School selection

[izrozyse]

Do the headteachers have any say in the primary school selection? Do I need to schmooze the head at the school I want my LO to go to?

I think its 6 in densely populated areas where the last admitted pupil by distance can be on the same street as the school. You can't be as sure which schools you will get in to.

(We only applied to one Secondary school as we knew we would get in as the catchment was 7 miles and we lived 200m away!)

No, I mean there are lots of schools in the area. We don’t like the nearest but are ok with the second nearest so it will be second choice, however we love the third nearest. The third choice will be much further away.

If you really don’t want him to go to the catchment school and are willing to risk him being at any random school nearby then you don’t have to put the catchment school as a preference. That’s kind advice is for if you’re indifferent to the school being discussed. If you dislike it so much you’re willing to send him almost anywhere else, putting it as a backup isn’t necessary.

That’s kind of what we’re doing. The school we don’t like is very undersubscribed and is the one we’ll be allocated if we don’t get our three choices, so we didn’t put it as one of our options. But we are willing to take the small risk that our catchment school does end up full and we get sent somewhere random.

If your local school is undersubscribed, you could well end up being offered a place there even if you don't name it as a preference.

What will happen is that the applications for each school will be ranked based on the school's admission criteria. They will then look at whether you are high enough up the list to get an offer from any of your preferred schools. If you qualify for a place at two or more of your preferred schools, the order of your preferences comes into play and you will be offered the highest preference. So if you qualify for a place at your second and third preferences, you will be offered your second preference.

If you don't qualify for a place at any of your preferred schools, you will be offered a place at the nearest school with places available. If your local school is undersubscribed, that is likely to be the school you will be offered. If you don't want it, it would then be up to you to find a school you do want that has a place available.

The other thing to bear in mind is, if you are allocated the school you really don’t want, accept the place and ensure that you are on waiting lists for the schools you do want.

If you reject the offer place, the local authority has no further responsibility to find you a school place and you’d be on your own. Accept the offer and you may find that waiting lists move, so you could be offered a place at one of your preferences.

It would be helpful if we could get rid of the notion that you choose a school. You express a preference and must meet the criteria to be offered a place. ‘Choosing’ implies that you just have to pick the one you want.

They aren't school choices OP, they're preferences. I am getting the impression from your posts that you haven't reviewed how feasible it is that your child will get into your preferred schools. You really, really need to review the previous maximum admitted distance for these schools to ascertain if there's ANY possibility that you'll get in. If there's a decent chance you might get in, then put it down and hope for the best! Hopefully you'll get in and everything will be grand. But if your first choice school is 1 mile away but they never admit students more than 0.3miles because its so oversubscribed, you're really not getting in no matter how much you like it. Unfortunately that's just the reality of things - people plan these sort of things years in advance, sometimes before they even conceive their children. One of my top priorities when me and DH were buying our home was that it would be within fairly safely guaranteed admission of at least one decent school that we could also walk to, we didn't even have kids then but I didn't want to get into a situation where we bought a certain house because we really liked it but then realised after having kids that it wasn't within catchment/realistic admitted distance of any decent schools. DH now highly appreciates my forward planning as several families in DDs nursery have been completely caught out because they purchased houses on a popular new build estate nearby, assumed they'd get into the closest popular good school (the one DD will go to) but didn't actually check first if they'd feasibly get in. So for eg the newbuild estate is 0.8 miles away but this school has never historically admitted children more than 0.5 miles away. They just assumed "that's the school closest to our estate so that's where our DC will naturally go". These families have now all been allocated a different local school a bit further away that the parents are all very unhappy with because they didn't qualify for the other school. (Ironically the school they were all allocated is actually perfectly fine and I would be happy for DD to go there, just preferred the one she's actually going to as logistically easier to get to for us. But the "undesirable" school has a lot of children from one of the nearby council estates so that automatically has blacklisted it from the "naice" middle class families who seem to all be having kittens at the thought of their PFB attending a school where gasp some of the children are eligible for free school meals and have things like ADHD!! I am obviously exaggerating a bit here but there is definitely an attitude amongst these parents of "I absolutely cannot have my child attend a good local school because it has children from the local council estate in it" 🙄 my own DMIL even regularly slates this poor school as she is from the area and when DH was a child the school was quite rough, she acts like it is still really awful now - when actually, its a lovely little school and has changed massively since DH was a kid)

You list the schools in order of preference.

If you don't get any if your preferred schools (likely if you've chosen schools far away/out of catchment/where you're unlikely to meet the admissions criteria) then you will be given the nearest school which has places left after they've allocated places. The issue with not putting down your local school is that if it gets filled, you might end up with an undesireable school 10 miles away rather than the local one.

You should actually read the published guidance as it's helpful.

