Primary school admissions and school preferences - how does it work?

[Meita]

Hi all,
DS is three and should be starting school next Sept (eek!), so like so many others, we are looking at schools and trying to get to grips with the system. I think I have it pretty much down for all the essential bits but still a few questions remaining.

Ok so as far as I understand, we put three schools by order of preference. The LEA checks for each of our preferences if we get in. In the case of the faith school, they do this in conjunction with the school board, i.e. the school decides according to their criteria if DS is offered a place or not. If we get in more than one school on our list, we are offered the one we listed with the higher preference. If we don't get in any of the three, we are offered a place at any random school that still has places. So far so good, right?

Now for the complicated, sorry it's long!

So, what I have been wondering, is how it actually works, how they allocate the places.
Let's assume a child lets call him Aaron, lists 1) faith school 2) local school 3) other school and 'gets in' both 1 and two. Said child would then be offered a place at 1.
Now, school 2, the local school, doesn't know that Aaron had their school as second preference, and obviously they don't know if he would qualify for a place at school 1. And hence that school doesn't know that he will not be using one of the 30 spaces at school 2. So when they compile the list of 30 names who get into school 2, they'd have Aaron on there too, but Bertie, who lives a bit further away, but has school 2 as his first preference, may be only number 31.

What happens then? Let's say Bertie got into his second choice. Will Bertie be offered a space at his second choice? Or will they realise first that Aaron in fact won't be taking up a space at school 2, since he will be going to school 1, and hence Bertie, as 31st on the list, actually moves up to 30 and thus gets offered a place at school 2, which is his first choice?

Ok I understand it is a bit of an academic question but I am somehow really interest in grasping how exactly it works!

Does anyone know? Who would know, I mean, where would I go to find out?

Where I am (and you put six schools on your form), the schools and LEA effectively rank all children who have applied to the school. These are then compared, so anyone with an offer on a school that is higher up their preferences gets removed from the lists of schools that are lower down. And everyone else moves up on the rankings. This keeps happening, until all preferences are accounted for.

There are also rounds of offers where I am, so there is a fair amount of movement between the first offers and subsequent.

Does that help?

You have got the right idea. In practice it's fine by a computer and it will automatically select down to Bertie. School two will never know that Aaron was eligible and just get a list of the 30 pupils they will be admitting.

Done not fine

I don't think school 2 would ever be told that Aaron had qualified for a place there. The school places get sorted out and then the schools get told which children have got places at their school.

I presume these days it is all down to complicated computer programs which run through all the permutations, so the schools only get a final (first round allocation) list.

It must have been a nightmare a couple of decades ago, like planning school timetables - I always felt sorry for the teacher given the task of working out timetables at the school where my mother used to teach, as it involved weeks of huge tables covered in bits of paper that had to be moved around and manually cross-checked to make sure that the same teacher/pupil/classroom didn't appear in two slots simultaneously. Now there are programs for that too.

Wow that was fast! Thanks all :)

ScienceRocks, I guess the only problem with that would be, like, if Aaron was 31 in school 1, his first preference, but let's say 15 with school 2 his second preference. Then Bertie, perhaps 15 with school 1 but that being his second preference, and 31 in school 2 his first preference. Then, neither of them could be removed from a school's list before the other one had been removed... Bertie would not be offered a place at his first preference as he was number 31, hence staying at 15 with his second preference, and accordingly Aaron would not move up to thirty in his first preference. So it might end up for them both to be offered a place at their second choice whereas they could have just switched over and both have been at their first choice.

Well, helps a lot in any case, so thanks! And the above situation would be quite a coincidence and not very likely I guess!

Uh, now what's this about subsequent rounds of offers? I thought I was starting to grasp it all, but this, have never heard of...?!

Subsequent rounds are to deal with places allocated in the first round that are rejected for whatever reason - family moving away, child going to private school instead etc. This is when waiting lists become relevant, as places are allocated to whoever is highest on the waiting list (even if they have already been allocated a place at another school). But for most people the second round is irrelevant.

The subsequent round of offers comes after the deadline for accepting or declining your offered school.

For instance my DS was given none of our choices. After a few days he was offered 3rd choice (fraud application discovered) and after the deadline for accepting he was given another offer of our 2nd choice. Happily he is at 2nd choice now.

Mhm I think I'm getting it!

So, if we were offered our second choice, but wanted to hold out for our first choice - would we a) accept second choice and at the same time go on the waiting list for first choice? Or would we b) have to decline second choice?

Assuming a), if we were then subsequently offered a place at first choice, would our second choice place which we were thus not using, despite having accepted it, be given to whoever was top on their waiting list?

I can see how it all can draw out forever, and that is even before dealing with appeals! Wowsers. When I grew up there was just 'the school' and that's where you went if you lived there.

Second and third rounds of offers play a huge part where I am because it is such as densely populated area and not enough primary school places! One of my friends was in the high 20s on the waiting list for her first choice school, so accepted what was offered (her fourth choice). She moved to 14th after the second round of offers, then got a place on the third round. That's very common in my area.

Meita, you've got it!

Yes, you would accept whichever school you are offered and go on the waiting lists for schools at a higher preference. Some LAs automatically add you to the waiting lists for any preferred schools which weren't offered. Other LAs need you to phone and put your own name down.

There are very very few circumstances in which you would decline the offered school- basically only if you can make alternative arrangements (such as home schooling/private) and feel that you would rather have no school place than send your child there.

Thanks! Now for the important bit, which schools to choose... (not helped by the fact that we live on LEA border with apparently wildly different systems)

My biggest tip is to research past admissions and use your choices realistically.

At least one school on your form should be your 'banker'. The one you would have got into basically every year. You don't even have to like that school that much- you aren't comparing it to the other schools you've listed or looked at, you are comparing it to being allocated X random failing school right across town because you didn't get into any of your preferred schools. I know some areas, eg. of London, even this isn't possible. But a lot of people would save themselves a lot of heartache by having a 'better than the awful random school' on their list. Even if it is only to stay there whilst you wait on the waiting list for other places.

It was stressful tiggytape :)

In fact back at Easter time you were helping me put together a case for appeal (he's at a middle school) but thankfully it was not needed in the end :)