Only one school in choice list

[nakipos]

Hey mumms
We are about to make an application for year 1. There is an outstanding school just 3 min walk from our home and none of the other schools are near as this one nor they are suitable for our kid.

Do you think it is reasonable to put only this school in the list? What happens if we don't get an offer this school? Will we have an offer eventually from this school?

Please help🌸

It would be handy to have back up. If you don’t get in you could end up anywhere.

If you don’t get in and you haven’t named a school then you will be allocated a school with a place. don’t take the risk.

Always use the options available on the form to highlight your preferences

No. If you don’t put other schools and you don’t get this one then they will allocate you the closest school with space but AFTER they have gone through everyone else’s choice list. You will get the school in your LEA which no one else wants to go to.

If you don't put at least one other school, they will assign you to any school which has a space after everyone's school choices have been placed. This could be miles and miles from your local area.

You are ALWAYS best advised to put at least a feasible school within reasonable travelling distance of home.

You WILL NOT guarantee a place at your preferred school if you only put the 1 choice and everyone else is higher in the admission criteria. Those children will still be higher in admission criteria if they have put the same school first and any number of other schools.

If this school is full then they will assign you the nearest school with a space that’s not on your list.

You should try and work out what schools are least unsuitable or look into homeschool if you can.

Definitely don't do this. If you don't get a space at that school then they can allocate you one anywhere.

Is this an in-year application? You should be able to find out, either from the LA or the individual schools, if they have space before you put in your application.

you need to use all your choices. Otherwise m, if you don’t get your choice, you get whatever is leftover when literally everyone else has chosen/been allocated.

Use the remaining choices for your “I don’t want it but it’s better than the sink school with no money or teachers, and only leaky buildings” picks.

We got out second choice school, which I am happy with anyway. I could have been allocated an unsuitable one if I didn't put my own 2nd choice down. Don't take that risk and fill all the selection boxes in.

You may well have a good chance of being allocated this school, given distance is usually one of the admissions criteria. However, it may not be the top criteria, it may be a church school and have attendance criteria or sibling priority, you need to check first! Even so, you need to use all your preferences, just in case! If you just put one, this doesn't mean the council will say " oh well, it's the only one they want , so we had best give them a place"! If you don't get allocated a place in the preferred school, you will behave allocated a place in a school that still has places after everyone else has been given a place. And if a school DOES have a place , there will usually be a reason for it!

Yes, you can only put 1 school, but there is no guarantee that you will be accepted into it.

You will not benefit from only choosing one school (they won't give it to you just because you haven't chosen another school).

They will apply the normal admission rules to all the applications they have & if you fulfil their criteria, you will get a space.

If you don't and have no other choices down, you will be given any school that has space for you in the local authority area. It might be miles away & not somewhere you would want.

Think carefully about doing this as if you don't get into the school, you will most likely be given a school that no one else wants (that's why it has spaces left).

So is your child currently in Reception and you are moving? If so, contact the school if you can and if your preferred school has a space in what will be Y1 in September, there should be no problem.

Do not do this!

you have not found a way to beat the system.

They will just offer you a place at whatever school has room.

ALWAYS use all of your options.

As others have said, if this is an in-year application for Y1 then yes it should be possible to just apply to this one school, though the school or LA may be able to tell you now (or soon in the school's case) if there are spaces. If there aren't any spaces you will be able to go onto the waiting list. Are you able/willing to home educate your child in the meantime? If not then you will need to find another school even if it's further away and less ideal, but you can still stay on the waiting list for your top choice even if you accept a place elsewhere in the short term.

Good luck! Moving house with kids in primary school is not for the faint hearted.

As a few others have pointed out, this is different to applying for a Reception place as it's an in-year application. Therefore admissions will be able to tell you whether the school of your choice has space or not. It's a very different process to putting 3 schools down, as you do when you apply for a Reception place, as you're not competing with thousands of others applying at the same time. If your preferred school has space, you'll be given it. If they don't, you can go on a waiting list but will be offered a space at the next nearest school with space.

