How many parents don't really have a school "choice"?

[BedsitBob]

DS is in Y5 so thinking about 2ndary school. There is lots of discussion on MN about what to look for in a good school, making decisions between 2 schools etc.

However, the situation where we are is that actually there is no choice to be made. We are in a town with catchment areas with priority given to living in catchment and attending feeder schools.

Considering schools in our town (or reasonable striking distance outside) we have

• our catchment school (with priority to DC from primary school DS attends) which DS is 99.999999999999% likely to get into

• about 5 other perfectly fine (at cursory glance) schools, all of which he has approximate 0.000000000001% chance of getting into

• the town's undersubscribed, badly failing academy which would be a complete nightmare to get to anyway.

I can't see any point in doing other than writing our catchment school for Choice 1 and leaving the rest of the form blank. But apparently that is a huge no-no on MN! Should I really be looking at the no-chance-of-getting-into schools to pick out the one I like best?

Surely we can't be the only people who really don't have a genuine realistic choice?

I think I've posted a thread on here before asking if anyone at all in the whole of the UK has a realistic 6 choices, for either primary or secondary. I'd be really fascinated to know if such a place exists.

Here in West London, Mintyy, (secondary, at least). But that includes faith schools, so probably not quite what you meant.

We have no real choice - small town with one (good) comprehensive, or private. Since the comp is actually a good school and literally 400 yds down the road from where we live, we've just gone for it. I did put a second choice on the form, a no-chance school in the nearest town. No way was I going to go for the SM Free School in the other nearest town!

I'm in the countryside and my DCs are at the catchment school. It's the most popular, but does take DCs from our of catchment. We had the choice of 3 additional schools that we would have got into if we'd put them as first choice. All of the schools are "good".

London burbs here and there isn't a single school my kids can walk to. If we ignore selectives we get a very rough school with 40% A-C GCSEs.

I dream of the choice others have and would happily settle for a "bog standard comp" that everyone in the area walks to. That is why independent education is so popular in London and surrounding areas.

Mintyy, Bath has an excess of secondary places. Living in most of the city you have a choice of five (which five depends on boy/girl). If you're also church-going (not necessarily Catholic) or at a Catholic primary (some of which are undersubscribed) or can get in on aptitude, the Catholic school makes six.

Details here if you are bored. We've got one secondary with a PAN of 102 that made 36 offers last year.

I had a real choice of six primary schools for my son for reception 2013. We are in Surrey. Two of those six I wouldn't have wanted but the other four are all fine. Interestingly we weren't close enough to get into our 'nearest school' though and my son got the last place offered on distance for the school he did go to.