Admissions

[ClareS71]

My daughter has just been turned down by all three primary schools applied for, in spite of the fact that we were very sensible and put down our closest school as our first choice. The school we have been given a place at is not good so understandably we are feeling pretty angry right now. Does Anyone know how I find out where she is on the waiting lists for the schools we wanted. Do I have to put her on the list or is it automatic? Thanks

sympathies, this happenned to us last year. Very stressful I know. You should go on the waiting list for all 3 automatically if they are community schools controlled by the admissions authority. For any foundation/church schools you have to contact them directly. I wrote letters to the council and the schools directly just in case as the admissions process was so shambolic in our area, they had my childs name wrong, distances wrong etc so I was not confident the process would work.

Good luck

It is a good idea to tell the LA that you want to go on the waiting list for these schools. The LA should also be able to tell you where you are on the waiting list but don't rely on what they say. Someone who applies late, e.g. because they've just moved into the area, may go ahead of you on the waiting list. If a vacancy arises, they have to assess the children on the waiting list using the same criteria that were used to decide who was admitted originally. However, if you are at or near the head of the waiting list, there is a decent chance you will get in - there is often a lot of movement on waiting lists between now and September.

As you put your nearest school down as one of your choices, it is disappointing that you didn't get in there. Have you checked the admission criteria for that school? That will tell you how they decide which children are admitted if there are more applications than places. That will help you figure out why your daughter wasn't admitted.

You do, of course, have the option of appealing for a place at one or all of your preferred schools. Your chances of success depend on whether or not it is an infant class size appeal. As a rule of thumb, if the admission number is a multiple of 15 it will probably be an infant class size appeal. In this case, the rules are that you should only succeed if the authority has made a mistake (e.g. getting the distance to your home wrong) or has acted unreasonably (the bar for that is very high so you are unlikely to win on those grounds). If it isn't an infant class size appeal you have a much better chance of success.