You are expressing a preference, not choosing. Use all your preferences. If you just name one school and it has no places or your child is lower down the oversubscription criteria, the LA could offer you any school with a place, after all you haven’t given them any other information to go on. Once they have offered you a place, they have fulfilled their duty. Meanwhile, your new neighbour could have sensibly listed 3 / 4 / 6 schools, missed out on no. 1 but could have been offered no. 2, so no. 2 may now not have a place for your child.

If this is a mid-year application, and you genuinely would not want your DC to go to any other school than this one, but no place is available, and either you can't afford private school, or there are no suitable private places available, either, then your alternatives are:

• just stay on the waiting list / continuing interest list, and organise full-time home education in the hope that a place comes up sooner rather than later and your DC is first on the ranked list when it does (where does 'just on proximity to school', or even, 'in the defined catchment area, ranked on distance' actually come in the list of oversubscription criteria? A lot of schools rank siblings above catchment, and faith schools may have a whole raft of criteria above 'just living veryclose by'. And all schools must give LAC / PLAC first preference )

• go on WL / CI list, submit an appeal, and organise full-time home education in the hope that a place comes up sooner rather than later and your DC is first on the ranked list when it does
• just organise full-time home education and stick with it

After a while, you may decide that those schools a bit further away that seemed so appalling initially are actually quite appealing, if they have a place available.

You can work out from the school's published admissions policy under which criterion your DC would be ranked, although you don't know how many may already have a higher priority, or may come along between your DC being added to the list and a potential place coming up. There is such a thing as the Fair Access Protocol, but that would not be invoked for your DC if the only reason they didn't have a school place is because you don't like any of the ones within a reasonable distance, bar the only one with no places available.

If the class is full ( 30 children or PAN on roll, ) then your application will be rejected.

As it is Y1 infant class size will apply, so if it is a class of 30 an appeal will not succeed. I believe you might be able to appeal if it is a smaller PAN ( not sure about this ) though the school will vigorously oppose and you are unlikely to get a place .

Your best bet is to go on the waiting list and hope a family move. Or to look again at the nearby “ unsuitable for my kid” schools .

The LA will have a duty to offer you a place, but this might not be a school in a reasonable distance or a school you want. Turning down an offered school will not make them offer you the school you want.

If there are absolutely NO Y1 spaces in ANY school within a certain distance, several miles I think, then you can ask them to invoke the Fair Access protocol which means a school will be told to admit your child even if it takes them over PAN.

Or prepare to homeschool.

We did this on our last In year application. It was literally saying that we wanted the closest school if possible, otherwise the nearest school with a space.

Its different to normal admissions rounds, where you applying for for several schools at once and the places are yet to be allocated to anyone.

Are you applying for year 1 to start next month? Is your child currently in reception? If your preferred school is already full you won’t be allocated it. Did you ask your preferred school if they have spaces when you looked around? There could also be a waiting list for this school.

The 'other schools aren't suitable for your child' is bollocks and will not stand in allocations or even in tribunal. If you are really close and likely to get a place based on previous years you could risk just putting the one school. But it's a risk.

Fill your choices in order of preference.

Where is your child now? I did this when moving house (and waited six months for a place) but that only worked as we'd only moved two miles, so while annoying I could still get DS to his previous school.

This is a terrible idea. You need to have that school as school 1 on your list, then you need to put the schools you hate least as 2 and 3. The alternative is that you won't get offered this school, the other schools will be full of people that expressed a preference for them, and you'll be left with a school that is further away that couldn't fill their spaces.

When we moved and did an in year application I automatically put the two very good and very near schools as 1 and 2 on my preference list. I then found out what other schools nearish actually had space, checked them out and put them down in order of preference. Obviously hope was that I'd get nearest schools but at least I knew I'd be offered 3rd choice if not rather than another school that was slightly closer but I didn't like. You have to do your research and have backups.

In the end we were VERY lucky and got two spaces in our 2nd choice school as spaces happened to become available.