"As the Cros flies" - did Barnet Council get it wrong

[simonandsherry]

What a stressful 24 hours!

Sadly, my little girl didn't get her first choice. We live in London and know competition is fierce but given we live within 0.5miles, we thought we had a decent chance.

Sadly, it wasn't meant to be.

I've checked with Barnet and they've taken the measurement from our house to the school to be 0.646miles.

However, using a variety of online mapping tools, my measurements come out at 0.569 miles/0.557 miles.

The discrepancy (0.089miles/143meters) which I know sounds small could just make all the difference.

I've emailed the admission team at the council and our 1st choice school to see what they say.

Am I clutching at straws?

Have you used your postcode when checking the distance yourself? If so, it may be that the postcode covers a wider area - and that when you have used online mapping tools, it has taken the mid point of the postcode, whereas the local authority have measured it to your actual house. I wonder if it's that. Definitely worth checking with them though.

143m is small. Yes, check it out, but it is probably within the margin of error for mapping tools. Where did you map to at the school and have you checked what their reference point is?

Do they definitely use "crow flies" distance, not walking route?

If the desired school has two entrances, the council may be using only one of them for their calculations, rather than the one nearer to you?

Worth checking with them though.

All is not lost. There's still 6 months until Autumn term and people are always moving in and out of the borough. A few years ago my dd wasn't initially offered her first choice but she was put on a waiting list and was given an offer a week before the start of term.

Is there a fixed point of the school to which you need to measure? The gate on 'x' road kind of thing? Some criteria are very exact.

Yes, where did they admit to? If it was 0.3 miles it is all totally academic.

You may have measured to the nearest part of the school grounds, whereas the official measurement might well be 100 metres away in the middle of the school hall. You've probably also measured from your gate rather than the datum (usually the centre) point of your house.

I think some councils use mid point of the postcode dont they? I am in London too and when I rang my council to ask for my distance they did the calculation without taking my house number - so could only have used midpoint of post code.
We got in to our 1st choice by the skin of our teeth luckily

They don't Vickster. All hell would break out. They presumably had your details from your name, reference or whatever.

I'm sorry to hear you didn't get your first choice. I do think you are probably clutching at straws TBH, I am sure they have a very careful method as otherwise they would be having to admit to and reshuffle probably thousands of children every year!

If you are red hot keen on the first school then waiting list is probably the best plan, but most of the schools around Barnet are pretty good all things considered so why not see how you get on with the school you have been given (2nd choice round here is still a pretty good result!).

One of the single-form entry primary schools here in SE13 offered its furthest place to a child living 161m away so I'd say a discrepancy of 143m has the potential to be significant. That said, you really need to know the home to school distance of the last place offered before getting your hopes up.

Also, although you didn't get your first preference, your post suggests that you may have been offered a place at one of your other preferences. Round here, a significant number of families who were sensible about listing schools they stood a decent chance of getting into, have been allocated none of them. Revisit the school you've been allocated and remind yourself of all the positive reasons that led you to placing it on your application in the first place. And be grateful you're not one of the 200 or so Lewisham parents who missed out on everything on their lists.

Vickster99 - Either they had your details as Penguins suggests or they simply gave a rough distance using the postcode rather than consulting the computerised system they use for admissions purposes.

simonandsherry - Barnet measure from the Post Office address point for your home (usually roughly in the middle of the property) to the school's main gate. The system they use for these measurements is very accurate. It is highly unlikely they would have got it wrong unless they have measured from the wrong house (which does happen sometimes) or used the wrong gate (rare but I have known disputes for some schools as to which is the main gate). Their system is far more accurate than online tools, most of which will measure from the centre of your home postcode to the centre of the school's postcode. But it is worth checking that they measured from the right house to the correct gate.

The council's measuring system is always going to be accurate as they can measure from the two points to below 1 metre accuracy when required - the computer systems used all based around the Ordanance Survey data.

Having said that the systems you used will also be based around the same data, so whilst the variation in distance at 143 Metres sound small in reality it is a large variation. If you had said 14 metres I would say that is the difference in accuracy of the LA system against what you can measure, but not 143 metres.

There is obviously something different between your measures and the LA measures. The most obvious answer given it is straight line distance is that you are measuring to a different main gate of the school. That is always going to be slightly contentious but you need to talk to the LA admission office and establish exactly what gate is being used - do not talk to the school as they may well not be 100% sure which is being used. If it is the same main gate and the same house then you need to go to appeal and to see if anything else becomes apparent. If it is a different main gate from that you have measured to, then you need to establish what is the main gate that is being used by the pupils coming into reception year because that is the main gate that should be used for distance measurement. If there is a discrepancy there then that does not get you a place, it just results in a lot of chaos and extra work for the council as they will need to remeasure all applicants distances to see how it affects the applications as to who should have got the places.

This is not going to be resolved quickly and you do need to consider other alternates as the probability is that the distance measurement is right and your distance measurement is wrong.

Also worth considering that if they have measured your address incorrectly, they will have measured everyone's address incorrectly, as they used the same system for everyone; so re-measuring may not produce a place, as the 'catchment' would effectively shrink.