Child left with poor options reception 2025

[BluntPlumHam]

Hi looking for some advice.

We are in the North of the country and in an area with a low birth rate. We were advised by all the schools we visited that you’re more than likely to get your first preference because of the low birth rate and last years admissions criteria’s going beyond the usual limits, I.E going well outside the catchment area.

Our first preference is well within our catchment 10mins walk, second 15 and the third option is not but we applied because they told us that over 40 percent of their intake is from outside of the catchment.

Despite this our DS has not been offered any of his three preferences and instead been given another school which is the closest but not suited to his needs at all.

He has been put on a waitlist for all three schools of preference.

I spoke to admissions and they said it won’t be till next week when the schools data is published that we will know where he is on the lists. She was agreeing with me that it was a low birth rate and doesn’t understand what has happened until the data is published. His nursery are also confused because they’ve never heard of anyone not getting any of their preference especially when sensible options were selected.

i have rejected his offer because the school isn’t right for him, they mix their years and don’t perform well at all. This won’t remove me from the waitlist, they have confirmed.

I am looking for advice, thoughts, anecdotes and anything really because I’m stressed as he doesn’t really have a plan B.

Don’t think you are necessarily guaranteed a place, just considered for a place ahead of those “out of catchment”. Op, has there been any recent housing developments in the area which may have increased demand from local applicants. If everyone was given the same message about low birth rates they may have chanced a school previously considered difficult to get a place at.

The thing about it being a low birth rate year has made you think that there will be loads of spaces. Unfortunately with increasingly squeezed school budgets and rising numbers of SEND children, many schools are making difficult choices, reducing the number of classes they open, combining year groups, making staff redundant and/or creating SEND bases with the space created.
this is certainly the case in the area where I work.
so whilst the people who advised you probably genuinely thought that you’d be fine, tough decisions made since then may have had an impact.

Is the sibling priority linked to living in catchment / proximity? If not, you can find people live in small homes near a high performing / popular school, these homes can sometimes sell at a premium, they then move further away to larger homes, (which would have been out of catchment for a singleton) once the first child is settled in and then the siblings gain places instead of children that live nearer / in catchment without a sibling on roll.. Some schools do link the sibling priority to remaining at the same address or moving nearer / remaining in catchment or within a certain proximity, but some don’t.

You should check there hasn't been an error.

My Dd didn't initially get into our closest school, but some kids did on distance. The school was literally at the end of our garden. You could see into the classrooms from our garden and the playground was literally a path width from our gate.
Turned out the system had picked up our postcode wrong.

It’s quite possible the schools you’ve applied for have cut their number of forms meaning last year’s data isn’t relevant anymore.

I don’t think you are in three school’s official catchment area that guarantees a place. That would he most odd.

You are likely within the radius of three schools where your house is within the furthest distance offered - totally different thing and open to changing hugely depending on Faith criteria, siblings, EHCP etc.

I’m confused to catchment. Where catchment areas operate and where catchment areas form part of the admission criteria, you usually only have one catchment school. I’m in catchment for one primary and one secondary and catchment takes priority in the admissions criteria. My closest school is not my catchment school although I’d get a place most years but we’d be in the last category which any other children under distance and it does get skewed by siblings.
You should have been told which category you were placed in and which category the last child was admitted in and usually distance of the last child admitted. It is worth checking the admissions criteria carefully and then if the schools do operate catchment areas checking where your address fits in. Check the admissions policy and make sure it is the right year very carefully. Sometimes especially with small PANs you can have a bumper sibling year and it throws everything off.
I would also make a list of any other primaries in the area that are acceptable to you and then see if there are places available or get onto waiting lists. Some LAs have already published the admission statistics so you can see where has spaces available.

You are limited to there was an error and it denied you a place
2) the decision was beyond irrational based on the information provided.
3) the policy was illegal.

Once admissions know what is what they will provide you with the numbers in each category and the distance of the last child accepted under distance but often there are none accepted under distance.

It is not unusual for a child to not get into a school they live next door to.

You can apply for other schools and go on as many waiting lists as you wish. There may be some movement over the next few months.

To those talking about catchments – it can vary.

My Dc were in catchment for a primary; a friend's house was in catchment for a different primary but closer to the one we went to. So there are anomalies like that. One part of the area I live in is in catchment (famously, locally I mean) for a highly rated secondary – but also very much in catchment for the local lower-pecking-order secondary. So you can certainly be in catchment for more than one school.

However IME that catchment area means you are sure of a space – I never heard of anyone applying who lived in the high-rated secondary catchment and not getting a place.

If you are as close as you say @BluntPlumHam then I agree it is worth interrogating the process to make sure a mistake has not been made, as these can happen. If there has been a mistake, then you should be offered a place without appeal.

Just to say – the people from the schools advising you “you’ll get a place for sure” – not only, as PPs say, may they have scaled down their admission numbers, but also, again IME, school staff often have surprisingly poor knowledge of how school admissions work.They say “put us first or you won’t get a space”; a teacher I know thought that they could get their child into a school that was full by repeatedly ringing up the head to ask them for a space; another teacher said of their DC “we are out of catchment but they gave him a space bc he is sporty and they like that”. All nonsense.

