School admissions for sept 2016

[alien11]

Hi,
Just after some thoughts really. We are applying for schools for our child to start set 2016. In our area it's so so hard to get any school you would prefer. For example, our closest catchment school is 0.252 miles away from us but the cut off last year was 0.248 so our neighbour didn't get her child in. There are others closer but they are not good schools and I wouldn't want my child to go there.
I'm a qualified teacher so have a teacher head on and mummy head on. I've viewed many schools and have my 'favourites'

1. a village school, recently graded outstanding, 3 miles away, fantastic teaching witnessed, resources, pastoral care, enthusiasm and confidence from the children
2. catchment school(0.252 miles away) , good ofsted, very good academic statistics, I didn't get a good vibe from it- bit stuck in its ways & the reception area was a mess, all the resources falling apart etc.
3. church school ,1.7 miles away, outstanding school, links to child's pre school, great teaching, some great learning tools, confident children.

I'm taking Dh along to view no.1 &2 of our choices literally days before the submission has to be in.

My dilemma is what order to put them in, realistically 3 miles is some distance especially but 0.252 miles is a short distance but no one has got in the last few years being that close...

No.3 our child would be 7th criteria as not baptised etc. I have viewed another village school about 3.5 miles away that has 75 pupils in total and planned intake of 12. It's a tiny school with literally 3 rooms. The headteacher was lovely, knows every child. This school is 5 mins from my mum ( if childcare is needed when I return to teaching in a few years)

Sorry for the waffling!! Basically we re thinking to replace church option with tiny village one? As it stands she s highly unlikely to get into no.2 and no.1 depends on siblings etc.

Any thoughts? It's all very tactical :(

Hi teacher I think it's normally full or nearly full at lesst. I say this as one of my neighbours transferred their child to it mid term. Dh is adamant he doesn't want her to go there. I've discovered There are a couple of others I haven't visited yet so will call them in the new year.

It's that 3rd choice that's so tricky

Okay, so on what you've said, no. 1 you'd have got into 1/3 years, no.2 you would actually have got into in 2/3 years and only not got in in the year with a particularly high number of siblings.

And the other two?

Ok here's all the statistics info I can find so far on all the schools !

Can I butt in and ask where you find the distance info? We have made our choices, the one we want is one that our neighbour (same street, 100 yards further away if that) didn't get but they just took their second choice. I'd be interested to see where the furthest away family was that did get this school. Annoyingly DH went to a presentation about the schools which had some of this information but didn't note every single distance down (why would he?)

We are considering going on the waiting list (when we went on a tour we were told that all the places - two form entry as is common locally, and 60 admitted - were filled in Reception but that they had a new pupil "just last week" and this was in October, suggesting that the waiting list isn't long). Is it possible to find out the size of waiting lists after admissions, last year?

Have I read that list correctly?

Based on what you've written, last year you wouldn't have got into school 1, wouldn't have got into school 2 (the figures say you would, but you say a friend who lives closer didn't, so something is awry there), wouldn't have got into the church school and wouldn't have got into the school you've discounted.

I think you need to do some serious thinking there! At the moment, the tiny village school is looking to be your best 'banker' and the church school to be a waste of a place on the form if you only get three choices - you wouldn't have got in any of the last three years, by a massive margin? You can put a 'maybe a fluke' choice down if you have other safe ones, or lots of choices (we get 5). It's very risky if you other two aren't secure.

drspouse - it should be in the published admissions results.

Distance only counts if a school is oversubscribed, then it is used to distinguish between children in a given category.

eg
A - children with statemented needs, all get in
B - LAC, all get in
C - catchment siblings, all get in
D - other siblings, all get in
E - catchment children, all get in
F - out-of-catchment children, not all get in. The last admitted child lived 422m away.

In this example, it would be published as "F - 422m". "E - 125m" would means "all statemented, LAC and siblings got in, and otherwise you needed to live within catchment and within 125m of school".

We don't do catchments in our area, just distance in a straight line from school. The criteria for our part of our LEA only list criteria by school for faith/other special criteria schools, and then just generally for ALL community primary schools it says "LAC, then siblings with distance as a deciding criterion, then all other children with distance ditto". It doesn't distinguish by school or tell you how many didn't get in or give last year's distances.

I found an FoI request which gives the following. This is for 2014 entry. It doesn't give distance either.

