Applying for secondary.....Six schools on the form?

[SarahBeeney]

Just about to visit secondaries for DD who is in year 6.

I have heard mixed things about how many schools to put on the form.

We aren't even in the catchment for six schools so why would we fill it up?
There is definitely one school locally that we wouldn't want her to go to,but even if we left this off the list of six it wouldn't guarantee that she wouldn't get it would it?!

Any other advice about the whole process greatfully received. We are in SE London.

Good advice is:

Put the schools you really want them to go to on the form in order of preference

If your catchment school is acceptable to you, put that on somewhere

If you don't want your catchment school, make sure you put at least one school you will get into (look at admissions criteria and distances offered in previous years) on the form

Don't put down any school you really don't want - of course you still might get it if all your choices are full

We just put down one school but then we are totally in catchment for it. Lots of people locally to me put down the outstanding school in the next village - some years they get in, some years they don't. We didn't as didn't want a long bus journey/late home time.

It's a good idea to fill the form but if there aren't six school you like then I wouldn't do.

Should add - it must be different in London. We live in a small city and our house is only in catchment of one school (the one round the corner my kids go to). I infer in London you are in catchment for many? Must make it harder!

You should use all your choices and include at least one school which you would find acceptable and where you have a realistic chance of getting a place. A lot of people seem to think that not using all their choices increases their chances of getting a school they want. It doesn't work like that. If you only name, say, 3 choices and don't get any of them the LA will allocate a place at another school. This will be an unpopular school and could be a long way from home.

There is nothing you can do that will completely guarantee avoiding the school you don't want. But using all your choices will help. And remember, things can change dramatically from year to year. Maybe there is a school you really want that seems out of reach. Include it as your first choice. You won't lose anything by doing so and it is just possible you will strike it lucky and get a place.

Good advice above.

A lot of people also think that they may be disadvantaged by not putting a particular school first. This is not true. If, say, you put your catchment school second and don't get your first choice you will NOT have spoiled your chances of getting into the catchment school.

I was horrified to hear one Head at a school I visited tell parents "You need to put us first to maximise your chances of getting in" - couldn't believe a Head would lie and it really put me off the school.

You need to put us first to maximise your chances of getting in

Though of course that is sort of true.

If you qualify, then you qualify, wherever you put it on the form.
But if you put it last then you will be given any of your other schools that you listed that you qualify for in preference to the one you put last. So to 'maximise your chance' of getting a school you put it first.

Of course it would be less disingenuous / more accurate to say 'list the schools in your real order of preference. If we are really your first choice then put us first as otherwise you may bei given a higher listed school over us'.

Yes, put the one you want first - the way our council did it, they send your details to all the schools (they don't know your preference at this stage) and you are offered the school highest on your list that has offered a place. We didn't get our first choice but we made sure that the second on our list was one we had a good chance of admission.

Our second choice (which we were offered) is further away distance-wise than our first choice but due to Council boundaries, was the highest-placed offer that we got. Looking at the allocation day numbers that were published later, I'd say it is likely that we were offered at least three, possibly four out of our list of 5 so it is important to put the ones that you really want at the top of the list.

The school we were offered was actually oversubscribed on first preferences! That may well have been down to people putting it down as an 'aspirational' first choice though.

I would definitely fill the list, and check the allocation day statistics for the previous year if your Council has them.

