Primary school place if I didn't fill out the application form for dd?

[Reastie]

Just intrigued. dd will be going to school in September. We have her at a private school nursery and are intending her to go to the private school. On this basis, we didn't fill in the school application form of preference for her state primary school. assuming we have no sudden and unanticipated changes in finances this won't be an issue, but I have been puzzling to myself what happens with her state primary place. Will we get a letter on Thursday offering her a place at a school of their choosing (which we will then turn down for the private school) or how does this work in th is situation? It's been something I've been wondering for months but can't find anything online about this.

In our LEA, the health authority will not share their info, so it's dependant on the nurseries passing info on.

They don't have a choice under multi agency working

I only found out the deadline for applications was approaching because I happened upon a poster at the GPs surgery a week before the deadline when I needed to apply for DS1. I'd been there a couple of weeks previously and hadn't seen a poster then.

Given the difficulty getting an appointment at the GPs it's quite easy to need an appointment and end up getting one for a week or two later so I could have easily missed it. No poster up at nursery, no letter, nothing in the newsletters from the council or in the local papers, I rarely used the library as it was open limited times that clashed with nursery, most of ds's friends at nursery were september babies which meant they weren't applying that year and so it wasn't really a topic of conversation when I was chatting to them, plus all of them seemed to be 'the eldest' so nobody with an older child already at school to say 'have you applied yet?'

And although it's easy to say it's your responsibility to register with a GP, once you have everything gets sent to you - HV visits, jabs, etc etc so you get used to things arriving. The registering a baby with the gp tends to happen quite seamlessly as you know you need to go for the 6 week check (and ds2 needed to go for his newborn check as they didn't do it in hospital so he was seen within a couple of days) and it all gets sorted and done as part of the flow of things. I'm old enough to be from an era when you just went to the local school and there wasn't the same big process there is now, you just rang up and it was sorted. If you don't know about the process then it is easy to assume that you will be contacted or notified before the deadline - particularly when the local council website is horrible to use and information really difficult to find. If you're not used to the long timescales then it is easy to be caught by surprise.

Our old neighbour's children went to the local Catholic primary school's nursery and did not speak much English. Her twins did not get a place in reception as she hadn't applied for them, she had misunderstood the process, English being her 3rd or so language (they were from DRC). They moved away from the area, I don't know what happened in the end.

We have three children whose parents haven't filled in the application forms and have called in today to ask why they haven't got a place.

The OP did know the deadline though. She didn't apply because she didn't need a place (which will hopefully work out fine for them). All she didn't know was whether some sort of automatic allocation took place anyway.

I think there's plenty of publicity out there but if you are excluded from communication within society anyway because of language or other issues then yes you may miss this.

As I said, my friend two children at the school already, walked past a poster about it on the notice board 4 times a day and still forgot to apply for child 3................

To be clear the three parents who popped in today knew the deadline ...they just didn't bother.

This happens at secondary level as well. A girl in ds class at school hasn't been allocated a secondary school place yet as parents didn't apply. This was despite them having an older child at the local secondary and also doing the rounds of visits to others. We saw them at all the schools we visited but because they decided to stick with the one their eldest is already at they thought they didn't need to apply because of the sibling rule.