FInding out chances of getting into local schools

[BendingSpoons]

We have recently moved house. DD is 2, so not starting reception for a while yet, but I have been having a look at schools. I am trying to work out which schools DD is likely to get a place at. Our nearest schools are: 1) Catholic, 2) Juniors only (no obvious corresponding infants). There are then several schools further away. Is there a way of finding out who they have admitted in previous years e.g. for the Catholic school do they fill all their places on faith grounds, for the further away schools how far out to they typically go on distance (rather than siblings etc)? I know things change year on year but at this point we have no particular preference of school, other than hoping to be close to home so would like to have an idea of realities before getting our hopes up about a particular school.

Yes, that should all be available from the LA.

If you look on your councils website under school admissions they will publish a booklet detailing all the schools and their admission criteria. It also says what happened in 2017.

Obviously numbers may change by the time yours goes but it's a good starting point.

www.192.com/schools/

This seems to be a good checker, although you many not find the information you are looking for re. faith schools as they tend to admit children on religious grounds before distance. Hope it helps.

Thanks. I have now managed to find more information on the LA's website. The Catholic school says N/A next to 'furthest distance in metres to which the school has offered a place in distance category, which presumably means all their places go to their other categories (faith, siblings).

Have a search around on your local council website. It should all be there under the schools section. Might take a bit of searching though as some council websites are better than others!

School catchment.co.uk is brilliant. It show the areas where children got in to particular schools on a map.

Don't rely on any site/data that isn't published by the LA.

Thanks everyone, that's useful advice. I probably need to contact the faith school directly and find out if they generally offer all their places based on faith. Their catchment area looks big because it's different criteria.

The faith school I work in would also have n/a next to distance but for the reason that distance isn't one of our admissions criteria

I would have a look at the admissions criteria for the schools together with the info published by the LA. Just because they are faith, it doesn’t mean they have identical admissions criteria. For example, c of e aided schools can be a lot more faith driven than c of e controlled schools who may not have faith as a criteria at all. It’s always worth checking out precise wording.

For the local authority info, doesnt this only show those who got offers on offer day and doesnt take into account those who may have been on the waiting list and got in later on?

They can give info for the different admission rounds.