Primary Application Situation - Not in any catchment areas

[cgfw201]

We live in a little village with no school on the edge of London. There's 4 great Primary schools near us, all about 1.5 miles away (all in different directions).

We'd be happy with our daughter at any of them. However, they're all popular, and the furthest offered place for any of them last year was between 0.9-1.2 miles from the school. They are our nearest 4 too.

We're not expecting to get into any of them based on this, but they will be our top 4 regardless.

My main question is about putting a 5th and 6th choice down.

There's one huge Primary school about 2.5 miles away which we looked at and really didn't like, but they have tons of places and seem to hoover up all the kids who didn't get their top choices.

Are we better off putting that on our list of 6 or not? Alternatives would be 4-5 miles away, but better schools, but also obviously nowhere near their catchment areas.

Feel like we're going to end up at the one we don't like either way, just trying to see if there's any ways to stack the odds against it.

It would be safer to put the 2.5m school in 6th as a 'sure bet'. If you aren't keen, and are pretty sure they will have places, you could gamble and not put it down so you could put other schools 5th and 6th. The risk is you mught get none of your choices or the 2.5m school and get a worse school further away, so I probably wouldn't take the risk for more 'long shot' schools.

Our LA has priority zones for certain streets on the edge of town that are outside the technical measured catchment areas but not near to any other school. So although a particular road might not in inside the catchment area, people living here get priority in certain nearby schools as they're not near any others.

Is that furthest on offer day in April or on 1 September? You might find that you will get an offer once offers have been made for one of your preferred schools. Birth rates are falling off a cliff round here as well (also just outside London) so this is helpful for you too if the same round yours.

Echoing about births plummeting. We live in a place that is very popular for people to move to when they have kids. In previous years, almost all schools would be oversubscribed. Last year, only a small handful were, and, even then, not by much. DD's school is one of these. In previous years they would have stopped at catchment (and catchment would not even be entirely guaranteed); in the 24/25 intake, they went right to the final criteria (half her year are out of catchment). The 25/26 intake is even smaller than this year's - especially in London.

I would ask around where children from your area go. The advice is normally to ensure you have a 'banker' school (one you are sure you will get into) to make sure you don't get sent anywhere, but list schools in order of preference.

Cheers, good advice.

Will put the backup one in the list, at number 5 as don't think there's a 6th one we'd consider.

Aware of the birth rate situation, definitely a macro factor, just hard to say what the local impact will be, should be fewer 4 year olds about but who knows.