Allocation of school places, can someone explain this for me!

[bourgeoisfishwife]

I'm in the process of preparing an appeal for Y7 entry in September as we didn't get our first choice school.

I'm aware that at our first choice school and other oversubscribed schools in the city, people were offered places at the, when they had listed them as their second or third choices.

My understanding was that oversubscribed schools would only admit people who've put it as first choice. I don't understand how a school can be oversubscribed and be offering places to people who haven't put it as their first choice?

No, it doesn’t work like that. They work through their system of criteria (looked after children, siblings etc) and work out if you qualify for your first choice school, and place all people who qualify in order of criteria, distance etc. If you don’t get in your first choice, they check your second etc. Some schools tell you to put them first, but in my experience that is not part of the criteria, its a fallacy.

The order of your choices is irrelevant, they assign places according to their admissions criteria.
So they look at your first choice and see if you qualify and if not move onto your second choice.
You might live 6 miles from your first choice so don't get a place. Someone else might not get their first or second choice and have your school down in 3rd place, but they live 1 mile away so they get the place.

The schools will not even know what order the parents listed the schools, as I understand it. They just get a list of pupils, rank them in order of priority according to their admissions criteria and send that ranked list back to the LEA. The LEA then look at the order of preference of the parents - if someone got in to your first choice school as their third choice, it means that their first and second choice schools were 'full' by the time it got to their child's name.

Each application to each school is considered individually against all the other application to the school using the oversubscription criteria. And the highest choice you qualify for is the one you get.

What everyone else has said - the school doesn't know your preference. My DD was given her second choice school despite it being very oversubscribed for first choice places! First choice doesn't mean first dibs, unfortunately!

I would always put your favourite as first choice because it could be that you qualify for every school on your list and the Council will pick your highest available preference.

We've gone on the waiting list for the first choice school and hope to hear next week. Good luck with your appeal I'm not sure I'd go that far!

schools regularly lie to parents at open evenings and say 'put us first to guarantee a place'

as pp have said it doesn't work like that. If you put the school second, and you are not eligible for your first choice school, then your application for your second place is considered right alongside people applying for it as first place. So, you may get your second place ahead of someone who listed it as first, perhaps because you live closer for example.

Can I just add, I hope you have accepted the place you were offered. the best advice is to accpet the place you were offered, even if you are going to go on the waiting list/appeal for another school. If you lose your appeal you are really in trouble if you have turned down the place offered, as the LEA won't help once they have offered and place and you have turned it down.

What they all said ^^

But just to be clear. it is something like this:

Every school gets all the people who applied (whether 1st 2nd or 6th) and ranks them in order according to how they meet the admissions criteria.

The LA gets back all the ranked lists and draws a line for each school at their PAN level.

It looks to see if any child appears above the line for more than one school. If they do then they look to see which was a higher preference. they keep the higher preference and delete the child from the lower preference list. This then obviously makes a space in a school so the lower children all move up one place.

They keep iterating round until there are no duplicates above the lines. That is the allocated schools.

Then they look to see whether all children have a school allocated. If they don't then they try to match up those children with any schools with spare spaces, as well as those children who did late applications.

schools regularly lie to parents at open evenings and say 'put us first to guarantee a place'

Really? I've never heard anyone at a school open evening say that in recent years. I suppose there's no reason why teachers who aren't directly involved in admissions, and who don't have children of their own, would necessarily be up-to-date with how these things work. It certainly used to be the case that many local authorities had a first-preference-first system, but not any more.

@bourgeoisfishwife it would be interesting to know where you got your mis-understanding from. Did you read your local authority's admissions brochure?

criminally steppe It is all in the subtlety of the wording.

'Put us first to get a place'

• if you don't put us first we won't even consider you (WRONG and BAD)
• if you really want us then put us first as otherwise you might be allocated a school you put higher on your list even though you actually prefer us (FINE)

I'm assuming from this that you were hoping to show there was an error in the process and win the appeal at stage 1.

schools regularly lie to parents at open evenings and say 'put us first to guarantee a place'

What they mean - and shouid be saying considerably more clearly - is 'If this is the school you most want, put us first, because if you don't get in it won't make any difference to getting offers from a lower listed school. But if you put your 'banker' ahead of us, you get the banker, even if this year you could have got in'

I agree teen and meditrina, that they mean, if you want us, don't forget to put us first otherwise you might get another school.

