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

[HobKnob]

I'm biting my nails off here!

I'm waiting by the door today to find out where DS will go this September :)

Sorry for all the London disappointments. We are right on the edge of greater London (boundary of Herts and hillingdon) and aside from being pleased with the school, I am also really impressed with the amount of information available to me straight away on allocations. this page has blown me away in fact. Last distances offered under both rules 5&6, and even a table of he spread of 1st to 4th placing of each school on the form. That really shows up clearly which schools were the "don't really like, but put down for insurance" kind. Someone really keen on stats has put all that together!

I used their calculator to find the list of schools by increasing distance and previous two years' PAN/last offered distance stats in December to decide on my choices, in conjunction with the ofsted reports on the closest schools to me, and I am glad it was relatively straightforward. I know we don't have a massively mobile/fluctuating population just here so that's the main difference with inner London.

I was trying to find similar for a colleague who will be navigating this system in Bucks in 18 months time and just now is trying to work out where to buy a house, and they appear to operate a catchment before sibling system. I can't understand how they can do that without cocking life (i.e. morning/afternoon logistics) up for a lot of two-child families. Maybe they draw the catchments by trawling council tax registrations and making a fag-packet guess to how many children are on each street.

Those Herts stats are exactly what we need to follow our application up - I'm hoping that detail will be included in the letter (for the 6 we applied to anyway).

Just agreeing that the there are many areas of Edinburgh with lots if schools in a close radius. I teach in one. We are hugely oversubscribed with non catchment requests and the council stopped schools from creating a non catchment class many years ago. I live in a commuter town on the outskirts and we have 6 primary schools, most within a 1 mile radius. The ease of the Scottish system is overstated. There are huge issues, depending on where you stay.

Yes. The money would be an issue, of course. They'd raise the class size limits rather than operate with some slack in the system. And there would be lots of bussing in kids from miles away to what has been deemed their 'catchment school' by an LEA that doesn't have any other choice. The people in the black holes would find that they were officially in the catchment for the incredibly unpopular school 5 miles away, even though here are 3 or 4 schools within a mile of their house.

And all the over-complex different types of schools with different admissions criteria (but it would be much better to get rid of all that anyway).

There are schools in Glasgow and Edinburgh with almost no outside space (victorian build primary schools with 4 floors and a playground mostly excavated from underneath the school). It's just the leafy suburban schools everywhere that get playing fields and a big grassy playground.

But Indy, having applied through both systems, the Scottish system is easier on parents (it may not be on schools and councils who have to deal with population flux etc). You know which school you are guaranteed a place at. You can try a placing request, but you also know it may not come off.

Down here you get to spend loads of time figuring out which schools you might have a chance of getting in to but you can never be certain. You can then apply and rank your 'choices'. There's lots of angst over that bit too. Then you wait months to find out if you've guessed correctly or if you've miscalculated/been horribly unlucky and have been allocated a school you've never heard of on the other side of the city. People really do rank their 6 closest schools and get none of them; then they can feel bad for not having had the 'foresight' to ignore their local schools and rank all the unpopular schools on the other side of town in the hope of not getting the school absolutely no one wanted. This system is absolutely hideous for parents (but probably easier for the LEA and the schools).

Both systems are equally crap if you move in to an area outside the usually admissions cycle. Then it's just a case of find a school with a place.

Our letter arrived and we got our first choice school. So, so happy and relieved that we can now tell our DD that she's going to school round the corner.

Hope everyone else who has been disappointed with their allocation is able to benefit from quick movement on the waiting lists.

Tiggytape, thank you for that.

Ds doesn't have any pressing health or social needs, it's just that I feel it's a great little school with an ethos I thoroughly agree with, and I feel he would really flourish there. It seems we lost out on distance.
Surely we would need a special specific reason to sway a panel - even though they only have a class size of 25?

Thanks Tiggytape. I shall sit down and have a good think about what to do.

i will get an email tomorrow i think,i forgot actually til i saw this.

already have ds1 in reception half a mile away,ds should get in,if he doesnt ill just puthim on the waiting list and hell stay at home til he gets in.

Just found out we are number 101 on the waiting list for our number one school??!!! Bloody hell. There must be a colony of children living underground closer to the school or something!

Happy with our 3rd choice school but totally flabbergasted that we're so low down on the list for 1st choice - and the man I spoke to actually thought that wasn't a bad position to be in??! They must have thousands on the list in that case!

101 on the list is...wow. How big was the PAN?

This is a hypothetical question, as I am happy enough with the outcome for us, but can anyone explain this bit of the email I got?

"If your child has not been allocated a place at one of your higher preference schools or if they have not been allocated a place at any of the schools you placed as a preference, this is because the schools were oversubscribed and your child did not fulfil a high enough criterion of the school's admission policy to be offered a place. An alternative offer has been made for you at the nearest school which had places available at the time of allocation and is listed below (ranked 21)."

What does the 'ranked 21' refer to? DS has been given his 2nd choice school so this bit does apply to us, but I can't work out (perhaps I am having a dim week day) what this means. I would ring, but I don't want to clog up the lines right now given that there are a lot of anxious people who have 'real' questions probably wanting to get through.

Hampshire stats:
14,291 children (97.76 per cent) were given a place at one of their top three choices.
13,169 children (90.09 per cent) first choice
879 children (6.01 per cent) second choice
243 children (1.66 per cent) third choice
327 remaining children did not get any of their preferences and were offered a place at their nearest available school.

Snazzy, does that mean that he is 21 on the waiting list for the 1st school choice?

lougle If so that would be moderately encouraging, although they have an intake of 50 so then again half the intake would have to drop out in that case. Hoping one of the school place experts on the thread will know

Lozario is that R school in Lambeth with 101 on the waiting list? That's crazy.

Snazzy - no news till one minute past midnight tonight! I seem to have no fellow sufferers tonight.

Will have to get drunk alone.

101

Is someone breeding clones?

Please help, my second child did not get a 1st choice even though we have older child in year 1 in first choice school,

we recently moved to another county and had to do a in-year transfer for our oldest child back in December 2012 but we did not get a place until end of Jan 2013 but when we applied online for our youngest deadline was 14th of Jan so we could not select the sibling option but we added on to notes that we have applied for in year transfer for our oldest so they can review before making decision.

we would like to appeal as there is no way we can be at two schools at same time and the fact that they did not look at our notes for in year transfer, thank you

I think you need to find out very carefully what the date for siblings to be considered is Buzz. Our sibling criteria is for children who will have a sibling at the school when they join. But I don't know whether the will is assessed as at the closing date of applications (in which case you wouldn't have been sibling because you didn't know at that date you'd have a place for your older one) or as at the date of allocation (in which case presumably you should have been sibling rule). I think you need to have a read of your information and phone the council if necessary to work out your next steps.

buzz call the school your oldest child is at and put him on the waiting list.

A bit late to this thread. We are due to find out tomorrow if DS has got a place at our local school.

I'm hoping all ok as his sister is in Year 1 and we are only 0.2 miles away.

Am shocked at a waiting list of over 100!

so sorry for those that didn't get the schools they wanted

It might not be the school, in our LEA it's the council right up until September. The school only get control of their waiting list from September onwards - they don't have the power here to add people before that (unless it is VA, etc).

But yes, as you will now have a sibling (even if you didn't at allocation) you should jump right to the top of the waiting list.