Application for Secondary school

[CouthyMowWearingOrange]

I got a letter home with DS1 yesterday telling us more about Secondary applications. A lot has changed in the four years since I applied for DD!

In our area, you have always only had 3 choices to put on the form. This year, for the first time, they are telling you to choose 6 schools.

There are more than 6 Secondaries in our town, but it is complicated by the fact that I (well, DS1) will be reliant on public transport, and 3 of the 8 or so Secondaries are literally impossible to get to on time, another one is a Catholic Secondary where you have no chance of a place if you haven't been Baptised as a Catholic before 6 months of age.

DS1 realistically has the choice of (hopefully) the Grammar school, our local school (where DD attends and he will have a sibling link), the next closest school, or there are two that are over an hour's bus journey (outside of rush hour, so more in morning rush hour) away. One of those he will NOT be going to. So really, there are just 4 schools that can possibly go on my form.

However, the letter says that we must use all 6 of our choices. What happens if I only put 4 on there? If he gets offered any of the others, then I will be appealing for the four I have on the form, as the others (bar one) are just impossible get to by bus on time.

Will they be pissed off if I only put 4 choices on the form?

It could only be 3, as if there is no chance of a Grammar place based on his results from his 11+ (results come out before application deadlines this year), then there is no point in putting it on the form.

WWYD?

I was also suprised by the 6 choices

we have 2 schools realistically to choose from

there are plenty more schools but they involve at least 1 change of bus and travelling will easily be an hour plus

I will only be putting 2 choices and taking the risk but fortunately we don't work on catchment, it goes as the crow flies so fingers crossed we will be fine

It's fine to use only 4 of your choices, but the risk is that if you do not get a place at any, you will then be allocated a place at any school which has vacancies. Even though your potential choice 5 and 6 might be difficult, the offer they come up with may be even worse if it gets to that stage.

When I spoke to the LEA about this they told me that they were not 'choices' and they were preferences - for the reasons said above.
In our borough you could put 6 preferences and still be given a school that you do not want.

Isn't this just a way for LEAs to claim that people got one of their 'choices'? We are always being told the majority of people got one of their preferred schools when the reality is most didn't have any 'choice'. I have seen too many people end up with places they wouldn't or couldn't attend though, in the hope that somehow if they only put down the places they really wanted it would work out. It doesn't always work like that. I would strongly recommend imagining you have no place and putting down any school you would accept rather than home ed, because as other have said, if the worst happens, you will be offered the only places left ie in schools that aren't fileld in the first round.

And this is why it pisses me off when people say on MN, 'You chose the school, go elsewhere if you don't like it' when someone grumbles about daft uniform/homework/food policies.

The national statistics concentrate on the percentage getting their first preference (85.3% in 2011) and the percentage getting one of their first three preferences (95.9%). There is very little difference between the latter figure and the figure for people getting any one of their preferences (97.6%).

There are wide local variations behind these statistics. In Hartlepool 99.7% of parents got their first preference, but only 40.8% of parents in Slough got theirs. Overall if you live in London, Birmingham, Buckingham, Slough or Southend on Sea you have a lower chance of getting your first preference than if you live elsewhere.

As other posters have said, you do not have to use all the preferences. You will not be penalised if you do not do so. However, the risk is that you won't get a place at one of the schools you name, in which case you will be offered the nearest school with places. This will almost certainly be an unpopular school, could be some way from home and may be a school you regard as totally unacceptable. I would always recommend using all your preferences, making sure you include at least one unpopular school where you will almost certainly get a place. That way, if you don't get offered one of the schools you really want, you are likely to end up with an offer from a school you regard as acceptable (or at least, less unacceptable than the alternatives).

Cross posted with lots of people! Agree with Tiggytape.

I wonder in reality who the preference thing really works for. In big cities it sounds as though on the whole you have to live onto of the school to get a place. Where we are, there was only one high school listed on the form and that's the only one that the LEA provide transport to, so there's no real preference for us unless we drove DD somewhere.

In this borough, most of our choices are faith schools, which we have no hope at all of getting in to as we don't attend church (still have to pay taxes toward the running of these schools of course, but thats another point).

We basically have 2 schools to choose from, but will have to list 4 that we have no hope of getting into (they are the best schools of course).

So around here, unless you turn up to church each Sunday and kiss the Vicars arse, your kids can't get into the best schools in the borough.

My current list goes :

1. Grammar school
2. Closest school to me, very popular, but have a sibling link.
3. the next closest school, that I really don't want, but should get him into if he doesn't get 1/2.
4. school an hour's bus journey away, too far in reality to stand a chance of getting into.

There is a closer school than 4, as the crow flies, but I WOULD HE rather than send him there, and though distance wise it's my third closest, by public transport it's actually physically impossible to reach there by their 8.30am start time!

The only bonus is that DS1's year is a VERY low birth rate in my town. The year group is literally half the size of the cohort above them, and a third of the size of the cohort below them!

I am currently living just 0.3miles from school 2 where I also have a sibling link.

I do have one more question - what happens if I move house between October 31st when the form is submitted, and the offer date in March?

I won't get a real choice of area, and I'll only get a week's notice of the move, and no choice about WHEN I move, as I will have to move to wherever the council/HA house comes up?

I am quite nervous to find out exactly how that will affect the application. Because then, though DS1 will have a sibling link to school 2, as I won't move DD in Y10 or Y11 (she's just started Y10), he could be 3-5 miles away. Near a school I wouldn't send him to if hell froze over...

Am in Essex, but Essex figures on first choice places are well off for my town, especially my end of it, due to massive house building all concentrated in the area around school 2, which apart from the Grammar schools is the best Secondary in the town. Which complicates matters slightly.

Also there is an extra primary school here to when DD went 4 years ago, and I know there's Y6's there too.

AAAARRGGHHH!

Another one in an area where the preference system is a mockery.
Nearest school grammar - a possibility, but no guarantee
Next nearest school - we are apparently not in the catchment for if 'all else fails'
3rd nearest school - we are in the catchment area for, but not a preferred choice
4th nearest school I would be happy with
5th nearest school I would be happy with too
6th nearest school a grammar

From knowledge from families who live in the same road. If my DS does not get into grammar, he will be 'offered' 3rd nearest - whether I put it 1-6 or not at all.
How is this even a preference? The Borough holds all the cards. If your child passes for grammar - go for it. If not, this is the only school that you will be offered. And it does matter - state secondaries in this area have a huge difference in pupil outcomes.

Using all 6 loses you nothing at all, they won't stop you getting a place at 'x' because you'd accept 'y' if you put 'x' higher than 'y', they're not allowed. Having more spaces simply means you have a bit more of a say if you (for whatever reason) can't give you a space at one of your top 3 choices.

Not listing the impossible to get to schools won't stop them giving you a place there if you don't get a space at a school on your list - at least this way you get to rank them.

Thank you, that makes sense, as there is one of the 'unreachable' schools that I would choose over the others IYSWIM, so I will definitely put that 5th.

God knows what I'll do about choice 6 though - I literally WOULD Home Ed rather than send him to any of the other ones!!

You could leave it blank. They can't penalise you for that. Personally I would put whichever of the others is least unacceptable (if you see what I mean) but it is entirely up to you.

All of the others have value added scores of less than 900, basically meaning children fail to progress. None of the others stream, and are in mixed classes all the way through, for all subjects, something I REALLY dislike. AND he physically CANNOT get there on time by public transport!