Is anyone else waiting to hear what primary school their child has got into?

[HobKnob]

I'm biting my nails off here!

Soontobe - what happens here is they plan a development of flats for say 'young professionals', of 1 and 2 bedroom flats, and argue that almost none of them will have school age children, as they would move before any child was school age. Then you add a credit crisis, recession, and huge house prices, rent, and reductions in housing benefit, and the couples with babies can't afford to move anywhere else as they can't get a mortgage, or can't get a job if they move to that small town outside London, and suddenly there's 300 kids that 2 years ago weren't expected.

And most of the schools have expanded already; there literally is no space for a new building in many of them as one has just been plonked on it. Plus funds for building planned new buildings was withdrawn when the current Govt got in - my borough was one of the few that clawed some back on appeal.

wow tiggy - that's scary stuff!! what were the councils thinking off??

wouldn't happen here. There is an application in at the moment to build a pile of houses nearby (on the flood plain ) and as part of that they are building a new primary school and it may need a bit of rezoning of the current ones. Personally I think they are waiting for that to be accepted before expanding our local school. When they got the builders to expand it (from 4 classrooms to 8) they didn't get it quite big enough so now they will have to pay themselves to deal with the shortfall - it was 10 years ago that the school expanded. Initially a lot of families applied and got places in another school thought to be "posher".....but our school got a far better report than the posh one so suddenly it's uber popular!!

However, every child in the catchment who wanted a space, got one.

notcitris, yes, I can see how that would happen - they have some sort of formula to work out the likely number of children based on the house types being built. However, every property in Scotland is within a catchment area for a school and they are obliged to offer you a space at it and they just have to make it happen - they can try to offer you a space elsewhere, but you can insist on one in the catchment school.

I really feel sorry for those having to try to deal with all this.

And since the government cancelled the Building Schools for the Future programme initiated by the last government, I don't see it getting any better.

Today's the day?

today for me too, although we had an offer on our house last night so we might be moving away but I still really want to know!

Correct me if im wrong but think theres a ban on building new la schools.

Only ones allowed to open are free schools so a group other than la has to decide and apply to open a school and often their locations are not where the need is.

A few rubbish schools even primary ahve converted to academy.

We have one area near me its entirly new build houses although some 10years or so now.

When the area was formed they built 2schools.

1 school was relocated from nearby village into the new housing estate and still retained the village name and opened as a60intake, its now expanded to 90last few years so thats one hell of a lot of siblings combined with fact best sats results and just had outstanding ofsted means village peopel cant get into their old village school as they too far away.

Nearly every other house has kids.

The 2nd school builot for this new area god results but 30intake they refuse to expand yet seem to have the room to do so.

They want to extend this new area but it needs another primary nd definatly secondry.

I live near the new build area and lots of kids now applying for my nearby schools so it has a knock on effect on other areas.

I dont have to apply until next year dd missed this year by 16days sept birthday and her elder sister goes out of cathcment area school got in mid year and has 20per yer no room to expand and im not in catchment or on map boundry.

Im really worried my 2nd choice school although 10mins walk has tiny catchment area as well performing has tiny catchcment sometimes half siblings on 60 intake.

Hopefully pass driving test this yera which allows me to veiw couple nearby village schools but stil unsure logistically how can do both schools im doing separate preschool-primary now 1.2miles apart and thats hard.

Im trying to stay positive as eldests school on county border so think im head of them even if im nearer as its my county.
Some go private there.
2near by area has better performing school than eldests so imagine it be there 2nd choice.
The mixed classes , being so tiny and playing feilds puts me off.
It has fairly high sats not best and good ofsted.
Another nearby new build area in its catchment is having a brand new 60 intake academy open in september so hoping they pick that school.

Good luck to everyone its so stressful think they need to copy scotland seems sensible here people seem to travel miles as people are very picky.

Indeed, no new schools. The LA are getting round this by turning a few schools into two-site ones.

Yep, we have the new family houses, no new schools scenario too, so each year gets worse.

that's happening here wingding, the 'new' school is another campus for an existing school.

We don't find out until Saturday. They post the letters out on Friday. No emails for us because we live in the Dark Ages.

The free schools thing is ridiculous. There's one opening up in this city but it's absolutely nowhere near where the pressure points for schools are. Indeed, it's in the bit where the schools are all undersubscribed.

Whereas in this part of the city there is a secondary place crisis looming and no one seems to care much. They've built (and are continuing to build) a whole new estate of houses, which is huge and filled to the gunnels with families with babies and primary school age children. They built one first school with the estate (a 30 intake) and have had to extend it to 60 PAN. They're also building another 30/60 intake first school on the estate. Both these schools are supposed to feed into a middle school (and high school) system that cannot accommodate all these pupils.

The feeder system means that kids in the first schools should all get into the corresponding middle school and the high school but there just aren't enough places to take all the children who will be coming through these new schools. There are barely enough places for children in the much longer established schools as it is, and certainly not room for 90-120 more in a few years. The schools have all been recently rebuilt too to accommodate the same number of students as previously.