Anyway it's risky to turn down a school as the LA won’t necessarily offer you another one, but if you are happy to go private or HE then no worries.

With my youngest there were 24 siblings in a class intake of 30. Meant that those who lived only a street or so away from the school didnt get a place. So its not inconceivable that higher priority critera have taken all the spaces.

If the schools have consistently taken “eldest kids” from a family from further away, then there may just happen to be a lot of younger siblings from a range of distances in the mix this year.

Yes this is what we are speculating has happened because otherwise it makes very little sense given how close we are. We will be asking for them to check re errors but we would also want to know how many sen, sibling and then in catchment allocations were there? How many 1st preference that were closer than 0.2 miles were there that we missed out or was it that there was a high sibling intake.

They haven’t reduced class sizes or mixed their years the birth rate isn’t that low but has been dropping over the years and continues to do so.

It’s just disappointing because I have never been one for independent schools but we are being pushed down that route. Just to make it clear I was prepared to drive him to one that was in the next village, is a fantastically diverse school and they take 40 percent of their intake from outside the village but we never got that either!

It doesn't matter whether those who live closer to you ranked the school first, second or third. If they got in, it's because they didn't meet the criteria of the other schools they ranked higher. All applications are considered equally, against that school's criteria, with no weighing on order of preference. You can get your 3rd choice school ahead of someone who ranked it 1st. Ranking a school as first preference does not give you priority.

It’s just disappointing because I have never been one for independent schools but we are being pushed down that route.

I am a user of independent secondary but… yikes, OP. You get that some children have to go to the nearby school that you don’t want? You (and I) are lucky that we have the means to make a different choice.

Or you could start at the nearby school and only move if it is as bad as you fear. Mixed year classes are not hugely unusual.

Appreciate this is stating the obvious but are you in an area where closest school is one of the criteria?

Op I do have some sympathy with you and hope you are successful on appeal or waiting lists, however, saying you are being “pushed” to go private is ridiculous. Please stop making yourself into a victim here.
you didn’t get what you wanted so are prepared and able to pay…fine!
but you have been offered a school that many other children go to and you haven’t even given it a chance. So you’re not being pushed to independent you’re deciding to do that-own it!

I read this a lot on here, but I’ve never heard of it in practice. I’ve known four lots of families reject the less-than-ideal settings, and have all been offered more preferred options.

Yes agree, you are hardly being pushed into private school.

It’s a choice you are able to make, and many cannot. People do send their DC to the school you don’t like. It might be worth trying to see what it’s like.

In our LA you can not refuse a place without the offer of another.

They keep that school as your option regardless. The requirement is to offer a school. When the appeals paperwork arrives it will specify the school offered and that it remains the option.

If they reject and go on waiting lists and a place comes up, then they would get it. But they don’t go higher on the waiting list for rejecting the offered place, so they might as well have kept it.

To me it sounds like you are also getting a little hung up on the school in the next village that take “40% out of catchment”. I’m guessing that is just how it worked in previous years. But maybe this year, something has changed which means more children in catchment were allocated that school. So all the out of catchment children which would previously have gone to this village school had to go elsewhere.

This happened to us. A local school had a bad ofsted which meant application numbers the following year dropped. It had such a knock on effect because all those children got into other schools nearby. Which then meant there wasn’t space for the children who would normally get into those schools. If that makes sense!

Our local town (where all primaries are rated outstanding) has had a surge of applications this year and all schools are full DESPITE falling birth rates.

Meanwhile all the local independent prep schools have seen a decrease in applications and all but one has spaces in reception which was previously unheard of. Doesn’t take a genius to work out that VAT on private school fees must be playing a part. People are choosing state or are saving up for independent secondary only.

If you live in an area with several independent schools then this could be what has led to your problem.

That begs the question as to why we are asked to list preferences at all … I think it is concerning that if we have listed the school 1 and are in the catchment (0.2 miles) and someone who has listed it 3rd or happens to be further away has got in excluding meeting the sen/sibling.

I have, it was an informed decision.

I disagree. It was an informed decision after looking into the school, visiting and checking the stats. We know our child best and that school isn’t for him. The three we listed were. The way the schooling system works in this country almost lottery like, does feel like you are pushed into taking the alternative or having or forced to settle.

i have spoken to two parents who fought tooth nail to get their kids out of said school because their children were being let down. They too had to settle in the beginning because they got offered this school.

That suggests an error may have been made, or there is a circumstance you are not aware of. You get to state preference as not ail schools are equally attractive for all, you may have transport to access easily or not, or you may happen to know more about one than another and it may be less logical not to give siblings a chance of being at same school, for example, if alternatives are far apart.

I don’t fault parents for using independent.

My personal view is there shouldn’t be a two tier system, it’s out dated and state schools should be funded and brought up to standards. The latter isn’t the reality though so I’m having to do what’s best and practical for my child.

As I said any of the three options would have been fine just disappointing that their is a you get what your given approach.

Yes, I appreciate what you are saying I should recognise that I’m privileged enough to make that choice. I am grateful. I was state school educated and I did well in life. I wanted the same for DS.

It is SEND, sibling and then in catchment.