Is it important to give reasons for school preferences in the CAF?

[JUNI2005]

Hi, I have spoken to my LA today and they told me that giving reasons for our school preferences in the CAF is a waste of time. I would be inclined to believe that it is not as I have had very conflicting advice during this whole secondary school selection process from the schools and the Council.

I'd like to hear other parents' views on this. Many thanks!

I have heard that if you were going for a catholic school, for example, and you were going through an appeals process because you didn't get a place, it is only at this stage the school are aware where they were placed and it would help if you had written there something along the lines of a catholic school being integral to your child's education because, blah, blah, blah.

Having said all that I don't know for fact, but there are some pretty hot mums on here who do who I am sure will be along soon.

It makes very little difference at all.

It is useful to highlight eg existence of supporting documents for exceptional medical/social need, or to restate other factors relevant to which category you should be placed in (existence of sibling, sibling placed in this school by LA etc). But that is to reduce the possibility of error (correctly submitted documents being overlooked) rather than making any difference to your case.

School places are decided by how well you fit the criteria. Not by how much a parent wants a school.

Apart from stating siblings attending, and providing documentary evidence of any social and medical conditions with the CAF . The LA aren't interested in how many friends are going, or that Grandad can collect her after school.

I knew it made no difference whatsoever for the initial selection process, I did however, thought it had a bearing at appeals stage. But like I said, other would know best.

It has no bearing on appeals. A properly trained appeal panel will not give any weight to the presence or absence of reasons on the CAF.

Thank you for your replies. At what point and who exactly sees the reasons? If I enter reasons for each of the six choices and they are very different, and potentially contradictory, could that be identified by any of the schools I select, and so jeopardise my child's chances? Or does each get taken into account separately? Thanks!

Did you not read the answers on thi thread? It makes no difference what you put for this bit. You get a school place based on meeting the admission criteria not on what you write in the box.

Your council's admissions team are the only people who will see what you put. Unless you say something that puts your child in a higher admissions category they will ignore it. And there should be somewhere else on the form for any information that does affect the admission category. You can contradict yourself as much as you like or even give no reasons at all and it won't make any difference.

Dear Titchy I understood the answers perfectly well, and am more than aware that what we need to meet the schools' admission criteria, including for the Catholic schools we have selected, but I was seeking further clarifications from this very helpful forum. I hope this is permitted. Thank you for your patience.

By the way, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to reply to this thread. The reason I am asking is that one of the schools we are keen on told me to put any additional relevant information (not to do with siblings or special needs and/or disability) in the CAF as their SIF would not have the space for that. That made me think that it is important to add additional information - where relevant.

But what other additional information that is relevant can there be? That's what people on here are saying. Unless you need to alert them to a sibling, statement, looked after child, religious qualification or medical/social need, there is nothing to put that will change how your application is viewed by the LA or school.

No. It is pointless really to put your preference of school in a CAF.

IMO it is also pointless to have a CAF at all, but perhaps that is another thread.

If I understand it correctly, the one place where "reasons" matter is where your rights to priority do not depend on a question that can be answered by a simple yes or no.

With medical and social reasons there is often a grey area. How likely is your child to need the school with special bereavement counselling because his mother is expected to die in the first term? How badly would your child with MH issues be affected by a large school? Exactly how would they be likely to be affected? How much would a 45 minute bus journey to and from school affect the concentration of your child who has chronic back pain? How well would your child cope with the school that is across the road from his sexual abuser's house?

There are plenty of things that can't immediately be read by a computer.

We were told by the appeals panel that if the way dd's disability affected her learning had been more clearly spelled out on our initial application, we would not have had to go to appeal. The doctors' certificates provided the evidence but somebody was needed to interpret it in terms of education.

It doesn't sound like this is relevant to you, just mentioning it.

A school near me has express preference for single-sex education as one of the most important criteria. This is higher than distance in the order of criteria for admission. The admissions team told me to use the comments box to say that I wanted a single sex school as there is no other way to meet this condition. . They also said I could put a different mixed school as top choice without this affecting my chances for the single-sex choice.

So there are definitely some instances where the comments are really important for admissions.

In my view this comes very close to breaching the Admissions Code paragraph 1.9(c). After all, if parents are required to demonstrate a preference for single sex education that would be undermined if they name schools that are not single sex as higher preferences. Indeed, if it was the only single sex school in the area catering for the appropriate sex it could be a way of getting "first preference first" by the back door. There appear to be at least two schools in Hounslow doing this. I think they should be referred to the Schools Adjudicator.

Thank you. I think I will play it safe and stick the reasons in - I don't see any harm in doing that bearing in mind the important difference between explaining the reasons for choosing a school and telling the council's admission officers how well we think we fit the schools' admission criteria (I strongly agree with the rest of this panel that in the latter case it would be a total waste of time to mention anything to do with the admission criteria in those boxes).

That's my view @JUNI2005 - stick something in there anyway especially as it takes less than a minute, it'll make you feel better and like those more qualified than me have confirmed, it sure won't harm your app.