils with the LAs agreement which is allowed) and if they take 21 again they are going to have a capacity problem, 2 lots of 21 = 42, which is two small classes and problems of large classes further up the school.

Thank you both.

That's really helpful. Will phone the LA at some point... It's all complicated by the fact that she has mild cerebral palsy and the small school is the only one all on one level.

The 2 other schools we're considering are the church school where we live a fair distance from it, but we are members of the church so would get in (almost definitely) due to that, and a big inf/jun school round the corner with 90 places. They are both pretty certain.