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

[HobKnob]

I'm biting my nails off here!

To me it just seems like common sense why cant council planning and admissions -work together.

At the moment developers not building smaller houses its all 4/5bed executive houses which attract families.

im bit worried they want to extend the new build area and build another 3000 homes.

bristol has huge problem with school places we forcast to run out senior places by 2017 unless they take action now.

I think economys made worse people move more urban areas for work, less go private combined with rising birth rate,

read about some schools 6class intakes thats as big as a senior school.

All the extra porta cabins oddly some on roofs can go on forever.

The new free senior school no where near me shame as looks good.

They on about opening steiner free school but hardly going to attact a wide group.

They need to focus on areas of need asking parent to do 2schools or reception child to start school miles away just not viable.
most do want something reasonably close with not too awful ofsted.

I can see this situation getting worse as cant see whats being done apart from expanding current schools.

im dreading next year and year after as have 1 starting 2014 and youngest 2015. I also have senior school applications for eldest.

wish we had 6choices as dont think 3is enough.

Another fact I like about the Scottish school system is the flexibility with the youngest children in the year (allowing parents to defer if born the last quarter of the intake). Plus the cut off date is end Feb meaning that the youngest a child starts is 4.5 and not 4.

That is however a whole other thread...

Shame it rains a lot though.

Mam29 to answer some of your questions. New houses do not always equal new children for schools. A large new estate was built in the North of my town, the roles continued to fall for years afterwards in that part of town (it was only a sudden rise in birth rate which stopped schools being closed there). Birth rate also doesn't correlate perfectly with the number of children in schools, as there is a lot of movement both in and out of the area.

In some areas it has been assumed that a certain percentage of children will go to private schools, however, economic downturn, entrance exams getting harder (as children commute further or certain schools become more desirable), and other changes to private schools; can change this number.
The government does not allow LAs to build/open new schools unless both the Free school and Academy route have already been explored.
There is also a lack of land to build new schools, and if lack of land for houses causes land prices to rocket, the same will occur to land for schools. Most new houses near me are in-fill, so there is not much chance of building schools on that size pocket of land, and not much of a planning bonus. 4 and 5 bedroom homes are usually built as pairs on the site of one previous 4 bedroom house. Another site might have 10-20 2 and 3 bed houses, the whole site would have to be taken for a school, and might need quite costly remediation works first. For example there was a big development of flats on quite heavily contaminated land.

There is also of course a local shortage of teachers, at least I some subjects.

Six hours to go.

We had four choices so I put down the four nearest primary schools.

All of which are either 'outstanding' or 'good', and all oversubscribed.

We are rule 5 for our nearest. If we don't get a place there we won't get a place at the other three choices as a rule 6 applicant. We would instead be offered a place at the undersubscribed fifth nearest school, which I wouldn't choose as it is too far to walk to and also 'satisfactory'.

Just trying to stay calm... and trying not to think about the practical implications of the fifth school - no local school friends, either having to buy a car, or change jobs/stop working, or paying for more child care... just because there wasn't a place at the 60 intake primary school 400 METRES AWAY FROM OUR FRONT DOOR

I see what you mean pinky - I wish I knew what the solution was - maybe with the drop on the economy the private schools with places could be subsidised to take on some addition pupils funded by councils at the same rate as it would cost them to provide a LA place? they must be struggling a bit too and it will be difficult to run a school without enough paying customers. I appreciate it would be a lot less than normal income but at least it would be something - can't imagine that the parents paying full whack would be best pleased tho!

Argh. Just got the response from the local authority on furthest distance. They don't say what distance they have us down as, but based on my calculations we lost out by 19m. 19 bloody metres. That's one child realistically isn't it? Max two. Can't imagine many people lost out by so little.

That's very irritating, Amanda, but at least you'd probably be pretty much at the top of the waiting list...

This explains why the only newbuilds in the town where I work are retirement flats.

We don't get DS's offer until Tuesday 30th so I shouldn't be reading this thread at the moment. It's just making me anxious.

We challenged on walking route for DD1 and won but as it affected everyone on our road, it just bumped us all up, so that alone didn't get us in - but it helped.

Definitely check walking route, our council gets it wrong every year for our old area.

Fingers crossed for you amanda, I remember the stress all too clearly.

It's crow flies, so not much scope for adjustment on the distance.

I realise my own calculations might not be super accurate and can't challenge theirs, but I used postcodes on an online site and the midpoint of our postcode is slap bang on our house, as is theirs on the school, so it should correspond reasonably well with the ordanance survey reference points they use for calculations. Once I get their distance, it should be in the same ball park. If they give a materially different figure I'll be double checking they have our details right, it is corresponding to the correct house, etc, because it could make quite a difference.

0.1 of a mile is 160m, so I really just wanted an idea of whether we had missed out by that (which could correspond to quite a few houses round the circumference of the area) or some much smaller amount. It seems to be the smaller end, which should be good for reconsideration after the first round of acceptances (it might only take one child turning down our school in the first round to go private and we could get it) or for the waiting list.

Surrey is still not up, I keep pressing F5 on the admissions. They say you will get an e-mail "in the evening of the 17th" but last year my friend did see it online at 4pm before the e-mail came out.

Will keep trying!

We got our 2nd choice. At first I was disappointed that we didn't get our first choice (0.7miles away) but now I'm just so relieved we got our 2nd choice. Catching up with friends earlier, some haven't been allocated any of their 5 choices and have been placed at schools the other side of town, in the lower achieving schools that are undersubscribed.
One friend is utterly heartbroken and knows she has a rubbish chance of a successful appeal

We are going to appeal. I just declined the offer online and via the paper form. eek! Wish us luck!

Oh Terrys that's interesting - was meant to be 5pm here too (Lambeth) but I'll start checking in an hour or so!! Starting to feel nervous now, don't know why as we don't have much chance for our top choices anyway!

Amanda you're short by such a short distance that I think you can be optimistic? I wonder if you can find out how much the catchment grew from April - Sept last year in order to see your chances; I know here it grew 100 metres for our local school in that time!

DS is currently watching Toy Story 3 - what is he doing to me??!!!

lindsey you could always stay on the waiting list for choice 1? But congrats on 2nd choice, that's not bad going :)

raisinggirls GOOD LUCK! :)

Good luck Raising - what grounds are you appealing on? Fingers crossed you get the result you want

What borough are you in Terry? Driving myself mad waiting for this email. Have a new baby due in 11 days and really hoping I don't have to spend a summer worrying about waiting lists on top of all the newborn stuff!

Raising Girls - from last year the advice is to accept whatever you are given so you have a place even if you don't want it, then put names down on waiting lists and appeal the decision too.

However, the council is only legally obliged to offer you a school place. If you then turn that down it has fulfilled its obligation and does not have to offer you an alternative.

There are some excellent, knowledgeable people on here who have helped many parents through this process. I would recommend starting a thread explaining your position and asking for advice.

We're in Epsom.

Its an interesting one for us, we've just had an offer on our house but we're umm-ing and ahh-ing about accepting it, which would mean we move house out of the area. If DS gets our third choice then we might be tempted to take the offer and run but if he gets first or second choice we might hold out for a better offer because at least if we stay we know he has a good school to go for!

Its a bit of a jigsaw at the moment and we need to get all the pieces to fit together!