rejected from all 4 choices - help!

[cnaik]

Southwark council has emailed us the brilliant news that my little boy has not got into any of our schools of choice.
Have been allocated a school that is miles away where he (a very shy boy) would know no-one and it is bottom of league tables.
Feel devastated
Want to employ expert to advise and appeal - can anyone make a recommendation and/or give advice/reassurance?
thank you so much

How terrible for you! Sorry don't have any personal experience or help but thought I would bump for you.

You have my sympathy. I'm not at all an expert, I am waiting to get the allocations for ds1, but I have found the secretaries at our local schoold very helpful. Eg the secretary at our second favourite told me that he probably won't be offered a place straight away but she thought he would definitely get in from the waiting list. I don't know Southwark but in most areas of central London there is a lot of movement as people go private or move away.

Best of luck, you sounds very determined, I'm sure you'll work something out.

Someone I know used these here.
And a helpful and optimistic, thing a friend said to me once was that "all schools are full on the first day of the first term, but most schools have places a term/a year on".
good luck.

Thank you everyone. This is just horrible, can't sleep but feel slightly more focused.
will call those people cherry blossom and check waiting lists and private schools.
There is no way I am sending my son to a school that is totally unsuitable for him and will home school him until I can find a local place - does anyone know of any tutors providing that sort of service (guess home schooling is a well worn topic on this forum - will check it out)

Several of our friends children got into their schools of choice a little while after allocations as places were accepted or rejected, so don't give up hope. Plus as others have said Inner London does have a lot of churn, so places are very likely to become vacant. Sympathy though (I used to work in Southwark, so can imagine the school you have got a place with might well be far from desirable).

What is the point in having 4 choices if you don't get any of them?

I hope you get some good news soon.

you need to find out how your council's waiting lists work and where you are on them

you need grounds for appeal eg the admissions criteria were not correctly applied

cnaik - we were in your position about a year ago (? - no concept of time here!). I want to tell you that dd was allocated a place at a school that I wasn't happy with. I feel guilty writing that. Obviously, the school was full of children, and what am I saying, if I say that I didn't want my dd going there? But anyway, guilt or no, I couldn't face it.

Anyway, friends told us to just get her name on the waiting list of as many schools we liked (in borough, out of borough) as possible. This we did and sure enough, a place came up at one of them two weeks after the start of term. In fact, places came up at quite a few of them after the start of term.

As others have said, it is worth having a very good relationship with the admissions secretary. The secretary at the school she went to told us, over the summer, that a place was likely to come up, which allowed us to plan.

We did contact various appeals people (hence my having that number) but were fairly confident we didn't have grounds for an appeal.

Mainly, i want to give you my sympathy. It's not a great position to be in. I can remember how bad it felt.

Good luck.

Sorry to hear this, cnaik. There is a lot a movement in London- we were in your position with our twins a good few years back and places came up at one of our local schools by the time they were due to start. I'd phone each and every of your preferred options to check where your son is on the waiting lists. Where abouts in Southwark are you? May be worth looking at other boroughs if you are near a border?

cnaik - for what it's worth, I suspect that there will be even more churn than usual in southwark / central london this year, as a result of the uncertainty in the City job market. I'm in Southwark and DS is in private nursery - I intend for him to stay where he is in September, but nevertheless applied for state schools in January as we faced the possibility that one or both of us might be made redundant. I've been through a redundancy round and have come out the other side, and we now have a better idea of where our jobs stand, as a result we will likely not take up the place we have been offered (at one of the OK schools). I know that a large number of parents have taken the same approach, whereas in previous years they may not have gone through the state school application process.

(PS please don't flame me or start a debate on the relative merits of state vs private schooling. I'm trying to be helpful here.)

I don't understand how this can happen? Did you apply to the schools nearest to you? If you did, it seems so grossly unfair that you didn't get into any of them. Definitely get your name down on waiting lists. This has worked for most of the people I know who have been in similar situations, although obviously it is nerve wracking waiting for something to come up

I feel for you, I'm still waiting for decision (westminster) don't know what I'll do if dd doesn't get in to any of our 6 choices!

You have my sympathy, I was in your position last year. I contacted the people cnaik recommended and the man was very straight with me. He said that he would not take my money for a consulation because, on the info I had given him, I had about a 5% chance of winning. In a way, that really helped and allowed me to move on.

Over summer, we were offered a place at a local school. You do have the advantage that London has a very mobile population and there is a good chance a place will come up so, although it seems desperate at the moment, things will probably fall into place by September.

I mean cherryblossom recommended.

