School Places offers

[Wyatt1980]

Help!!!! I’ve just realised I was supposed to accept my sons place online to start school in September and completely missed this I’m now in a major panic that he won’t have his first place choice of school all because I forgot to accept the offer. Someone please tell me I’m not the only one to have done this and what I can do to fix it. The deadline was 3 days ago 😭😭😭

I think legally they have to remind you.

See if you can accept online and if not call admissions. You might get through now ....

Did you get any reminder emails?

I would start calling the council ASAP

The portal for accepting has closed, there was no reminder but I have sent an email to the admissions team and will call them Monday. I’m just praying because the deadline was only 3 days ago they won’t have given his place to anyone else yet 😬 I’m just so gutted I’ve messed this up 😭😭

The admissions code makes it very clear that -

"Where the parent has not responded to the offer, the admission authority must give the parent a further opportunity to respond and explain that the offer may be withdrawn if they do not. "

so assuming you have had no reminder emails/letters/calls, they cannot remove the place simply because you have failed to respond to the initial deadline.

If oversubscribed and you were definitely going to get a place
You’ve lost your place

If not oversubscribed - you’ll be fine

PatriciaHolm -thank you so much you may have just saved me from a sleepless night. I’ve definitely not had a reminder so will get into them first thing Monday morning. Thank you so much

Did you not have a reminder?!

@Egghead81

That just isn’t true. Don’t scare OP with wrong statements

The reason I know is that it happened to my neighbour
It was high drama became I got in a she didn’t

OP. See this similar thread. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/4232987-Help-me-school-place
The people that know the rules say they must warn you before withdrawing an offer. Listen to them. (In particular: prh47bridge, admission, PatriciaHolm and PanelChair).

It may also depend on your LA. In ours, the places don't get withdrawn - it becomes the schools responsibility to make contact with the parent and the assumption is that they will take it up unless they reject it. Even then, the parent has to provide information on what arrangements have been made instead, e.g. home schooling, private ed or moving house and an application submitted.

One year we had to trace a family who didn't respond and found out they'd moved to Australia.

PatriciaHolm has reproduced the relevant sentence from the Admissions Code. The place cannot be withdrawn unless the parents have been sent a reminder and given a further opportunity to respond. If an admission authority is stupid enough to withdraw an offer without a reminder it should be straightforward to get the place reinstated at appeal.