How do I find out if a primary school is oversubscribed?

[softkitty79]

This is probably a silly question.
Is there some form of public record as to which local schools were oversubscribed for the last intake? Or is it a case of asking the LA or School directly?

thanks for any advice!

I asked the school directly, they were very helpful!

Our council's admissions website has a .pdf with the details of whether or not each school was oversubscribed last year and how far away was the furthest child who got in under distance criteria. So start with the LA website?

Thanks nothing obvious on the LA website so I've emailed the schools directly. But I will also ask if the LA have a doccument like that which sounds exactly what i need. thanks!

Look at the primary school admissions or starting school booklet of your council, this usually has a list of schools with application numbers etc at the front, gives you a rough idea.

My council also has a primary schools admissions brochure on their website, that has a table listing all the schools with numbers applying, and, if applicable, criteria last child was admitted under and what the distance cut off was.

I'm in Norfolk. I don't think our LEA do anything like this, though it would be useful. I applied for DS today and I'm worried. His big sister goes to the school we want him to go to but when she started (2011), the school was woefully under-subscribed. We just loved it and chose the school that was right for dd. It's since been rated outstanding and parents have moved their dc there in droves, they've gone from 15 per class on average to more than 60 applying and house prices have gone up by 60%. I'd love to know the last child admitted on distance and the number admitted from within catchment and without. As it is, we're just crossing our fingers.

Do you get sibling priority, Show?

He does thankfully. They reintroduced the sibling priority a couple of years ago. Before then, it didn't exist as it wasn't really needed. If you applied, you got in.

I'm trying to be optimistic. I think he's likely to get in. I hope so. I don't know what I'd do otherwise. I'd have to move dd to a different school and she's been there for four years. No after or before school provision here and I can't be in two places at once.

I chose to send dd out of catchment though so this is something we have to accept as a potential eventuality.

I get a bit muddled about how all the catchment stuff works.

Where we live, unless you want a religious school (we didn't), there's no catchment areas, so siblings at any distance get higher priority than all non-siblings (children in care or with statements naming specific schools excepted).

I live in a rural area so the catchments generally align with the borders of each parish and make perfect sense. Here the priority goes (excepting care/statements) in catchment with a sibling, in catchment without a sibling, out of catchment with a sibling, out of catchment without a sibling.

Usually it doesn't matter as people tend to go to the village/parish school. Out of the 30 in dd's preschool, only dd and one other child went out of catchment.

Then the outstanding ofsted grade happened. The schools are exactly the same, same staff, same results. It's meaningless but it's caused all sorts of hoohah.

Bond, our area is the same - siblings have priority, then distance, there are no catchment areas.
There is a website with all the distance maps on for London boroughs (schoolcatchment.co.uk?) which showed us we have no chance of getting in any schools so we're moving up north!