Thank you everyone for help and support
Legalalien you wont get any lecture from me - feel like a fool for not hedging my bets with private and will now be going to the local privates on hands and knees - of course if you get into a good state school you can be smug and sniffy about private but if your only option is a sink school miles away from where you live where you are no part of the community and know no one then it's a different kettle of fish - how could I have done this to my boy?!
Feeling a bit calmer today - will wait and see, call re waiting lists etc.
Perhaps this varies from council to council but given that i have no intention of taking place at school offered ( i will get a tutor for home schooling if it comes to it and judging by the number of parents locally in the same boat as me it looks like I could start my own school) is there any disadvantage in refusing it?
Can I go on waiting lists for schools I didnt apply for?
Can i apply to another boroughs schools?
Yes MrsMattie all 4 schools I applied to are in walking distance - my first choice is 400 yards way and you can see it from my house - all the kids on my street (my sons friends) go there. The school I have been offered would require 2 buses to get to and take about 45mins in rush hour.
Am concerned tho that credit crunch means people that may have gone private wont and property market stagnant so no one moving out of London ... aghh

Hi Cnaik,

You have my sympathy - my dd rejected from all 3 schools I applied for. (the three nearest) and has been offered somewhere else .
I may have grounds for appeal and will be pursuing as my dd would have the same issues your ds would when allocated his place.

Not in London though, so have no experience of location.

Keep bursting into tears when I think about it (pretty much all the time) and feel at such a loss.

Hope you get sorted asap.

To be able to see a school from your house and your son not to be able to go is just crazy.

In NZ the system is that you have a school that is for your street and you are completely entitled to turn up to that school on your 5th birthday and enrol (of course you would let them know before to be nice - but you could just turn up). There will be other places at that school for people who don't live in the right streets which will be balloted.

It's worth talking to the private schools because they probably get people who don't go if they get into a good state school. They would know who is now not coming because if those people didn't give a terms notice they would have to pay the first terms fees. It's absolutely worth talking to them.

Some catchment areas are tiny though, especially where there are lots of siblings (first in the list usually) and the school is small. Because of the 30 class size limit once the places are allocated the list closes. When we were going through the system one of the local schools had two forms, one of which was completely full of siblings, and our friend who was a similar distance didn't get in. As it turned out one of the other schools she had failed to get into later had a place, and they have been very happy. We had three places offered to us for ds, so obviously rejected two and which were then free for another family. That seemed quite common then, and one of the reasons why so many schools were over subscribed (although I 'm not sure that's how the system works now).

Ds had to wait to go to the school we really wanted because there were a cluster of siblings (who are guaranteed a place). This year there have been no siblings and the class will only be full this term. So much is just luck.

cnaik We did not get our choice of schools.
Lots of tears before bedtime for DH and myself.
Our solution so far.
Friend of a friend recommend a private school, I Phoned them, cut a long story short they have said 'yes'. We are 3rd on the waiting list for the state school of our choice.
DH has appealed but, we have no ground to appeal. He has just done it, to show we are keen.
We are going to put our name down on other school waiting lists.
I'm going to have to ask my boss for 4 days a week (at present 3x9hr days) lots of work so I hope he says yes.
If we get the school of our choice we are prepared to lose the deposit. & we are prepared to lose a terms fees every term until he gets into the state school of our choice. Going to phone the schools one a month.
We hope that this will only be for 1-2 years. Not planning for him to stay at private school.
Hope this helps in you in your planning.

You probably know this anyway but though I'd mention that your DC doesn't have to start school legally until the term after he turns 5. And he will qualify for the Nursery Ed Grant until his 5th birthday. So at least there is the option of keeping him at a private nursery until then and keep applying/chasing a school place meanwhile.

Blue eyed maid - that is interesting - didn't realise the nursery grant ed would apply until 5 years of age...
I asked at the school if my dd would be able to continue in the preschool attached but they did not know as had not been in that position before.

Sorry - cnaik for the hijack.

Hi deckchair - not sure about how the NEG applies to state nurseries but can't see why you shouldn't be able to use it there if they have a place for your DS and she hasn't got a place at the school yet. We can certainly use ours at a private nursery until the age of 5 and even carry on beyond that (paying full fees mind you) as the setting is licensed to teach kids up until the age of 6.

If the school nursery 'don't know' if your DS can continue there they should find out exactly what the rules are asap. So just keep pushing - it's the only way to get anywhere in this mad system I think. Maybe you can call the council and ask them what their policy is on kids carrying on in a school nursery if a school place isn't available?

Hi BlueEyedMaid,

I have to call the council tomorrow (if I can get through!!) and so I will ask the question to them and see what they know. (am not hopeful but will keep pushing them as you suggest.

Thank you for the tip.

cnaik I'm here in sympathy, we got no schools in our LA and have appeals pending.
Funnily enough I had a canvassing visit from one of the councillors from a neighbouring ward over the weekend and so we raised the issue and his response has got me really annoyed!

Have you said you want to appeal? If there is a doubt ask for the forms and fill them in I don't think you can change you mind later if you don't

It has crossed my mind that I could open a school locally too!
There are 300 children here wihtout schools I gather the council is expecting it to be down to 150 by the summer (so that's allright then!)

Good luck