What to do if you didn't get a school you want

[NynaevesSister]

1. Read this forum, and pay attention to anything that PRh47Bridge, Admissions, and TiggyTape say. They are the experts. If they say something you can rely 100% on its accuracy.

1. Accept the offer you were given even if it will be a cold day in hell etc. The council only has to offer you one place, if you turn it down they have no legal obligation to find you another.

1. There will be an Appeals/Waiting lists thread in here very soon, and there are threads from previous years. Read all of them for some cracking advice. Post your own story in the Appeals thread for advice.

1. You can go on waiting lists for schools and you can appeal even if you have accepted a place.

1. You can defer entry to the term your child turns 5. So a summer born child could start at Easter, giving you more time to hope a place comes up on waiting lists.

1. Listen carefully to anything anyone in point number 1 tells you.

But would she not have to start in year1?

Mrsvillers , I understand what your going through im not sleeping with worrying its awful . I hope you sort something out :)

Don't write off a school in special measures. Colleague's DS goes to a school which came out of SM lately and is thriving and doing very well there. I think there was an issue with leadership at the time of the inspection due to head having suddenly left.

Don't write off a CoE school because you are an atheist. Some such schools have less of a church ethos than non CoE ones.

Jade you can't defer the entire of the Reception year this way, just defer her start time in Reception. You can start her up to the term in which she turns 5. But she will still be starting in Reception. If you decided to wait the whole year she would be taken off roll and you would have to re apply as an in year application for year 1.

There has been a bit of a change about allowing August born babies to start Reception a year later but I don't know much about that. You would need to ask one of the experts here.

The change is just that admission authorities are required to look at each case individually when deciding whether or not to allow a child to start Reception in the September following their 5th birthday as opposed to going straight into Y1. However, in most cases they will still insist on your child going into the "correct" year according to age.

There are several families in our city who started HEing because they did not get any of the schools on their list. That's another possibility for people who end up with a totally unworkable allocation. Just be warned - at least two of the families I know have so loved the change of lifestyle into home ed that they would not now take a place at the first choice school if it were offered to them .