admissions help please :)

[Undertheboredwalk]

I posted a while ago about understanding about how primary admissions and the 1st 2nd 3rd choices work. I think I understand them ok now, I have been looking at two schools for DD, the council have published the numbers from last years admissions and I'm trying to figure out how it's worked but struggling a bit, if anyone who understands can help if really appreciate it :)

DD Is baptised Catholic, both schools are Catholic but out of parish for us. Their admissions criteria are

1. Looked after children
2. Siblings
3. Catholic children from parish
4. Catholic children from out of parish

So DD comes under category 4 for both schools.

For school 1. 60 places available.

Allocated 1st choice - 57 2nd choice - 2 3rd - 1

Applied 1st choice - 76 2nd - 40 3rd - 25

For school 2. 30 places available

Allocated 1st - 18 2nd - 7 3rd - 1

Applied 1st - 18 2nd - 24 3rd - 25

What I'm having trouble understanding is why 1st school didn't allocate all places from 1st choices? Does this mean that of those 1st choices only 57 actually qualified for a place? So in thos circs DD would have gotten a place?
2nd school why did they not allocate all 30 places? And again if numbers were same DD would have gotten a place?

I know things can change dramatically year on year so can't take too much from the numbers but we had initially thought we have v little chance of a place in these schools, they're outstanding schools and around 1 mile away from our house. I'm hoping to be able to be a bit more hopeful of the possibility :)
We do have a 3rd choice which we would be pretty much guaranteed a place (local in parish school) and would be happy with that school, just would prefer one of the other two!

Thanks if you trawled through all of that

I think what happened is that those who put it down as 1st choice for some reason didn't accept the place when it was offered. Most likely they moved away. Also looked after children probably didn't apply for those schools if that makes sense.

There is always a chance and it's worth putting them down.

No. I think what happened is that 76 children had school 1 as their first choice. Only 57 of those were allocated a place because the rest were too far down the admissions criteria. There were also 3 places given to children who put the school lower down on their form, but who didn't get into their first choice. Because they were far enough up the admissions criteria for school 1 they were allocated places there instead.

This isn't really going to help you find out if you have a chance of a place. You need to know what criteria the last child offered a place was and how far away they live from the school.

The data the council has published is pretty useless without knowing which category those who applied were placed in - this is the data that you need to obtain somehow.

The reason the first school won't have allocated all the places to those who put the school first is because the part about preferences doesn't even come in to play unless a child is accepted to more than one school, based on the admissions criteria.

They way it works is that they look at ALL applications for a school (regardless of if they were put 1st, 2nd or 3rd - the school doesn't even see this data!) and puts them in the order of the criteria. So say for the 141 applications, there is for example 5 LAC, 40 siblings, 30 Catholic in parish, 40 Catholic out of parish and then the rest don't meet any criteria. As there are 60 places, the 5 LAC would get in, 40 siblings and 15 Catholic in parish. Then the rest are not eligible.

The preferences only come in to play if say one of those Catholic in parish got in to both schools as they met both sets of criteria, then the one the put 1st would be the school they'd get.

Whether the schools were listed as first choice or second of third is completely and utterley irrelevant and tell you nothing. What you need to know is how many were admitted under which category, and for school 1 what the tie-break distance was in lowest admitted category.

I don;t know why they;re even publishing the choices

Actually I do know why they're publishing the choices - it's so they can imply that you have to put that school as first choice to really be in with a chance of getting a place. Which is of course wrong.

Thanks all, this place is so helpful for this stuff! Just I hold with council now to see if they can tell me what categories were allocated. Will call the school if they can't help :)

Presumably there is a category 5 and a category 6 as well? (e.g Non Catholic in parish, non-Catholic out of parish).

Do you also know 'how much' catholic you need to be? e.g Are their rules about having attended services for 2 years at least 3 times a month.

I don't necessarily think this data has been published for any sinister reason, titchy. Our neighbouring LA publishes it for all their schools.

It does give some information about the school, just not what the OP wants. School 2 for example has more total applications than places but is actually undersubscribed since most of those aren't 1st choice and the LA seems to have the capacity to place those children in higher ranked schools. It looks like a good choice to put as a back up if you are happy with the school. And I wouldn't count on much waiting list movement in school 1, presuming those are offer day statistics.