But that is not what they say, and that is not what parents understand.

People tend to ask me about secondary applications a lot, and every year I ave to explain the proces to people who have heard schools say this and worry, because they want school A, but that is a bit risky, they may not get it, and school B said you have to put us first, so they panic thinking 'if I put A first and miss, then B won't offer me a place, because I didn't put them first'

It takes a LOT of explaining and reassurance that B will consider then alongside every person who put them first, and B won't even know where they put them on the application form

Thank you everyone. My misunderstanding was based on 1. being told by the school put us first to maximise your chances (obviously that was incorrect info), and 2. I didn't realise that they don't know what ranking you've given the school. That makes much more sense now.

We think there has been another procedural error which we are awaiting information from the AA on to confirm if it's the case, and we also have several other grounds for appeal in terms of social need and a change of circumstance.

Basically your preferences is saying ‘if I am eligible for a place at more than one school, this is the order I’d like to be offered them’.

Good to hear you've got other things to use. Good luck.

I don't think that's misleading of the school to say it maximises your chances, it does make sense to put the schools down in the order that you want them.

If you are trying to check distance, tbh I'd say it's unlikely they are measuring it wrongly and if they are, then there's probably a lot of other people who would come under the same mistake!

Our first school (now waiting list) is much closer than the school allocated for DD (we have accepted) but they were so popular that the last distance admitted is closer than us.

This is all correct, except schools do know which preference you've given them (or they do in my LA). They don't take much notice of it, but it's there on the info the school gets from the LA.

I was told by two head teachers when I looked for dd in 2016 that we 'had to put them first choice in order to even stand a chance of a place" - it's still info often given out.

In my LEA, I believe our schools were told what order we had placed our preferences at some point. My dd got her second place school and we couldn't make an acceptance by email. I had to wait for a letter in the post. The letter came with a whole heap of info, including a letter from our allocated school saying they were aware it wasn't her first choice but welcoming her to the school and hoping she'd take up the place. People tell me the schools don't know but I didn't dream the letter.

Also one thing that's always confused me is in our city, there is a very sought after school that has on average about 2000 applications for 90 places each year. They allocate their places via a lottery. So no distance criteria, just looked after children and siblings. My dd's friend (no older sibling) got a place at this school even though it was her 2nd choice. Try as I might, I can't understand how this is possible when it's a lottery system and there are soooo many first choice preferences for that school but it was her 2nd choice?

Anyway, there are so many misconceptions and confusions around place allocations. I think it's high time there were some national ad campaigns around October every year. Only this year in my ds's Primary one school Mum friend was in tears in place allocation day as she'd only put down one school because she thought they'd have no option but to give her that school and had found out the hard way.

My dd's friend (no older sibling) got a place at this school even though it was her 2nd choice. Try as I might, I can't understand how this is possible when it's a lottery system and there are soooo many first choice preferences for that school but it was her 2nd choice?

Because she was one of the first 90 names out of the hat for school 2, but didn't qualify for school 1. They aren't allowed to only put the children in the draw who put the school first. They have to put all the applications in the draw.

All this stuff though is always (or in everything I’ve seem at least) very clearly set out in the council admissions documents if you read it. The fact that you didn’t read or understand it isn’t going to be enough for an appeal.

Oh I see Teen. I didn't realise that they all went into a big hat at the same time. That makes sense!

Believe it or not I am quite clever but even I feel pretty stupid sometimes getting my head around this stuff!

OP I don't want to sound harsh here, this is meant as genuine support, but I would say that if you don't understand how schools admissions work them you will be at a big disadvantage at appeal.

There are lots of people who are confused by the system, so there's no shame in that, but in order to have a chance of success at appeal, you need to have very clear, strong arguments and a good understanding of the grounds on which you are appealing.