I'm in London and we probably had a realistic choice of 4 secondary schools

A: 5 minutes walk from our house, Good Ofsted, likely to benefit from gentrification over the next 5 years, not oversubscribed. Good open evening which impressed DS1. No 6th form.
B: Almost 2 km away (just over a mile) - a short bus journey would cover half the route, or 25 mins walk including crossing roads. DS1 has a bike but it would mostly mean riding along quite busy main roads which would be a huge leap for him. Outstanding Ofsted, community school with head very resistant to academisation (this is a very positive thing to me). Oversubscribed and we would have been right on the edge of getting the last place on distance to start 2 years ago - which went to someone 1.9 km away, almost exactly the same distance as our house! Tour of the school on the open evening not so well thought out and DS1 was a bit overwhelmed. No 6th form
C. 1.5 miles away to the west, nominally C of E, Good Ofsted - has 6th form that offers mix of A levels and BTecs - only wondered about it because I went to a meeting held there and was shown the way in by another parent from the school. Although it's much closer to the wealthier parts of my borough than the other schools on our horizon, it doesn't seem to attract the interest of more middle class parents there or around where I live. It's an easy bus journey, perhaps a bit far to walk. DS1 didn't think anyone from his school would go there (though several classmates including one or two friends did actually apply in the end) and the open evening was when he was away on a residential.
D. New school planned to be 11-18 but expanding upwards as it grows, part of controversial academy chain whose Executive Head is paid far more than any local authority education director. Didn't really think about it because I don't like the organisation that runs it, and although they plan to have a 6th form it's not established enough to know how it will all turn out by the time DS1 would start GCSEs - he would probably be part of the 3rd cohort but.... no!

We put down A & B as 1 and 2 respectively and got 1st preference as not oversubscribed. If DS1 had preferred B we would have probably put down A as backup, although I'd have been more likely to arrange a visit to C and put it down as another option in those circumstances.

Putting down another 3 would have been quite pointless IMO, given that we had a reasonable school so close and not oversubscribed (I think that may change in the next few years).

Go to the website for all the schools you’re interested in and read the admissions criteria.

A lot of schools have a simple admissions policy - they put children in a number of bands and then sort them by distance. All Harris Academy schools do this - except Crystal Palace.

All secondary schools in the borough of Leeisham managed by the council (not voluntary aided) just rank all students by distance - no banding tests are done.

Just list the schools on the form in the order of your preference. But just make sure you include a school that your DC is pretty much guaranteed to get into - for example, the 6th school on my form was a Harris school 0.3 miles away

Leeisham = Lewisham

Now in Y7. One of DD's classmate's parents only put two down. Out of catchment for both. Got a random unloved one miles away. Appealed for several including the one she finally got - in catchment.

It varies madly depending on where you are... I live in a small market town which has exactly one secondary school. It's 3 minutes from our house and it's pretty damn good. I did put down a second choice for both though.

And yes, I know how lucky we are.

I suspect my DCs' schools will never be the ones talked about on Education threads, in the sense of how do I get my DC in to this one. But I think it's all turned out pretty well so far. I'm glad I didn't choose the primary school which was forced to convert and join an academy chain.

Surely if a school is over-subscribed on first preferences where children are all in catchment and qualify, putting that school second, but not getting your preferred first choice school, means you may not get your catchment school because other children could qualify ahead of you? I was always told to put the school you were most likely to get into first, assuming you were happy with it. If you put it second and a wildly popular, aspirational, school first, but it is over subscribed with those in catchment, these children will be offered above you. Then you may not get the second choice catchment school if it too takes all from within catchment but has to use over subscription criteria which could mean you fall foul of a distance rule, if there is one. Or am I missing something? It can be tricky.

Each school publishes criteria. It also publishes which criterion it went up to the year or two before.

Bubbles where you place the school on your list has no influence on if you will meet the criteria.
So, if you put the school you live next door to in 6th place, you are very likely to qualify for a place. But that will only translate into an offer if none of the schools you have placed higher can offer you a place.
So, position on the list only important if you meet the criteria for more than one school. The school doesnt know where you put them, only that you have put them somewhere on your application form.

We met the criteria for two - second and third on our list. We were given the second. We were out of catchment for the first by 200 metres. We appealed. We didn't get it. Dh and I are happy with 2nd. Dd less so but she's coming around to it.

BubblesBuddy

How it works is this: (Imagine you have two schools on your list for simplicity)

1. You put School A first and if you qualify for that school (whatever its criteria is) then that's the school you will be offered.

