Have you been affected by the primary school place shortage?

[choicemyarse]

Have you applied for a primary school place recently and what was your experience?
Our 3 year old won't go to school until next year but in our area (in London) there seems to be a serious crisis in primary school places and I am concerned she won't get in anywhere. There were 274 families in our area that got NONE of their six choices and were asked to go to schools miles away from their homes (in rush hour traffic in London this is a very long commute).
The Local government authority recently posted a news release about this, which explains the school place crisis as a result of restrictions on local authorities to build their own schools (because they must prioritise free schools and academies).

www.local.gov.uk/web/guest/media-releases/-/journal_content/56/10180/7171350/NEWS
Personally, I am not interested in sending my child to a free school or an academy (for a variety of reasons) but more importantly, I just want a decent local school my child can walk to and this isn't being provided.

I'm involved in a local campaign around this issue (which is why I've namechanged) but I've been on mumsnet for years and had lots of good advice about schools, babies, etc.

Please post your experiences here and hopefully we can do something about this.

(And this time without being flip - I know a family in this exact situation. They drop their eldest child at a childminder on the other side of the borough, dash back to drop the younger one at the local nursery where she was already settled and they have help with local emergency pickups, etc, then park at the station and hope the train gods smile on them. It is expensive, time-consuming and exhausting, and particularly galling when they see children driven in from other boroughs to the school a five minute walk away from them, because they were admitted under faith criteria or sibling criteria, where the family is no longer local. Or my particular favourite, siblings of children admitted under faith criteria, but who don't take up faith quota places.)

That's pretty bad, RM!

Jassy, I do not support selection on faith criteria for schools primarily funded by the state.

It's bonkers, isn't it? The trouble with the sibling criteria combined with the faith one is that it enables them to keep out most of the heathen and/or poor riff-raff.

Jassy, congratulations on upcoming baby!
We have several faith schools near us as well but as atheists we are unlikely to get in (not particularly interested either but beggars will be).
I totally agree that the system is set up for gaming and it's infuriating. But what also boils my blood is situations where free schools that have been set up elsewhere are under subscribed and yet we have a huge shortage in our area.
We have friends who paid twice as much for a flat next to a school and are planning to move as soon as the first one gets in. I thought I was above that and just wanted a local school but at this rate there don't seem to be any!

Then they go through it all again for a secondary school space

Thanks choice!

Found out today that they're keeping the bulge class at our nearest primary (CofE) for next year, so at least we stand a chance of getting somewhere. It means they'll have 90 kids with only max 30 under faith criteria, so even with siblings of previous bulge classes we might get lucky there (or elsewhere). Slightly hopeful!

Random I can't think about that now. Actually I'm hoping secondary will be better as we are very close to a good secondary (as long as we don't have a surprise boy as it's a girls' school).
Jassy, that's good news about the bulge class, hope it works out.

The funny thing is I moved here from Canada where primary school places are stress free so it's a big culture shock.

It never used to be like this - has changed hugely in the 15 years since I applied for my eldest.