Primary admissions help please

[MrsGannicus]

Would like some advice from admissions experts please.

We live in Surrey and didn't get any of our 4 choices. I put all of our nearest schools (except for our 3rd closest which is in special measures).

We have been allocated a school 4 miles away. It is really weird as last year that school's distance for 90 places was 0.853km and it seems like a good school. Someone online told me last year they didn't get in there as their first choice and they only live 10 mins away.

I also know a friend who put our 2nd choice school 1st and got in. The school is our 2nd closest and what I thought was a done deal as it has intake of 120. We are 0.66km away and she is 0.736km away.

I will accept the place I have been offered but do I have grounds to appeal based on this? Would appreciate advice.

DS is a June baby so what are my options for keeping him at his private nursery?

Thanks!

Yes, 2 people further down the road got the nearer, SM school and 3 of us got the school 4 miles away. It is early days too so still a chance of getting in on the waiting lists.

Squiff15 - I agree with Tiggytape. Either the system was explained badly to you or it was deliberately misexplained (which happens far too often). There is absolutely no way they would be operating in the way you describe. They would face a huge number of successful appeals every year and the Schools Adjudicator would have stepped in and forced them to change. Individual schools cannot operate in the way you describe whatever they tell you. They are not told whether or not they are the applicant's first choice nor are they told which other schools have been listed.

The whole preference thing is a myth that still does the rounds and it annoys me so much.

The Times ran an article on Nancy Cameron's school allocation saying it would be unusual for someone to be allocated this school if it wasn't their first choice. I was busy at the time, or I fear I may have been one of those people who write to the editor!

Hi can someone tell me please, when you receive your offer from a school, is it usually from more than one school and you get to choose which place you want to take? (Like UCAS)

Inter No. If you meet the offering criteria for more than one school you will only be offered the place that you put highest up your preference list on your application form.

No only one offer from whichever school you placed higher preference which can accommodate you. So if you didn't meet criteria for a place at school 1, but did at 2 & 3 you'd be offered 2.

Agreed the preference thing is poorly explained. Thing is the Times quote is technically right - where there's a very popular school, lots of people will put it as first choice if there's any hope of getting it, so it would be unusual for the attendees to have not put it as first choice. That doesn't mean putting it as first choice influenced the result at all.

Technically all schools in my area are oversubscribed, but one will have been almost every pupil's first choice, and ds's school until this year was third or lower for almost every pupil.

Just updating for my own records. Emailed the council yesterday to go on a few other waiting lists for schools other than our original 4 preferences.

Distance criteria used for allocations will be on the Surrey website on 1 May and can phone up on 7 May to find out where we are on the waiting list for each school.

We were offered our 20th closest school!

Does anyone know if the waiting list information released on 7 May is likely to be the waiting lists as they stood on 16 April after initial allocations, or will they have started allocating declined places by 7 May?