We're just choosing a school for DD in yr 6. I don't understand the admissions thing and hope someone can explain.
We're told that you can put up to 3 choices, and each choice is treated equally. So each school is given a list of all the children who've put that school down, whether in first, second or third place. They then rank the children according to their own admission criteria, regardless of where that child put the school in their choices.
OK so far: but then how does the LEA allocate schools? If it was simply a case of each school offering places to the first (say) 100 children on their ranked list, that would make no sense as a lot of those children would prefer to be somewhere else. To me it only makes sense if they go to each child in the first 100 (say), ask them if they want that school, and if they say no, then move on to offer a place to the 101st child. However that can't be it as all children are offered a place on the same day, and that system of negotiation could take months.
Can someone please explain how it works??