2. If you don't qualify for School A you will then be considered for School B. But you won't be disadvantaged by the fact that you didn't put School A first. So if you are in catchment and someone else's child isn't (but they have put School B first) you will be offered a place before that child.

I have met a few parents who have said things like "I'm scared of putting School A first because it might mean I don't get School B either". This can't happen. As a real-life example Cherwell school in Oxford is one of the most oversubscribed schools in the country. Last year a child was offered a place there who had it THIRD on their preference list. Cannot imagine how someone who lived close enough to get a place preferred two other schools instead but there you go - that's the system.
The only danger is if you don't list a school at all. In THAT case you don't get priority for School B even if you're in catchment over the people who had it on their list but aren't in catchment. You could be offered School C miles away. That's why the knowledgeable people on Mumsnet always advise that you put a school somewhere on your list that you feel pretty sure of getting into.

Surprisingly people can be very reluctant to accept reality on school admissions. I knew one parent who spent a lot of time trying to convince a Headteacher how religious her family was even though that particular school didn't give a priority on church attendance but went only on distance. This was a Cambridge graduate who was perfectly capable of understanding the system - just seemed like she couldn't actually "believe" it.

Dunes is right, or at least that's how our Council does it Bubbles. All the offers are considered by the schools at the same time then (I assume) the Council looks at the school highest on your list that has offered you a place. They don't pass it to the first one and wait for a response - all schools on list get a request at the same time and respond at the same time.

Hence our first choice school with a priority catchment area that we were just outside didn't offer us a place. A school twice as far away (also oversubscribed with first choices) which was our second choice did offer us a place, due to distance/location criteria. Bloody frustrating, tbh, as my DD has a lot further to travel!

Of our 4 closest schools, 3 were on our list. One wasn't because it is utterly dreadful. There was no way I was giving the Council a chance to stick my DD in that one so filling all the spots on our list with achievable schools was essential! Our first choice school is one that has been failing in the past and improved, so it would have been easy to get into any other year!

There was no way I was giving the Council a chance to stick my DD in that one so filling all the spots on our list with achievable schools was essential!

Trouble is, some people believe (and I've heard them say this) that if they put an unpopular school on their list somehow the Admissions Authority will offer them this school EVEN IF they qualify for a more popular one higher up on their list.

Shame there's never been a myth busting campaign on School Admissions.

The thing is that you will always qualify to be considered for any school in theory. The fact that a secondary school has 180 places to allocate and you happen to be 1000th on the list in the qualifying order means that you do not normally get offered a place at that school!

We put all 6. Got offered 4th first go, then 3rd after about 5 weeks. 2nd choice a week after that and 1st choice day before term started!

I was shocked to only get 4th choice in March!

I am South East London too and about to start this horrible process. Important to remember is that some schools don't actually have a catchment and places are all lottery so you have equal chance if you live next door or practically in Essex or whatever (Kingsdale I'm looking at you). I would definitely put six realistic choices or you could end up with a random school 5 bus changes on the other side of your borough.

bookmum, if you really like Kingsdale then I would advise you to put it down as your first... you have nothing to lose.

I did that for my DD and out Harris Crystal Palace as 2nd - got neither on offers day and was offered a place at Kingsdale 2 weeks later.

Another tip would be to get your DC to try for a sports or music scholarship - because if you get offered a half or full scholarship then you will increase your DC’a chances of a place. So, if your DC doesn’t get a place on offers day, with a scholarship they will be placed on the banding waiting and scholarship waiting list.

In the oversubscription criteria, places are offered to DC on the scholarship waiting list before those on the banding waiting list and children of school staff.

Thank you everyone,loads of good advice

We are in fact in Lewisham! Kingsdale will definitely be in the top six although DD and my DP haven't seen it yet so not sure whether it'll be 1st choice or not.

I don't like Kingsdale. Far too big. I just think it's unfair a child could literally live next door and not get a place there.