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

[HobKnob]

I'm biting my nails off here!

Murder - Or maybe I could just dig up one of their houses with a jcb and move it past mine. Is that impractical? So glad it went well for you.

I am actually starting to feel a bit better about the school we got. One thing, which DH would say is me overthinking, is that we are considering a third child. School 1 is an infant school, so DD2 would not be in the school at the same time as hypothetical sibling because they would be at least three school years apart. Being at the juniors doesn't count for the sibling rule apparently (although website very unclear), so we'd have to go through all this stress with no. 3. At the primary school, hypothetical sibling would still have two siblings at the school, so shouldn't have any issues at all.

See how much time I have spent on this? I am considering a not-yet-conceived-and-may-never-be child.

1st choice here for DD!!

I'm chewing my fingers off here. I know we will get the email on Friday as in Bristol, but I'm a mess. Almost threw up at work today. DH is as cool as a cucumber as per.

Congrats to all who got any of their preferences. Best wishes for those who didn't.

Amanda Nah, thinking ahead is admirable! I got a list of the distance from each school for the last child admitted today with my confirmation letter. Does your LA just not do this?

Nope Snazzy. Blood out of a stone getting information out of them.

When we were trying to DD a place, we missed out on distance.
We accepted the place we were offered, stayed on every waiting list and prepared an appeal, mostly because we felt we would regret not trying every avenue.
It was a very stressful time (made worse because I was hugely pregnant, suffering from very high BP and being monitored every couple of days in hospital for hours).

I was sat chatting to my DM one afternoon, talking about the appeal hearing which was scheduled for the next day, when I got the phone call telling us that we'd moved to the top of the waiting list and they would like to offer us a place at our first choice school - would I like to accept. I bit her hand off. It was a lovely feeling.

I'm sharing this story just to say, try and keep calm, be very practical and logical, follow up every option and keep your fingers crossed.
Good luck everyone.

I feel so stupid i didn't realise that and i read the forms and books hundreds of times. I would have gladly put the other options down if i knew i would be offered so far away. oh i'm in such a pickle now. I am appealing to a VA school which was my first choice but presume that will be no good.
i don't want to clog up waiting lists but am so upset now. Thanks for explaining

OK. We got our last choice school which I only put down to avoid the possibility of being offered nothing. I think we will go on to waiting lists but don't hold out much hope.

Can I ask, does any one of you lovely people know about Free Schools? Our local one says it limits class sizes to 25 but I thought infant class sizes were capped at 30. Who do I appeal to for a space at a Free School?

Still waiting here, letter is due in the morning ( I don't think I can wait that long!)

We put our 4 nearest schools on the form. They are all within 300-500 metres, one of them is taking a bulge class this year, and another two were expanded in the last couple of years.

We didn't get any.

Instead, we have been offered a school in a different town 2.7 miles away. There are easily 15 schools that are nearer to us, probably more, but apparently every single one is oversubscribed.

Thankfully we know that Merton LEA is crap so we saw this coming, and we've long signed up DD for private school. But if we hadn't, or couldn't afford it, we'd be utterly fucked.

Well done Merton this whole system is crap - there needs to be a deep reform of the admissions priority rules, especially on siblings priority as people are taking the piss around us. A huge number of places go to families who live really far away and cause traffic jams around our local schools. There are also way too many VA schools, it is simply not fair that some parents have lots of choice while their neighbours have none.

Well, I didn't come back earlier because I've been tucking into the .

We got 1st choice, thank goodness. It should have been a no-brainer, as we're so close we can see the school from our house, but nothing's a foregone conclusion with primary schools these days.

Good luck to those still going through it, and especially to those appealing.

I know we have talked here about the advantages of the Scottish system and whether that would work in the more densely populated South. Here's the reason that it works in Scotland and your system wouldn't. You'd be lucky, even in a big city e.g. Glasgow or Edinburgh to find two primary schools within a mile of each other unless one was a catholic and the other non-denomination which have different admission criteria. Where I live the next nearest primary is at least a mile and a half away and that is in a smaller city. Children often have to travel a long way to their nearest school never mind if they couldn't get a space and had to travel to the next nearest - further up north, that could be 50 miles away or on another Island.

