Rejected my sons place offer for September, what happens now?

[PoppyPia]

We were allocated a terrible primary school miles away earlier this month for reception, I have thought about it and there's no way I can send my son there, so I have rejected the offer. What happens now?

I don't get how this happens. Surely like most people, when your son was born you began to consider what school might be best and as the years rolled by you gave it further consideration and checked the Ofsted reports of the local schools and checked out the admission criteria of the schools and made sure you met them?
I have to move to make sure my children went to a 'good' school. As the only one I was guaranteed a place in was 'satisfactory' (or whatever its called now).
I have several friends who also moved to get there DC in this school, as that year was a particularly big year and all the local schools were over subscribed.

Can you please answer people's questions as you have lots if experts (not me btw!) who are willing to advise but they do need the full picture. :)

You said earlier you couldn't afford private education has that changed?

The local school is c of e and prioritises religious children, but it does take others so I hoped we might get a place anyway. I did not list it for that reason- seemed like a waste of an option.

If you didn't apply for a school you are unlikely to get a place! Have you got your name on the waiting list there now?

So you didn't even bother to out the local school on the form? Are you quite wise?

You didn't list the local school that you hoped you'd get a place in?

OP, you are refusing to take advice and get the offer reinstated. You can't afford to home ed or go private. What exactly are you going to do in January then?

Well if you didn't apply then of course he hasn't got a place!

What kind of fool are you? Did you not read the application material?

Definitely hang on here Poppy, lots of very knowledgable people in here who can advise you. If you didn't list the local school as an option then it would not even have been considered by the local authority. Are you on the waiting list there?

...to be fair to Poppy I doubt she listed the school her son has been allocated either.

I get the impression you just listed all the outstanding schools that you didn't stand a chance of getting in, ever. Now the local school is full and you are left with no option. Poor DC.

Your best bet now is to get your name on the waiting list of every school you would consider. Hopefully you will get offered a place somewhere by September or January at the latest.

If you haven't applied and your name isn't on the lists though, you won't get offered another place.

as it is OP's first time through this minefield cut her some slack....
OP you would be well advised to take some of this good advice or you could be in bigger trouble than your child going to school with immigrants could ever be. that is your main objection right?

Tbh Poppy, you need a back up plan now. Get you DS's name down at all the schools locally you think are suitable. You are going to have to be very proactive now. Look at all admissions criteria for each school, see where your DS fits in and prioritise the schools where he is more likely to get a place quickly.

Go and visit all the schools you can, I hear you when you say this allocated school is not practical for work purposes but there must be other local schools which are practical.

It IS a minefield....I am fortunate that we have some good local primary schools locally and I am spared the challenges other parents have to cope with. It looks and sounds horrendously difficult for too many people.

Seriously then op, what are YOU going to do now? If you've been offered but rejected a place then no one's going to be doing anything for your son. You need to sort it out.

Ok, you need to know that unless you phone the LA you will not be on the waiting list for your nearest school. You need to contact them and ask to be added to the list. You should be quite high on that list, if you can see the school.

PoppyPia I feel for you, actually. You sound like you had an idea of how admissions would work logically, rather than knowing how they work actually.

It seems like your thought process went along the lines of:

-No point putting down in-sight CofE because we're not religious and if they don't give us our preferred schools he'll go there anyway.

-Put down 3 other schools which we might get a shot at.

Then, offers day comes and, shocked, you see that not only did you not get your preferred schools, you didn't get the local school.

So, you rejected the place offered, thinking that the LA would prioritise your DS because, after all, he doesn't have a place anywhere.

Now you're in a bit of a pickle.

Yes, OP it sounds as though you might have had some bad advice or made a lot of assumptions, but what's done is done. Right now, you need to make sure you are on the waiting list for every single school you could actually get your son to. Even a school that you really dislike might be better than having to home ed, and you can stay on the waiting lists and move your son as soon as a better place becomes available.

In the meantime, do make arrangements for what will happen if you don't have a place in September.

How much of a difference in fees is there between a private school and a full-time nursery place?

OP,

So where DID you apply to?

You didn't apply to your local school??? You seem to have thought that you would be given a place there even if you didn't apply...did you actually read any of the information available when you chose schools???

To summarise what you seem to have done:

• Assumed that you would automatically be given a place at your nearest school without naming it on your application form.
• Applied only for schools where you had no chance of getting in.
• Assumed that if you rejected the place that you had been offered, a) you would have a better chance of getting into one of your preferred school and b) someone else would do something for you.
• Now you are assuming that your child can stay at nursery for another term - have you checked this, as it may be as ill-based an assumption as all the others that you have made...

Which begs the question - did you read ANYTHING in the run-up to the application process? Talk to anyone? Visit any schools?

Are you now on the waiting list for your nearest school? Remember that waiting lists are kept in the same order as original over-subscription criteria, so if you originally applied only to schools that you were far too far away from, you will almost certainly not get a place there from the wating list either, as anyone who is closer to the school and chooses to add themselves to the waiting list will automatically leapfrog you.

So place yourself on the waiting list for EVERY school, starting from the one closest to you and working outwards. Don't just stay on the lists of your 'ideal' schools, as unless you move closer to one of them you almost certainly won't get a place there - as an example, the first child was admitted to my daughter's class from the waiting list in Year 3, nearly 4 years after original application.

Did you think the local authority had a crystal ball?

Seriously staggered you could have been so dim.

clam has a point often nursery fees are more than school fees worth considering.

There may be places that come up in September if children don't turn up. It would be unwise to pin your hopes on a sizeable number of private school parents sitting on state offers though - many may never have made a state application in the first place and others will reject promptly.

And even if there are rejected places leading to vacancies, they will be allocated to children on the waiting list immediately. So you need to get his name on lists for all schools ASAP. You can start him at one school and move him later if you keep him on the list at others you prefer and a place comes up.

That's a bit unkind, freddie. The OP clearly thought about this from the perspective of her one child. She wanted the best education possible for him, and thought, somehow, that a) her choices would be accepted and b) that if they weren't, her catchment school would take him.

I know that in my area all the preschools are given word to warn people to put their catchment school as one of their choices because people made the same assumption and didn't end up with a local school at all.

But how on earth could you not know that you have to APPLY to the school you want to get your child into? The school won't know you want to send your child there unless you APPLY.

Also, it seems like the OP hasn't been to see any schools at all and is making judgements based on what exactly?

I might be missing the point spectacularly, for which I apologise if I am, but seriously, how do you get to the point of having a child go to school and not know that if you want them to go to a school you have to APPLY. I might as well start a thread saying I'm disappointed DS didn't get into Eton. But. Oh. I never applied.