Chance of admissions criteria for secondary changing?

[Awcw1234]

Hello,

We live a 10 min walk away from a oversubscribed but very good secondary. We have just moved into the area and due to full primary schools, we are unable to get a place at a local primary at the moment.

The admissions criteria for the secondary prioritises distance and siblings. Feeder primaries are not mentioned so based on this, there should be no issue. However, I know things can change and attending a feeder primary may become a priority.

How often do councils change the admissions criteria? My fear is that my child won’t get a place at a feeder primary and therefore not get a place at the local secondary.

How old is your child?

She turned 7 a few months ago

There has to be a consultation before any school changes its admissions criteria.

Feeder school arrangements are quite rare where I live. I get the impression from MN that they’re most common in areas where children at some primary schools have no local secondary school at which they’re likely to get a place (such as where the secondary school fills up with children from primary schools A, B and C because they live closest and children from primary school D, which is farther away, are allocated places in a distant secondary school). Some LEAs use priority admission areas for similar reasons.

So, I think it’s unlikely that the admissions criteria will change, unless there’s a recurring problem which changing the criteria might fix and, even then, there’ll be a consultation first.

Thank you. That is reassuring, maybe I should stop worrying!

The area i live in has feeder schools. But the criteria for Secondary admissions is...

1. Looked after children etc
2. Living in Catchment
3. Out of catchment siblings
4. Out of catchment at feeder school
5. Others.

Each Primary has a catchment area as well.

So are feeder schools only taken into consideration if you live out of catchment then?

@Awcw1234

So are feeder schools only taken into consideration if you live out of catchment then?

It depends on the individual school. Most schools in England/Wales don't have defined catchments, and most don't have feeder schools, and many that have one don't have the other, and if they do, could just as easily be feeders before catchment!

As Panelchair says, a consultation would have to take place before criteria were changed, but there are many variations on how they could change, so all you can do is keep an eye on it really.

Where I was born and grew up had a 3 tier system so the high school prioritised children from the two middle schools nearest to it before any other children due to the next nearest school being over 10 miles away. Most places where filled by those children very occasionally it was undersubscribed.

Just googled it and it's the same system now for that school. But the secondaries nearest me now have the same system of admission as the primarys do so LAC, Siblings etc.

At our school in Hants the feeder schools come after in catchment.
But there is no hard and fast rule.

Thank you for the responses. I can only hope that the admissions criteria doesn’t change within the next 3 years!

It depends on local variables. One of our local secondaries in in special measures and its neighbouring school (they used to do yr 7-8 / yr 9-11 as a companion set) changed their criteria to shut out out of catchment siblings because there was such demand for pretty much any other school except for the special measures one. In our case, you'd have benefitted from being geographically close to the better school.

The primary school my children attended change the admission criteria for themselves but there was a massive heads up as they were changing to a catchment system which is definitely for the better.

I believe it was a 3 year heads up so that anyone needing to think about moving had time to sort it out.

Secondaries have different criteria some of which can be feeder schools some of which are within catchment. The one near to me has a "children of staff" who have been in post for 2 years or were headhunted to fill a particular role!

Look at all the potential secondaries and their priority list so you are knowledgeable when the time comes.

A change in PAN downwards was what screwed us when a new school opened in the area. The admissions criteria remained the same but there were 30 fewer places. The new school had space for 120 though so there were actually 90 more places in the area, just not at our closest school.

These changes are communicated prior to the dates for getting your applications in though (I believe they have to be legally) so you get fair notice. But yes. It was extremely annoying!!!!