Think it is horses for courses.

Amanda do check as the few infant juniors in my lea have automatic transfer/place to linked junior I personally prefer primary if have more than 1 child remember mun running from infants to junior.

Michelle 1984 what type of va school was it?
dd1 got into rc va and we not catholic.

I am really worried about dd2 and dd3 next year and year after think 2009 boom year. Despite having sibling we out catchment so not the magic pass in. I keep hearing about parents doing 2 schools logistical nightmare and schools not exactly geared up for that.

Prima facie thats terrible same in bristol last few years nearly 300kids dont get their 3choices only get 3 and we have large indpendent sector my nearest is snip at 1500 per term but cantb afford private with 3kids:(.

my friends applying this year find out friday I think.

Have you seen that this week's webchat is going to be about Primary Appeals? here.

mam29- they have pretty much automatic transfer infant to junior. Unless there is a massive influx of children in local authority care. What they don't seem to do is sibling priority for children applying to the infants if their only sibling(s) are at the juniors.

It was for c of e school which is a 5 min walk from my house but only have 18 open places which i obviously didn't fall into :(
i have been really silly and it seems my son is paying the price just feel so upset all the work and time off work and research i put into schools for nothing

Right, who else is midnight tonight? See you all here at about quarter to?

I had a nightmare last night that a massive travelling fair set up home in the field behind the school today and the LEA sent out emails telling everyone that there was going to be no space at all in the school as the new arrivals were closer than everyone else and had 60 4 year-olds.

I woke up irrationally angry with the council.

What an incredibly depressing day that was.

London is a joke (Hammersmith & Fulham).

We didnt get our two nearest schools (top two choices) both about 500 yards away, nor the next three (two of which were a bit of a long shot) and got offered our sixth which we only put down to make sure we got something.

Havent had the letter yet but have to assume that it was all on distance even though our sixth choice is further away than our top two!

I see a long period of waiting lists, appeals etc.

What a farce this system is.

Ours is 9am tomorrow. I shall stay calm. I shall stay calm. I shall stay calm. I shall stay calm. I shall stay calm. I shall stay calm. I shall stay calm. I shall stay calm. I shall stay calm. I shall stay calm. I shall stay calm. I shall stay calm. I shall stay calm. I shall stay calm.

Eek letsget that's annoying.

what's the news kungfu?

There are definitely schools in Edinburgh within a mile of each other (schools on the south side like sciennes primary, james gillespie primary and preston street primary are close together because it's mostly tenement flats in their catchments).

It would be possible to have a guaranteed place at a catchment school in England but it would probably be unpopular as there'd be wailing about lack of choice (because there's so much real choice now) and there'd be liberal use of portakabins classrooms in the south east. Even in Scotland your catchment school is not necessarily your closest school (sometimes the boundaries are drawn very oddly), so I assume there would be quite a lot of people in London whose catchment school was not close to their house (and not somewhere they'd want to send their kids). So people would be putting in placing requests all over the place anyway and there would still be angst (especially as so few would be successful). I'd assume the catchments would also change frequently (as the population is so much more variable) so people wouldn't know what their catchment school was that year until it came time to apply for a place. I think the system would be equally unpopular with parents on those grounds alone. It would really feel like you were subject to the whims of the LEA.

There's also the argument about catchments artificially inflating house prices (and excluding many people on financial grounds) but any distance criteria does this anyway.

Arbitrary - actually the biggest problems would be with England having the Scottish system; it would cost more as you would have to keep spare places in schools (or get rid of the top limit on class sizes); and that there just isn't room in some places to build enough schools for the population. Free schools helped in Sweden which is why Gove is so keen on them, because they allowed schools to be set up in "non school" buildings. However if you look at New York, you will see that schools in another densely populated city, don't have much in the way of playground/sports space, are build on several levels, and can even have more than one school sharing one building.

I also grew up when there were catchments, at least for secondary. We applied for a "placing request" for me, and I went to a school which was closer to my home than the catchment school.

Another factor in England is that there are a lot of C of E schools, some of which can select on religious grounds (and a few Jewish, Muslim and Hindu schools).