But instead of building a new free school system for the new build estate (where there is absolutely going to be a disaster in about 3 years), a group of parents have gotten permission to produce a forest school in an area of the city where there is absolutely no shortage of school places. There are going to be a lot of very upset parents in a couple of years (and many, many more in 4 years), especially as many of them will have bought the new builds (which are now very difficult to sell on) because they were marketed as feeding into this high school system. And, as the two next nearest secondaries (and probably the only two other schools you wouldn't feel dread at seeing in your allocations email) are both oversubscribed from kids that live much closer to them and go to the feeder primaries, they're going to end up trekking across the city to go to a school with security guards on the grounds at all time.

The system is beyond a joke. It really is. It must be so much worse in the south east. Successive governments have let things get so ridiculous (and the complexity of faith schools, academies, and now free schools really doesn't help) and, even worse, they've done so while pretending that the system offers parents 'choice'. That's probably the cruellest bit of it.

I find all these types of school very confusing - it just doesn't happen up in Scotland.

The options are;

a. Private education
b. Catchment Primary school run by Council
c. Apply to another Primary school by making a placing request (this is not that common) and if they have space you get a place.

.....Unless you are Catholic, then you have the option of registering with the nearest (council run) catholic primary or registering with your local non-denominational primary as b. above.

Non Catholics can apply to attend the local Catholic school using method c above.

Transfer to High School is exactly the same - i.e. you go to your Catchment High School or Catholic High School or apply to another via metod c. or yoiu go Private.

A lot of the High Schools have been rebuilt using PPP - where the schools are built for free usually on a cheaper piece of land than the one they are sitting on and the builder gets the old school land for house building. All 5 high schools in my area have been rebuilt or refurbished under this programme.

I really feel for everyone stuck trying to find a space for their child :(

I found it all much easier in Scotland too. Moving down south presented me with a ludicrously complex system that only seems to make everyone anxious.

And I haven't even griped about the idiocy of specialist schools (thanks nuLabour) in a system where there isn't any choice. It's just too stupid to believe.

oh yes, I forgot that there are obviously access to special schools too - I know there is a bit on the Placing request form about those but not sure what the system is.

I may have missed this in the thread but what time do the London decisions tend to be online at? I have signed up to the texting service as well. Is it after 5pm this evening? To those with previous experience, does the system tend to crash with so many logging on or is it staggered?

I think you get emailed after 5pm iggity.

My sister lives in a new build development in Scotland and her catchment primary is massively overscribed (because that is what happens if you build lots of family houses without the supporting infrastructure doh!). So the children tend to go to other schools via placing requests but there is no transport etc to help them get there.

So who else is (in theory) midnight Thursday night/Fdriday morning?

And is anyone else staying up? I'm considering cracking on the wine......

And I agree with the previous poster about parents not just getting in a state for no good reason. Scotland is a completely different set-up.

If we don't get DS1 into our only choice of school, we are in a spectacular mess. We are just outside a small city with tiny catchement areas for all the urban schools except the two that are never full because noone wants their child to go there. The other nearest schools are rural with tiny intakes. This leaves one school which we have a chance at, fortunately a good one, and then we're stuck.

Our village school was closed down a few years ago, otherwise he'd have gone there.

"Scotland is a completely different set-up."

Precisely. Because Scotland's entire population is 5.2m, while England's is 53m. Not saying English councils shouldn't have a better handle on the situation because there is some very ill-thought through urban planning that only exacerbates things (a block of flats is being built right now next to my DS's primary so anyone further along the street who thought they were sorted for a place may well be in jeopardy when new families move in). However it's pointless comparing the system in Scotland and saying everyone in England should just go to their closest school. In London especially (8m crammed into a fraction of the space of Scotland) there just isn't room. God knows how the system's going to cope. Unless everyone moves to Scotland maybe. Now there's an idea...

The adjoining town to where I live have had a new primary open this September just gone.
It's too small already and doesn't have enough spaces.
The infants my DC5 has just left had a new classroom built in the past year for a bulge class but are still struggling with not enough school places. Where we live we could only dream of infants class sizes being 30.
The junior school DC5 now attends is having a new classroom built but already has class sizes approaching 40 per class.

pink, agree the scale is obviously different, but I don't see how having the councils responsible for the schools and then have them all have a catchment to ensure that all houses fit into a school wouldn't be better. It wont solve the overcrowding, but it will make it clearer where the need is. It also tends to even out the nice/not so nice schools a bit as the catchments tend to include kids from all walks of life.

Sounds like it has gotten so bad now tho that it will be a beggar to sort out without some sort of drastic thinking.......and yes, happy to have more people in Scotland, especially law abiding tax payers - most of it is empty!

I agree with the planning comment. We are in a situation where, if DS1 does get into our choice of school, DS2 should be guaranteed a place as there hasn't ever been a year where siblings have been a problem. They are category 2 and the intake always goes right down to category 5.

BUT there is a new planning application to build 100 new houses in the fields directly opposite the school. These are going to attract families as they will be about 200m from an outstanding school, with a good school a mile or so in the other direction. It's been held up by the council being crap and not doing what they should have done, but looks likely to go ahead, given the overall local plan for new housing. If that development is finished before we come to apply for DS2, all bets are off. I'm assuming that it won't go through in time for people to move in and get older children in so that there is a big sibling intake in DS2's year - applying in Jan 2015 - but the following year is likely to be a problem for people who would normally get siblings in.