Is it too soon to start a 1st March (secondary school allocation day) support thread?

[teddygirlonce]

DD has six good options on her CAF - we will be happy if she gets any of those six but there are no other local schools we would be happy for her to be allocated/offered - and private schooling is not an option.

So just a bit nervous and already counting down the days until we find out which school she's been allocated (if at all).

Thisdoesnotgeteasier I'm sure I'll check my confirmation email a few more times myself yet so I'm just as bad.

atheistmantis I've logged in too a couple of weeks ago because I was worried I'd not written down the password! Then I was worried logging in now might cause a problem! Hope you manage to get the IT issue sorted soon.

atheistmantis oh no. I've always used Chrome to log-in and not yet had a problem. Try again today - it could have just been a 'blip'?

Otherwise if the primary school HTs have the info ahead of us, then perhaps you'd be able to ask them to let you know on Offers Day (or the next morning)? Not ideal, granted.

I've been logging in every week or so since the beginning of February just in case they've put the info up ahead of time (but of course they haven't!) - idly wondering if that ever does happen?!

teddygirlonce I read once about an LA that had a computer glitch that released the results early. If only ha ha. But then I'd worry the glitch gave the wrong results so I can't win

Trb17 I read somewhere yesterday that the HTs get the outcomes w/c 20 Feb (so this coming week), so I guess anything is possible once the finalised 'results info delivery process' is underway.

HT certainly knew the outcome of the entrance exams way before we did. How mine kept a straight face to my flapping in front of him is still beyond me!

You have all made me log in and check I am set with passwords!

The secondary will know which child has been allocated a place at their school by Monday as LA sends the list to them to do the final check on the 18th. The list will be checked and send back to LA before the 1st March.

Yes teddygirlonce our LA states that they will release the finalised lists to the schools wk/c 20th too so I'm thinking many must be the same. I'd be very happy if someone pressed a button a bit early and released them to put me out of my misery.

If I was a teacher BubbleBed I doubt I would be able to stop myself from giving sneaky thumbs up to parents if I knew good news.

Ha ha JustEatYourDinner I might check mine again this weekend just to be safe.

Trb17 lists are to be released to secondary schools, I doubt primary schools would know.

wangxiaosara - what's the HT's final check for though? Given that we don't actually apply for secondary school places via the primary schools, their involvement in the whole process isn't direct?

Yes wangxiaosara that's what I meant by school, sorry I should have specified secondary - ironically I know some of the staff there but not the lady who deals with admissions sadly

Cross-posted. Cancel my last query wangxiaosara - it makes perfect sense for the secondary school HTs to know!!!

The primary schools get the lists as well.

We're on tenterhooks this year, and it was 9 years since dd1 moved to secondary school.
We are hoping for one of our top two choices, our first choice is a bit unusual in how the places are allocated and our second choice has never been oversubscribed before but it had an outstanding ofsted a year ago so who knows for this year.

@tiggytape thanks for that. I'm not too worried about Herts taking away the 1/3 offer and replacing it with one higher up our preference list. Everything will be a step towards what we want.

I'm still not clear how the Herts schools form their lists. This is particularly true for our first choice school which in addition to proportional places offered by parish, has a lottery for all children in each parish.

So trying to put my thoughts into concise questions.

If there are 2 children from different parishs which gets priority over the other? If its done proportionally and say 90% of applicants are town and 10% villages for 10 places on the list town will have 9 and villages 1 and so in which order / which parish / village are these given out? If you end up subdividing villages you will end up with 0.something of a child and so are you bottom of the list?

Also if for one school, children in a particular parish are allocated randomly do you keep the same number / place at each CI run? Or is the lottery rerun each time?

I think the whole process is as clear as mud! And very poorly explained in all the materials I've seen.

Oh well 10 days to go and counting. Hopefully all of this will be moot and we'll get our first choice first time.

Wow random allocation like that sounds very complicated. Here it's just distance. I wonder how many LA's use distance versus random lottery methods and which is harder to administrate.

@trb17 yes it is very complicated but part of me prefers a lottery as it helps to dilute the house price differential you get with distance to the school gate. However it makes it very hard to predict if we'll get what we want though.

@tiggytape thankyou so much for taking the time to explain. I actually think I understand how it works now and it seems fair. Herts does have quite a few lotteries and yes we are after a single sex school. I'm pretty sure the school we want runs the random allocation the same way as Verulam, county run it and I can't see them doing if differently so I won't take up more of your time.

Surely if you allocated lists by numbers even those added 'late' won't be disadvantaged?

Sorry that sentence makes no sense - if you allocated randomly from a waiting list, those applying late wouldn't be disadvantaged?

One of our local schools is allocated by random allocation (after sen, looked after, siblings etc)I didn't put it as it seemed too much of a gamble. plus the bus fare to get there is really expensive

MrGrumpy01 I really don't see why all the schools don't use random selection where demand wildly outstrips places.