Only one school in catchment- what are our options?

[Crolisd]

DD due to start school next year and I’m just figuring out the system of applying. There is one infant school in our catchment area. I’m not thrilled about DD going there but it’s not horrendous. Can I try to put nearby better schools (but out of catchment) down as first choice? Or will that lessen DDs chance of getting into our local school and increase her chance of being allocated a different much worse school?

Pretty normal to just have one catchment school. You can absolutely put schools you prefer higher up your preference list and it won't affect your DD's chances of the local school.

How oversubscribed is your nearest school? How far away did the last child admitted to the other schools live from the school itself (info usually on council website). There are lots of factors including whether schools admit by catchment, faith, siblings etc etc

@Themostwonderfultimeoftheyear

Pretty normal to just have one catchment school. You can absolutely put schools you prefer higher up your preference list and it won't affect your DD's chances of the local school.

It might if a lot of people put the school down as their first choice.

You need to find the stats on the local council website of the other schools. Are they over subscribed? How many places get allocated to out of catchment area… what’s the distance of them as well.
This will give you an idea as to whether it is even worth applying for them!
Here our local primary school is over subscribed, those out of catchment area do not get in..

It might if a lot of people put the school down as their first choice.

Not sure if things have changed but when we applied for schools for dd we were told this didn't matter. That schools didn't know/see if they were 1st choice or not. So the LEA or whoever oversaw admission would see if there was space for your first choice applying the admission criteria, if not then see if there's space for the 2nd choice again applying the admission criteria. The fact that the 2nd choice school was 2nd choice had no bearing on where you were on priority.

Not sure if this is different in different areas?

Yellow belly cat is right. They can't see your preference order. Just put them in the true order you like. Won't affect local chances.

It absolutely makes no diffeence if you put first second or third.

If massively oversubscribed and you put 100 its still done on admissions criteria - so if you are nearby you would have preference over someone further away who put 1st.

It doesn't matter how many people put the catchment school as first choice if the OP lives closer. Not putting it as first choice won't disadvantage them.

@GingerAndTheBiscuits I believe that that is only the case if they rank higher in the admissions criteria anyway. My understanding is that if OP puts an out of catchment school as first choice and catchment school as second choice and the first choice can't accommodate then the second choice will consider the application exactly as if they had been first choice. So if OP is higher up the criteria than someone else she will get the place even if the other person put the school as first choice. I'm sure one of the admissions experts will be along slowly to prove or disprove my understanding!

I looked at the statistics for previous years admissions to find out what the likely furthest distance was for schools when I applied.

Ah can see lots of people posted the same while I was typing!

@Themostwonderfultimeoftheyear is absolutely right.

The only reason your preference comes into it is they will look down the list and see if you are offered a place at your first choice school. If so great. Otherwise they look to seenif you are offered a place at the second choice school...etc etc...

Apologies for any confusion there, quite right that preference isn’t taken into account (though I have seen parents asked at appeal where they put the school on their list!)

Advice re: over subscription criteria and previous admissions still stands though!

Just put schools in preference order, it will not risk losing a place in your local school

Put down other ones you have a chance of getting but always include catchment school too

I rank admissions as part of my job. You should put the schools you apply for in the order you prefer them.
All applications are processed, ranked and sorted by the oversubscription criteria for the school and then subranked by distance. Preference only comes into it if you are above the offer threshold for more than one school.
With our schools it is usual for children to end up applying for more than one of our schools so they will have a different position on each list because they will be in a different criteria and will have a different distance. However, population density, birth rate and PAN have a major influence on whether you might be above the threshold for two neighbouring schools.

If you have younger dc look at the sibling policy for out of catchment as you may land up with kids at different schools if you don’t go to your catchment school.

Thank you everyone for your replies. DD does have a younger sibling so the advice about checking the sibling policy is especially helpful

I was sent this link which I find a fascinating explanation of the preference system, assuming it's accurate (ignore that it says 11+)

www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/schools/equal-preference-system

Here’s my example:

Catchment school - pretty poor. Awful ofsted.

Spent a good couple months looking at data on all local schools (readily available on your local council website).

Applied for 3x schools, none of which were in catchment. We did this because our catchment school is never oversubscribed. It had a really bad ofsted & numbers are low. They can admit 60 but only got 25 this year 😱 so we knew if all else failed, we’d get our local school regardless.

I wouldn’t have applied to all non-catchment in the area we used to live as our catchment school was heavily oversubscribed & if we failed on our 3 non-catch requests, we wouldn’t have got into the local school as a fall back.

So make sure you know are researching your local schools before you make any decisions.

For us:

1st choice was another very nearby school that’s very popular.
2nd choice was probably our favourite school but a bit further away
3rd choice was simply a school we liked but not our fav. Would have been happy to get it but preferred the two above.

We got our second choice. Our first choice had a huge siblings in catchment admission this year, 18/30 children are siblings in catchment. They didn’t admit anyone outside catchment this year. Looking at the data on distance, we’d have got into that school for the last 8 years. But this year, nope. Really is hard to predict but you can give it a good shout by knowing your stuff on all local schools! The school we got hasn’t been oversubscribed for the last 8 years & we knew that we’d have a good shout. It doesn’t have a uniform and it really puts people off! 🤷🏼‍♀️

[quote OverTheWater]I was sent this link which I find a fascinating explanation of the preference system, assuming it's accurate (ignore that it says 11+)

www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/schools/equal-preference-system[/quote]
Yes, that is an accurate description of how the equal preference system works. All admissions in England use this system.

Our catchment school is a fantastic infant school which unfortunately feeds in to a terrible junior school. There are also two schools closer to us (one so close we can hear the children when they're playing outside!) Both great schools, both always over subscribed- but they aren't our catchment school.

We put the closest school as our first choice, then second closest as second choice, and the catchment school as third choice. We were offered second choice to begin with, but DD was high on the waiting list for our first choice school and she was thankfully offered a space a few months later.

It all depends on how over subscribed the schools are.

It absolutely won't Ginger.

As others have said, do some research into previous years to ensure that you don't fill all your preferences with schools that on previous years you would have little or no chance of getting in at. The last few years admissions will give you a pretty good idea which schools you are and aren't likely to get into. No matter how fabulous a school is, there's little point in listing it if for the last 5 years the furthest successful applicant had been 600 yards away and you live 3 miles away. On the other hand, if all the children of your neighbours have got into a particular school in recent years there's a good chance yours will too - unless there's been a new estate built nearer, or there's an unusual number of siblings in the year etc. There are no absolute guarantees, but you'll be making educated decisions.
Remember that you are expressing a preference, not making a choice and the LEA is not obliged to allocate you to any of the schools you list if you're not high enough up the admissions criteria. If you don't qualify for any of the schools you list, their only obligation is to offer a place at the nearest school with a space left after everyone else has been placed. Obviously these tend to be the less sought after schools and you won't necessarily get a school near you. This us why it is very important to include a school which is acceptable to you and you've got a high chance of getting into, somewhere on your list. Better to get a not great school near home than a not great school on the other side of town, which can, and does happen to people.
Every year there are posts from parents who find themselves in this position having put very oversubscribed schools into every slot, or only putting one, in the mistaken belief that this will "force" the LEA into giving them what they want. It doesn't. Do your research, read the criteria and instructions very carefully, put your preferences in your genuine order, include at least one that you're pretty much guaranteed a place in and don't try to beat the system!