Sch. No Orig OFFERS 1st 2nd 3rd Sib

1001 60 60 55 59 69 25

1002 60 60 59 42 30 23

1003 30 20 19 16 19 9

1006 30 30 53 34 46 24

1015 90 84 60 94 59 26

Hope that's at least vaguely readable. 1001 is the one we want. 1002 is the closer one that our neighbour put 2nd and so have we. 1003 is almost equidistant to 1002 but we aren't really interested in that one and haven't put it down, we didn't actually look at it. 1006 we looked at but didn't like and didn't put down. 1015 as you can see is not oversubscribed and is a bit far but we liked it apart from the distance so we've put it third.

(All the missing numbers are either village schools which may be lovely but cat in hell's chance of getting in, or on horrible estates which are thankfully way way distant from us).

Socially and educationally 1015 would be absolutely fine but it would be a pain in the backside for commuting. They told us numbers were similar in 2015 i.e. almost full but not quite, so we should be fine with that, we just vastly prefer 1001.

drspouse Google your council school admissions 2012,2013 etc. Ours is in an information booklet for the application.

libraries tiny village is currently third, Church one has gone as no chance. Local one neighbour didn't get into is number one followed by village one 3 miles away. We
Re viewing them all again after Xmas holidays so will see how we feel again.

dr wow your local schools actually have spaces! All the schools in out counsel are oversubscribed! Every single one..

*our council

Thanks alien and very sorry for hijacking, I have the booklet, it doesn't tell us distances unfortunately for last year.

Only two of those schools have spaces, 1003 which we didn't even look at, and 1015 which has 6 out of a 3 form entry but as it has more than zero, it's our 3rd choice. It's recently built three more classrooms for the third R/Y1/Y2 classes and will be building more as the current infant classes move up the school. Sounds like they should be doing that in your area. We also have new builds left right and centre, none of them are anywhere near 1015 but that's the school with the large playing fields that's been chosen for the new classrooms!

It's shocking around here! I can't believe every school within the council area (& most of the county!!) are oversubscribed.

Is it an area where many children go to private school? Are they relying on that? Or on home schooling? What are they expecting children to do instead? Take it in turns? Move away?!

dr I have no idea! The area certainly isn't one that have many people who could afford to go private. It's really not a good picture at all. :( I feel we ll have to go on waiting lists & hope she gets a place in a decent school.

It's shocking around here! I can't believe every school within the council area (& most of the county!!) are oversubscribed.

Don't read too much into that. Imagine a town where there are 3 schools each with a PAN of 60, so there are 180 Reception places on offer. Imagine there are 180 children who need places. If all the parents name all 3 schools as preferences the result will be that each school will have 180 applicants for 60 places. They will therefore all be massively oversubscribed. However, there are enough places to go round so everyone will get a place and there is a good chance that most people will get their first choice.

As long as parents can name multiple schools the result will be that most schools are oversubscribed.

The problem is there are way more children than places around here :( also 90% of the decent schools are one form entry. Two new schools have been built & this is the first year they'll take pupils but only 15 each

Are you an area with lots of busing children miles and bulge classes then? That's awful, and I think another reason to use your choices conservatively.

I have no idea what happens! I'm guessing some parents will not worry what school their child gets I guess. I know alot don't get any of their choices and get ones an hr or so away

drspouse - distances aren't published in my authority's booklet either. However, people usually request the info as a FOI request so googling " last admitted distance" finds it.

I've found this site useful for finding the distances of last admitted child for primary schools.

www.schoolcatchment.co.uk/

i used schoolsfinder.direct.gov.uk to get my distances, but on advice received from another thread i called the LA and got the distances they would be using for my preferences. they were about 1/10th of a mile less than the direct.gov site. i tried the schoolscatchment site but my postcode isn't covered

my first preference has been based on a sibling attending there already, and the rest are the first four closest schools but with an order of preference (we have 5 choices this year). not sure i can do much more than that. good luck OP.

Where on the directgov are the distances? I tried searching by school but it doesn't give that information under the individual school

drspouse use the first link in my previous post, you will need to pop your postcode in for the 'Schools' section and then it shows up the results according to distance, closest first. i'm sure each result listed also displays the distance. but again, double check these against your LA - theirs were less than this site!

That's the distance from my house to the school surely, not the distance the last admitted pupil lives?