Help understanding school applications

[EdPops]

Hi,

My DS will start reception in Sept 2023, i'm in the middle of completing the enrolment application and wondered if anyone could shed some light on a question i have...

Essentially we have 6 schools we can list in order of preference, however our preferred number 1 and 2 schools are possibly just out of reach in terms of distance. Our strategy was to keep these as 1 and 2 on the off chance we get in knowing we have option 3 as our more likely default, our assumption being that if schools 1 and 2 reject us we'll simply be given our 3rd choice.

However, looking at the statistics from previous years of the schools we're looking at, 0 places were given to anyone listing them in 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th position.

If our preferred schools 1 and 2 don't accept us due to distance and all our other choices are filled by children who's parents put them higher on their list, what happens? Does the council just pick any old school for you that has spaces left regardless of your list?!

Thanks

When it comes down to it the main criteria for most schools is distance (once you've got siblings, looked after children, specific Sen need out the way).
If you live near to school 3 and you don't get 1 or 2 you will most likely get 3. If others have put 3 higher up on their list it won't make any difference if they live further away.

They cannot allocate places based on the order of your preference, they can only give you the highest preference school you fulfil the admissions criteria for. So I suggest you look at the admissions criteria for each school - it’s likely to be based on distance but sometimes siblings and faith make a difference.

I suspect the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th position you are referring to is actually the admissions criteria numbers. Eg.

1. Looked after children
2. SEN
3. Siblings in catchment
4. Siblings out of catchment
5. Children of staff
6. Other children in catchment
7. Other children out of catchment.

Every school has to publish their admission criteria. And they have to follow them to the letter. In my area you can see where the last child who got in was (eg criteria band 7, 234m). Distance in a straight line to a given point (eg school reception door) is generally the tie breaker if there are too many applicants within a criteria band.

The order you rank your choices in doesn't affect which you get into. Someone else could get your 1st choice if it was their second choice, and you not get it. (If the didn't get into their first choice, but was higher on the list for their 2nd choose than you). You will be offered a new lace at the highest ranked school on your list that you are in the top 30 for(or whatever the number of places is)

If nobody who put option 3 as 3rd,4th,5th or 6th choice got in it is because either:

1. they qualified for their first or second choice
2. they did not qualify for a place at option 3 - they would not have qualified had they listed it as 1st choice either

However, looking at the statistics from previous years of the schools we're looking at, 0 places were given to anyone listing them in 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th position.

Not entirely sure how you can know this?
assuming you looked at the number of places allocated and it matched the number of applicants from preference 1 and 2 but cut off at 2?

It doesn’t work like that.

Say PAN = 30
Applications were
Preference 1 = 15
Preference 2 = 15
Preference 3 = 15
Preference 4 = 15
and so on
The school might have offered 5 places to those who put it 1st, 10 who put it 2nd, 5 who put it 3rd and so on until all 30 places had gone. They wouldn’t have known who put it at which preference. It would all be done on usually distance (although LAC, siblings, faith etc come into play).

The schools you are looking at could have given none of the places to 1st and 2nd and they could have all been given to 3rd and 4th. You just don’t know. It’s all based on the admissions criteria NOT your preference. Preference only comes into play when they can offer you more than one school. If they can do that, they give you the highest ranking preference you named.

Always put preference in GENUINE order of preference. Don’t try and 2nd guess the system. Just put your genuine preference down.

But the criteria that applies to us (i.e. distance) is unspecified.

If there's 2 places left in a school and we have it as our first choice but live 0.5 miles away, will we be offered that place above someone who lives closer at 0.3 miles away but put it down as their 2nd or 3rd choice?

Schools don't know where on your list of preferences they are placed - they do not have access to your application form.

You list the schools in your preferred order, making sure you have one that you are certain to get into on your list. If you qualify based on distance, it won't matter where you placed the school on the list. You will be given a place at the highest school on your list that you meet the criteria for.

Here's a screenshot of the 2022 admission statistics (from Locrating) for one of my top 3 schools showing all 26 people who put it as 1st choice were offered a place whereby 0 places were offered to anyone putting them as 2nd or 3rd choice.

This school in question had 30 spaces available so i suppose all other children in the area were offered places in their schools of higher preference meaning 2nd and 3rd choices didn't come into play?

@EdPops distance is usually the 'tie-breaker' way of allocating places.
From what you said above I think the people living closer would get the place.
Without knowing how the criteria for that school is worded it's hard to say but from my experience distance from the school is the reason a child is offered a place.
Schools don't know what number preference you put their school down as - just that you put it as one of your 6.

If there's 2 places left in a school and we have it as our first choice but live 0.5 miles away, will we be offered that place above someone who lives closer at 0.3 miles away but put it down as their 2nd or 3rd choice?

No, if distance is a criteria the person living closer will get the place, assuming they weren't offered a place at a school higher up their own list of preferences. It wouldnt make a difference if you put it as first oreference and they put it as sixth preference. Exceptions would be if your child met one of the admissions criteria higher up the list than distance, eg looked after child, EHCP, sibling at the school.

Looking at that data... its that people listing it third got offered their first or second choice. I believe last year was a low birth rate year, so lots more schools weren't full.

@EdPops from that screen shot if there were 30 places I would assume that 4 places would have gone to children with a specific need - ie SEN. The admissions for children with SEN is slightly different.
The class may have 30 pupils but if 4 are allocated to a child with Sen (or looked after children - ie children in foster care) then they would be allocated first and then only 26 places were actually available.

