Primary school application - relevance of nursery

[Holiday5]

Hello, I'm stressing about my DD's application for a reception place in 2020. Wondering if anyone knows why the application for primary school asks for the child's current nursery, and if/how this info is used to decide their place?

We've submitted our preferences for three schools, we're within their catchments (towards the outer edge) but all three are oversubscribed. Our first two choices are great (neither have nurseries), the third isn't great, but we put it down as a worst case scenario, to avoid our geographically closest school which is terrible.

Hate the whole illusion that you're given any choice! But my latest panic is that DD's nursery which i named on the application has just had an awful ofsted review, (the manager left recently and it has massively suffered). I'm looking at another nursery next week as want to move DD (I hate her having to move but also hate the idea of her learning nothing there.)

My worry is...is DD's application now looking like a kid from the wrong side of town at a cr*ppy nursery to boot - should I edit the application to say 'other' nursery so she can't get tarred with that brush? Does her nursery have any bearing on her chances?

Do they ask for the nursery name purely so the children at a school's nursery get preferred entry to that school? If so, why are the non-school-linked nurseries listed in the drop-down list? Does anyone know? Help!

It has no bearing at all unless it’s in their admissions policy that they take children as a preference from a school attached nursery.
This is very uncommon.

Look at their criteria’s, it’s looked after children first, then EHCPs then siblings within catchment area and then those located within catchment by distance first.
You also need to look at this years to see how many children that didn’t have siblings got in this gives you a good idea. It also tells you the furtherest away within catchment too so you can see if you have a chance.
I can’t remember if we had to put DS nursery on but would imagine it is for transition, ie school going in etc.

For my Ds primary 12 within catchment area did not get in due to the sibling criteria

The nursery is not going to be used as any kind of deciding factor - they merely ask for it so that when the schools get their list of who their pupils for next year are, they can see where they currently are. Most schools will send the Head of Reception or Head of EYFS to visit each local nursery to see the kids in a familiar environment during June. If they don't ask for it on the application forms, they would have to send out a request for this info in April/May and 80% of parents wouldn't reply.

You don't get a choice, you get to express a preference.

Your preferences as described above may not have been wise. Your geographically closest school may be terrible, but using all 3 of your choices for more distant oversubscribed schools puts you in a position where you might well not qualify for a place at any of your 3 choices and will then be allocated somewhere where there is a space. That could be somewhere that is just as terrible as your geographically closest school, but is also 7 miles away. Being assigned a terrible school is unpleasant, but given a choice between a terrible school a stone's throw away and a terrible school 7 miles away, the former is preferable.

It has nothing to do with nursery and nursery place is no guarantee of a place at the school. They ask for nursery because if your child is offered a place they will send a reception teacher along to the nursery to chat to the nursery teacher and find out about your child to help with transition etc.

@Namechanger212333333333 Thank you for this, do you know where i look to find out how many children without a sibling got in last year?

@ElluesPichulobu Ahh that makes sense, thank you! Believe it or not the terrible school is also oversubscribed. The only other two schools in our area are a catholic one (we're not catholic) and another one that's the furthest away and in the opposite direction to both mine & husband's work. Just having to keep fingers crossed.

Your local authority should have all the details of who got into each school on their web site. In order of the admissions criteria for each school.

The terrible school being oversubscribed means you are in great danger of getting assigned a different terrible and also far away school. Good luck. Every year on the day school places are allocated there are threads started by people who did exactly this strategy and end up with a totally unacceptable school - if you are unlucky do ask for help here. It's not totally hopeless - occasionally those threads end up with some good news at the end.

@ElluesPichulobu The thing is we're not in the catchment area for any other schools... so all we've done is put the schools we are in the catchment area for in order of our preference, as we're asked to do. We've leaving off one we really don't like, which happens to be our closest, as we'd genuinely prefer DD didn't go there. I looked up the stats from last year and children from further away than us got places in our first & second choice schools so feeling better now! Thanks all for your help.

@Holiday5 glad you managed to find the stats from last years entrance and hope it has reassured you a little!
Next step after this is secondary... haha!
We’ve already started thinking about this and our next house move even though DS is in reception and DD is six months 🙈😂

Its difficult as there's really no pattern. DDs year of 60 had something like 50% siblings, then 4 sets of twins!

Yes nursery is so teachers can visit children in nursery once they accept a school place.

What Ellues and RedWine said.

Nothing to do with it affecting your chances of getting in, and everything to do with the school being able to visit the Nurseries the new intake currently attend before they move up.

The data is used with Council planning to gauge nursery and child minder capacity within an area. X amount of children do not attend nursery or childminders and suddenly appear on school data when they apply for Reception class.

Every child is given a deprivation score based on income, postcode, employment, health, crime etc from information Council gather along the way. This is just another way to gather information on the population to plan for the future.

I hope you get the school of your choice OP, but can I say please reconsider moving your child for her last two terms of nursery. She has another big change coming up in September and even if OFSTED designate the nursery provision poor she will be learning, enjoying being with children she knows, in an environment she knows.

If you weren't aware that the provision was poor before the inspection then your child was happy there, and you were happy for her to be there, and that is what is important. They will probably put in extra resources fairly quickly so she will get the benefit of that, but for nursery children the learning is about relationships, independence, resilience, curiosity and having fun.