LA refusing to tell us waiting list position

[Paramaribo0]

Hi, our LA is refusing to tell us DD position on the 2 waiting lists she currently on. Can they do this? Is there any workaround we can use to find out? Many thanks

In our LA it was ok to just phone he individual schools. they were very helpful.

Right at this moment the simple answer might be they have not got a waiting list yet. Some LAs take quite a while to process all the parents responding yes or no to the offer of a place and therefore which schools have places to fill.
I would go back to them by email and ask them at what point will they start to fill places that have been rejected at the preferred school. That will either give you a date when a waiting list will be available or if they say that they are already filling places, the ability to say so you do have a waiting list please confirm where we sit on the waiting list.

Bucks say they will only tell people on the 10th April and the 29th June (I think) and at no other time. They won't respond to requests. This does seem at odds to most other places from what I can tell?

I didn't ask about position, but I did ask to confirm I was on the waiting list, which I was.

I got referred to the school by the LA when I asked a couple of weeks ago and then the school said the hadn't had the info from the LA yet (Bexley) so they had no idea and wouldn't expect to be able to advise further until April.

I think that they are probably just not explaining the situation properly.

Where we live, parents have just been chased up with a reminder to accept or decline the place offered and I'm not sure that meaningful waiting list numbers can be drawn up until the accept/decline process has finished.

Sure, they could produce figures now based on everyone who has been offered a place accepting it but that would only be a temporary situation and they'd have to re-run the numbers after the deadline to produce the accurate waiting list.

I have two of my three waiting list positions but the other one says it will be Wednesday before they have the info. One of the ones that gave me info said not everyone has accepted places yet so council are chasing them up.

Thanks for all your responses.
On allocation day I rang and was informed of her position. I rang again this week as it's a week past acceptance day and wondered if her position had changed as she was high on both waiting lists. The lady just said we will contact you if/when we can offer a place otherwise we won't be informing anyone of places.
I thought it was unreasonable of them to be like that. We are thinking of moving house and this is leaving us in limbo land! If we could email in and request the information, it would at least allow them to reply in their own time.

I can understand that they are probably very busy and with primary allocations soon it won't get better. I think though that they should have some online way that you could log in and see where they currently have you on the waiting list with warnings that places can go up and down.

But the list is not a queueing system
so your place will go up and down depending on factors outside the control of the LEA
let alone if its an academy school where the LEA are nothing to do with it

But if you keep asking for an update, and every other parent does, when do you suggest they do the rest of the job? Also people tend to react badly when they find out they have gone down on the list, or they speak to someone at school and their child is higher.

This is why my LA stopped telling people, it creates far too much work. The idea of telling people on two set dates is a good one, and I'll feed that back at our next training day.