It depends if they got their 1st or 2nd choice preference - if not then yes, they’ll get the place over you because the live nearer and have to be offered their highest preference school where they meet the criteria.

What you really need to consider is a) which school is your top choice, and b) what distance was their last place offer last year. If you’re miles out then you probably need to reconsider what is realistic vs. what is your preference.

But I also agree with the pp who said don’t try to second guess if. Just put your preferred options in rank order.

Oh wow. I didn’t even realise that sort of data was available. We don’t have that in our admissions booklets. Wonder where locrating gets it from? Interesting. I’ve learned something new.

It is possible in the data that those who were 2nd and 3rd simply lived further away from the school than those who listed it as first (assuming we’re going on distance here).

If there's 2 places left in a school and we have it as our first choice but live 0.5 miles away, will we be offered that place above someone who lives closer at 0.3 miles away but put it down as their 2nd or 3rd choice?

Someone who lives closer (again, assuming distance), who places a school at a lower preference than you, will always get the place ahead of you if they received offers from none of their other higher preferences.

Again, to re-emphasise, your preference has nothing to do with how likely you are to get a place. Preference is only considered when you can be offered more then one school. At that point they give you the higher preference. Please please please do put down your genuine preferences and don’t worry too much about it. You are always in for a chance at any of the schools you put down. Don’t waste your preference on a school you don’t want as first preference. You never know what’s going to happen. Admissions can be a minefield and very surprising some years.

If there's 2 places left in a school and we have it as our first choice but live 0.5 miles away, will we be offered that place above someone who lives closer at 0.3 miles away but put it down as their 2nd or 3rd choice?

in this situation if the other person didn't qualify for a place at their 1st or 2nd choice, and put this school down as their 3rd choice, then they will get the place, but obviously if they qualify for a place at choice 1 or 2 then they would have that, and the place would be available for someone who lived further away. you putting it at choice 1 doesn't buy you any priority but if you meet the entry criteria for more than one school, you will be offered the place at your favourite of those according to your ranked preferences. there is no harm in listing schools that you are unlikely to qualify for for your top choices so long as at least one school on your list is a dead-cert that will definitely get. using all your choices for unlikely but nice schools that aren't very close could mean that you get allocated a school even worse than the nearby one you were trying to avoid.

Tbh I'd be surprised if Locrating wasn't totally wrong. That's information that local authorities don't publish, and would normally only be available via an FOI. Check the local authority website - that will be the correct data.

Always always always put your preferences in order. You will be higher priority for your third choice school than someone who put it first but lives further away.

I've just had a look at Locrating for a few of my local primaries. Apparently every one only made offers to first preference applicants. I think their data is probably dodgy.

I think locating might not be very accurate. I agree with @titchy, definitely check your LA booklet.

For my own interest, and also an accidental perfect example of how wrong the data might be, I just compared a school, ok it was a secondary not a primary, but it was just the first one I thought of.
This is 2022 locrating data and transfer to secondary 22/23 booklet data. I also know the locating data isn’t for the year before (2021 for 2022 entry) because the school only offered about 100 places the year before.

The numbers just don’t add up. And actually, could mean the school is doing something illegal by not offering all 1st preferences when there were clearly places. Which I know is not true as everyone who 100% wanted it (as in 1st preference) got it. I also know a lot more than 3 offers went to 3rd preference. I agree with @HappyJellyBaby, something a bit dodgy going on with locrating me thinks.

OP - Please check your LA booklet.

Had a quick look at my local primaries and it does seem to match the published data from my LA. I’m in herts and they do publish a really comprehensive set of admissions data showing who was given offers and the preference and whether they were on time or late applications to do the comparisons with. It did take a bit of digging on their website to find it though so worth checking for full data pdfs.

The whole thing is done via computer software. No school knows preferences

No. Assuming distance is the tiebreaker, the place would be offered to whoever lived closest to the school even if they made it their last choice and you made it your first choice.

The places aren't offered just to those who put it as their first choice.
It is where you qualify and hence the numbers won't match

A child may get their 4th choice over someone who has it as their 1st choice because they live closer or for other reasons.

@EdPops the reason no one got 2/3/4th choices is the school wasn’t full last year - they still have 4 places?

as others have said schools apply their criteria regardless of preference order. So if 1 space left and someone is nearer they are offered it by the school- if they put it lower in preference and also offered a place at a higher preference school then the LA reject the offer and the place goes to the next nearest person and so it continues until everyone is offered a place at the highest preference possible offered by the school. Schools do the ranking and the LA do the job of allocating ranking to preference. The problems come if parents have only put one or two preferences. If neither are ranking high enough with those schools to get places offered before full then they go to bottom of list and once everyone else has offer see what’s left!

Don't forget any EHCP or LAC or any medical needs if they have that criterion may be additional to those options.

The full breakdown will include all criterion, total number who applied and total number accepted from each group to evidence the policy was correctly followed along with the distance of the last place allocated You can't refuse an application if there is a place available.

Distance is often one of the last criteria applied. So it is impossible to say who would be offered the place unless all the other criteria were known for each child. So LAC, EHCP, sibling in catchment, sibling out of catchment could all affect the offer. And then there are the Church school variations!