Primary School Allocation Day: Thursday 16th April Thread 2- let the positive vibes continue!

[MTWTFSS]

I only want good news for all of you- Do not disappoint me!!! :P

fluffy - don't lose hope. You must be very close to top of waiting list?

Just to add to the voices of 'don't panic' if you're in London.

I'm in Haringey and I well remember the panicked frenzy around primary school admissions. I'm in the centre of the borough though, so can't speak for the extreme west of CE and MH.

What I can say is that of people I know locally (lots!) who didn't get their first preference three years ago, they were either allocated a school which they're actually happy with and their children are still there or they stayed on waiting lists and moved within a couple of years at the most to their first preference school. One went private for a term, then transferred to their first preference when a place came up.

Also, that schools that were and are considered highly desirable don't necessarily live up to their reputations, and vice versa.

Honestly, there is so much movement in schools in the borough. I do understand the anxiety and to 'just know' but this is only the start of it all...

fluffy

there's still time, you must be near top of list and people will decline or move. don't give up yet

longest I don't know as the council said they won't open the waiting lists till the 5 may. I would hope we could get a place, but I think there must be lots of children just outside the catchment.

Other local options are dire

Also, if you aren't offered any schools, there will be 'bulge classes' established before the next academic year. I know a number of people who got their 'first preference' school that way, having originally been offered one lower down their list.

On the local news last night, they suggested Essex schools were at 97% capacity and would be oversubscribed within 2 years. We need around 20000 extra school places apparently.

I'm betting a lot of regions near to London are in a similar position as folks get squeezed out of the capital due to housing costs and pressure on school places.

The percentage "first preference" in oversubscribed areas doesn't mean a lot though. It depends on whether people bothered to put schools they knew they had no hope of getting into on the form or not. Some people's "first choice" might actually be a pretty duff option.

Some places only have three choices - when we were initially applying for DS before we decided to relocate, we only had three choices - it was actually hard to decide which school(s) to leave out and whether to make a tactical omission knowing you'd be likely to end up there if you got none of your preferences!

Tiggy- That is shocking about Richmond. You kind of wonder if people realise when they get frantic about which perfectly good school that they might end up with no school. (Wasn't there a rather over-sharing thread along those lines deleted a while back).

Those asking about Haringey catchments - I have just received the stats in the post. Looks like I was really lucky - only 7 siblings for this year, which is roughly half the usual number, and I still am only just within the distance criteria. Some of the catchments do look to have shrunk further but we would have been within catchment for 2nd choice too.

Yes, that's exactly what I did tiggy - there was no point in putting schools I didn't want lower down the form as, barring bulge classes, there are only 2 schools I am ever within catchment for. So I put a stupidly unrealistic choice top, my realistic first choice 2nd, another unrealistic choice 3rd and my realistic 2nd choice fourth. The last 2 were random guesses at which good schools might have bulge classes but I might as well have left them blank really.

Giles - Re getting first preference, I always think that is a bit misleading.

Say 90% get first choice (to make the maths easier). There will always be a number of siblings, in our area I reckon that's close on 50% (most people have two kids, and I reckon the bigger families like ours cancel out the smaller. Roughly half those siblings will be eldest). Siblings are top priority round here (barring SEN etc, church, etc. We don't have defined catchments so no 'out of catchment siblings' issue). So that has already brought the stat down to 80% getting first choice, or 1/5 not. Then take out all the people who live on the doorstep of a school, put down one that isn't that popular, got into a faith school on faith, etc. That actually leaves a pretty high 'failure' rate for anyone who ever had any doubt about their application, doesn't it?

But penguins - that's my point. According to the stats for my borough the least popular school in the whole borough has a catchment of 1.2 miles and I am further away from it than that. I am not within the distances quoted for any of the schools except the 2 I mentioned. So even if I'd put it down the four least desirable schools as fallback options on my form I would still have ended up with no school place if I had fallen outside the catchment for my 2 closest options - so I went with equally unrealistic but more desirable options instead. I am lucky I did have 2 realistic options. Most have 1 and some have none.

Sorry, I posted twice Lurker, was that my post about fretting about perfectly good schools?

I didn't mean people like you. There was a thread recently where someone was saying "OH MY GOD. If we don't get school X, we'll get an awful school" and people were pointing out that, in fact, all the schools in that area were good and they would get one of them. I was commenting on the irony of getting your knickers in a twist because you wanted X Brilliant School not Y Brilliant-but-not-as-Brilliant School when other locals were scared they wouldn't get a school at all.

Ah, sorry penguins I misunderstood. I thought you were saying people with no school place should have been less fussy. When Kirstie and Phil tell people they're worrying prematurely about specific catchments and they should just move to an area with lots of decent schools so they have options I want to yell at the screen. In Haringey it's the places close to lots of good schools that also have the "black holes". The least subscribed schools are also the furthest away for me.

I never referred to first preferences just the second colour of being placed in top 3.

I found it interesting that's all because across the region's it's meant to look as if most did get a ranked school. and if the trend is similar in my region it seems bizarre that I alone would know of several people myself included in a single area in the region that failed to get a ranked school at all.

second column

Sorry Giles, conflated your post with others mentioning first preference. The point about first choice stats misleading does still hold though.

Oh I've no doubt it is penguins

MN alone counts for far more people who didn't get first or indeed any, than stated by the article

longestlurker, the letters with stats of siblings/last offered places in distance etc that come with your offer only include schools where the oversubscription criteria have been applied.

It doesn't include schools where every applicant was offered a place.

I got a place, but my friend's DCs didn't. Which is a bit awkward.

I think I live further away than they do, too. And we both have DCs already in the school.