Changing 1st choice school place

[Cazzie1979]

I posted a couple of weeks ago about the issues regarding my daughter’s primary school, such as high staff turnover and unsatisfactory provision of education in year 2 class. A few posters advised me to transfer my daughter to another school as things unlikely to change and could potentially get worse.

So I completed and sent off an application form to transfer her and expect to hear if she has a place in the next couple of days. My sticking point is my son, who will be joining Reception this September - our application submitted in January put first choice as my daughter’s current school, not the one we are hoping to transfer her to. The Council’s Admissions team have said I can send them an email after my daughter is in the new school, asking for the second choice to be reinstated as the first, and we’ll have sibling priority and it’s actually our nearest school. Both the Admissions team and the new schools head teacher think we’ll have no problem getting a place there. But i still feel really worried, if he does not get a place at the new school, we’ll be doing 2 different drop offs which I can’t see being possible, not to mention the fact that he won’t understand the reason why he’s at a different school to his sister.

Has anyone changed their first choice school after the applications have been submitted in January - and if so did you get the place? And when did you hear, soon after places are confirmed, or the summer, even start of Sept?

Or has anyone had the opposite experience and tried to change their first choice school, but weren’t successful? Did you try to appeal? I’m not sure if we’d have grounds for appeal as we changed the choice after the deadline.

I think you need clarification on how your application for your DS will be handled if you amend your choices now. That will allow you to decide if it’s worth doing, or if it’s too big a risk that you’ll end up with neither school.

Hopefully some of the admissions experts can advise. Did they comment on your last post? Perhaps you could update that if so.

If you don’t get the school you want for your DS, then you can ask to go on the waiting list as soon as it opens and you should be at or near the top of DD is there.

Any change you make now will have no effect on the allocations coming out in less than a month, and could potentially confuse things a lot, so do as they suggest and once you have your allocation, get back in touch to get yourself on the waiting list of the preferred school as a sibling, assuming your daughter will be on role by then.

As a sibling, he should go up to near the top of the waiting list I would imagine, which is why they are suggesting you are likely to get a place that way.

The council’s admissions team advised me that as soon as my daughter has transferred school, I should email them requesting that our second choice school be reinstated to our first choice - otherwise they disregard the second choice altogether if you get your first. Then when they send out confirmations in April for all reception places, they’ll send out ours as the old school but then they work through their folder of emails for people who have changed their choices and deal with them - so they’ll know if they have any places available at the new school and will offer us a place if they do as we’ll have sibling priority. If they don’t have any, we should go to top of the waiting list and also we live very near it too.

They confirmed that last year the new school offered 7 places to waiting list children and still had 5 places left over for reception as there are not enough children in our village to fill two schools.

If you change your preferences now, you will be treated as a late application. That means you will only be looked at after all the on time applications, so you will stand little chance of getting a place at any of your preferred schools.

Wait until you have been offered a place. At that point you should accept the offer and, assuming it isn't the school you now want, ask to go on the waiting list for that school. As your son will get sibling priority, he will almost certainly be at the head of the waiting list. Whilst that doesn't absolutely guarantee a place, it would be surprising if he didn't get one.

@prh47bridge Yes that’s what I thought, that our application would be treated as a late application - but the Admissions dept have advised me to email them after my daughter is at the school asking to reinstate second choice as first choice - otherwise they’ll give us our original first choice and completely disregard the second choice. They said it wouldn’t be treated as a late application we’ll still be offered our original first choice, which we should accept, but about a month after places have been allocated we should be offered a place at the new school (if there are places) or go on waiting list

Make sure you get that in writing. That way you will have evidence for appeal if they do something different.

@prh47bridge ah yes good idea to get that in writing, as I was told this over the phone.

I'd be wary of altering it at this stage as it might be deemed "late". It might be better to wait for allocations and go on waiting list for 2 if needs be. Iirc you will only get sibling link once your dd has started there.

Given you will know the allocation of younger child on 16th April, I think any move to change the preferences now would not be advisable. It will almost certainly end up with the application for younger child being considered as a late change, unless you get a written confirmation from the LA admission team prior to making any change of preference.
It is better to go through the process of getting older child moved to your new preferred school, which will probably not be to after the Easter break. See what allocation your younger child gets on 16th April, accept the place, just to ensure you have a school place for September and then start to ask for a place at the preferred school and go on the waiting list. If elder daughter has moved school then younger child will after 16th April get a higher place on the waiting list because of sibling but only after 16th April and daughter being a registered pupil at the new school.