In a nutshell, there will be a list of admissions criteria. Where the school is on your list will not be on it. If the school is oversubscribed, they will allocate places based on the criteria given. If you don't get a place, you will be considered against the criteria for the next school on your list. If you don't put a next school and you don't get into the ones you've listed, they'll send you wherever is convenient for them and the school.

Doubtless you'll then be in the local newspaper saying it's shocking that you've been allocated a school 7 miles away from home.

Have you looked at the data for previous years to see if your choices are realistic? In some areas, second closest wouldn’t result in a place.

The data for previous years is on the council website

It depends on how likely he is to get a place.

1. Put your first choice first
2. Put your second choice second
3. If there is a good chance of you getting your third choice school, put it third. If there is a low chance of getting it, put the local school that you don't like third. Otherwise you could be allocated another bad school that is also miles away.

They'll give you the highest one on your list that you meet the criteria for (usually distance for a first child, though some rural areas have wonky catchments to avoid children having to travel long distances). After they have done that for everyone, they will then allocate the children who didn't get any of their choices to any school that has space, they'll normally pick the nearest but this might not be your closest school if that school already filled their places with people who asked for it.

We were in your position.

Realistically with a falling birth rate, what are the chances that the undersubscribed, poor nearby school will suddenly be over subscribed this year? Ours had an average of 25 places allocated for a school with 50 places, so we took the risk and applied to 3 schools which are usually over subscribed. As it happened all were undersubscribed due to falling birth rates and we ended up with our first choice.

Ok so you can only put 3 choices -

Is the one further away over or undersubscribed?
Is your local school over or undersubscribed?

So supposing he doesn't get into choices 1 or 2.

• If choice 3 is your nearest school he is likely to get into it unless it is very popular and lots of people put it first or second choice.
• If choice 3 the other school further away he may get into it, but they will take children who live near and put it higher up their choices first.

If the you put the further away school and it is full of people who get higher priority for it because they live nearer and put it higher on the list, then you won't get it. That means you are at the mercy of wherever they pick for you (probably further away and worse).

If you put your local school, you will almost certainly get it, unless a lot of people actually chose it at 1 or 2, but if it isn't good that's unlikely.

I

I would usually agree that the OP should list their local school in last place, even if they are not keen.

But in this specific case, where they only get three choices anyway, it seems a shame to waste one on a school that by the sounds of it, they are pretty stuck on to get given if none of their prefs has a place for them.

It’s risky as a rule but I agree with @northernbelle84 – if it is historically undersubscribed (and @izrozyse should interrogate that carefully – the figures will be available) then it is less of a risk in a time of falling birthrates that it suddenly will have a peak in applications.

All that said, if you don't list it OP you do risk being given a school a long way away that no one wants. What is so bad about the local one?

We were in a similar situation to you. There was no way I was going to use the local catchment school under any circumstances.

I reviewed the last 5 year’s admissions data on the LA website for all schools within an acceptable distance. It was easy to see which ones were over subscribed and likely impossible to get into based on the details of the last accepted person each year.

Once I had a list of schools that were consistently not oversubscribed I put in a FOI request to the LA asking for actual pupil numbers for the last 5 years. This helped reduce the list to a group of schools that I was almost guaranteed to get a place at.

I then visited them all and put the top 3 in order. I got my first choice. It is a fantastic village school which only has 3 or 4 children from catchment with the rest all coming from further afield. Having a cohort of parents who have nearly all chosen the school in preference to their local catchment schools makes a huge difference. The parental engagement at the school is excellent.

It really is worth doing your research. The only time it probably won’t work is if you live in the middle of a huge city in which case you won’t have excellent schools that are oversubscribed.

We live on the edge of a large city and drive about 10 minutes to the village. Most local parents to me didn’t even consider doing that and instead prefer to walk to the local school which is dreadful in comparison.

Just to clarify (as I think it would be possible to misread your post), you don't get any extra priority for putting a school higher up your list. Places are allocated strictly on admissions criteria of everyone who listed the school somewhere on their list, whether they are 1st preference or 6th. If someone lived next door to the school and listed it 6th, they would get a place over someone who lived further away but listed it 1st (assuming both didn't meet any higher admissions criteria like siblings, etc, and the person who listed it 6th didn't get into any of their higher preferences). It is a common misconception that schools first consider those who listed them 1st, then those who listed them 2nd, etc, but this has been illegal in England for almost 20 years.

Thank you

@izrozyseif you can only put 3, I would put it as your 3rd choice. What are the chances of you getting place 1 or 2, based on previous years? If you DONT get 1 or 2, and you haven't put this school as your 3rd choice you risk being given a school miles away (unless you hate the school that much and therefore you'd be ok with that!)