Confused about the process of choosing...

[obviouslymarvellous]

Sorry if this has been done to death, but we are in the process of choosing a secondary school for eldest ds. My question is this, if we put a school down as first choice and other parents choose another school in same area (but this is heavily oversubscribed and therefore a number of students don't get in), if they potentially live closer would they get preference in our first choice school??? Or does choosing a school as first option come into play...It's not very clear on admissions criteria, and I'm struggling to get my foggy brain around it x

If you put a school as your first choice, and another parent puts it as their second choice, this makes no difference as to whether they are more or less likely to get into the school than you are.

The school's stated admissions criteria (usually including things like SEN, siblings, distance, catchment areas, feeder schools etc) determine who gets into the school. So if the school uses distance as a tie-breaker and the other parent lives closer than you, then their DC might get in and yours not. However, if the other parent was also able to get their first place school, then they would get a place there, rather than at their second choice (thus freeing up an extra place for everyone else!).

Yes they would, if closeness to the school was a the tie-breaker eg no siblings or SN or any other requirement came into play. So how it works is that your preferences only come into play if you meet the requirements for more than one school. So if you meet the requirements for two schools you will get the one that you put highest in your preference list.

The schools themselves will not know which preference they were on your list.

The schools do not know, or take into account, what position you have listed them in.

They look at every application and rank them all in strict order of how they meet the published admissions criteria. They tell the LA who they could admit.

Every school you apply to does this.

The LA looks at which schools could give you a place, and automatically allocates you the school which is highest up your list.

The computer keeps going until everyone has been allocated a place according to this system.

If none of the schools you applied to could offer you a place, the LA will look at which schools have vacancies, and allocate you a place at the closest. But naturally, these tend to be the places in the least popular schools, and may be a long way away.

This is why it is important to:
List the schools in the exact order you prefer them
And
Include at least one school, in last place if it is your least favourite, that you would get a place in based in the criteria.

I know a mum who was in the catchment for school A so put it as second choice and put outstanding school B, which was out of catchment as choice one. She assumed getting a place in school A was a surety no matter which position she put it. Her daughter was given school C, which is awful. She appealed and lost.

Armchair: but in that scenario, if she is in England, she wouldn’t have had any better chance of getting into school A if she had put it first.

There must have been a high birth rate or huge number of siblings or other higher category or something!

The system is called (perhaps confusingly) the Equal Preference System and is law in England.

@Armchairanarchist getting school C in that case was nothing to do with the order of A and B. The order you put the schools down in really really doesn't make any difference to whether you qualify for a place at each school. It is just your three choices.

The only time it ever comes into play is when you qualify (according to the admissions criteria) for more than one of your choices. Then the LA will offer you a place at the highest one of your preferences. So if you qualify for a place at A, B and C then you'd be offered a place at A. That's why you should put the school you actually want as your first choice and then the others in genuine order of preference.

She qualified for school B, it's practically next door to their home but she never got the place because mum put it down as second choice. They told her if she'd put it as choice one she would have got the place.

If she was given her third choice school, school C in your description, it can only be because she didn't qualify for A or B. The order that they were in is irrelevant, each preference is considered on its own.

It's my daughter's best friend. I understand what you're saying but unless mum lied to me this is what happened. School B is the one my daughter has just started and they live very near to us but closer to B than we are. B is a great school but A is outstanding. I would have liked school A but knew we stood no chance. She wanted A, was happy with B but absolutely didn't want C and that's where the LA have sent her daughter.

Firstly nobody gets a choice they can only express a preference. In the above case the information you have received just has to be wrong, that is not how the system works. If they did not get allocated school A or school B they would have been allocated school C as the nearest school with places.
If they live in catchment for school A this does not guarantee a place. If they are practically round the corner from the school then a number of things could have happened. Firstly they did not put school A down as a preference or somehow it was not put on the computer system. Secondly the distance to the school was not the determining factor - for instance all places were taken up under siblings criteria. The third possibility and what I suspect might have happened, is that for some reason the application was treated as a late application, which would not have been considered to after all on-time applications.
There is no way that putting a school down as second preference would have meant no place being offered. This is a myth which some head teachers delight in trotting out at admission nights but is wrong and simply illustrates their ignorance of the admission process.

If your daughter got a place and your friend's didn't, then you must rank more highly in the admissions criteria than she does. Otherwise it's a clear error in applying the admissions criteria, and she would have won at appeal if she'd argued that.

I suggest you don't know the whole story and it's not helpful to parents already stressed by secondary admissions to suggest that where you put a school on your form makes any difference to your likelihood of getting in.

Armchair: who told her?

It is rubbish. And against the law.

If this is a school in England in tne last 7 years (or more).

Schools themselves often misrepresent tne System, and people often give very garbled accounts as to what happened.

And unfortunately, Armchair, you are passing in a myth. (If it was in England). People need to understand how it works.

I think your information is incorrect armchair - my understanding of the system is the same as that of assassinated

I'm going to show her your comments. Either she is lying (although I doubt it) or someone screwed up somewhere.) We are both definitely in the catchment for school B. She told me she put B as her second preference. She said she put school C as her third preference (it's a failing school) and that's the school she was given.

Armchair::
I know someone who for some reason thought you listed the schools in reverse order of preference, and duly got her last choice.
I know a family that forgot to even submit the form. They faddled about with it, changing their minds throughout Sept / Oct and then forgot that they hadn’t actually pressed ‘submit’. They duly hit last choice.
I know people who failed to submit the Supplementary form, and people who forgot or decided to go away for the weekend for the banding test. I know a woman who was shouting the odds in the pmayground that ‘bloody LA’ had allocated her no space. She rang her papers and everything. She had listed six outstanding and faith schools miles away that she had no chance of getting in.

People talk nonsense.

Just being in catchment doesn't mean you will qualify. It depends on the admission criteria and how many children meet each criteria. Then on what the tie breaker is, which may be distance or faith etc.

She needs to go back to the LA and find out exactly how her application was treated.

And ask her who told her she would have got in if she put it first.

I will ask her who told her and show her your comments. We live in a town with only these three schools with clearly defined catchment areas. After SEN, distance is the next criteria, sibling rights out of area are not given priority.

Presumably siblings within catchment are before other children within catchment? An unusually large number of siblings that year could have resulted in not qualifying for a place.

I have a son already there but I know other only children further out than them within the catchment that were given places. From what you're all saying there must have been a screw up but surely when she appealed this would have come out, unless she didn't really appeal.

The thing is, unless you know absolutely everything about everyone's circumstances and the criteria on which they were admitted you can't possibly say what's done on.

Tread gently with her Armchair, because it may be that she managed to screw it up and is too upset / embarrassed to tell her Dd.

On the other hand, if the Appeal
Panel, for example, told her she would have got in had she put the local school first, then a serious mistake has been made and she has a case!

@pillow I will. I'm certain of what she's told me but not 100% every part is fact. Our DDs have been best friends since day one of primary and still see each other regularly. We know each other well but I'm 18 years older than her and dont want to appear patronising or open a can of worms.

Thanks all for the comments - the outstanding school is our choice b it is heavily oversubscribed. We are opting first for a good school which is a feeder - I was just pondering ds chances as it's a high birth rate year and if choice b is over subscribed etc etc. They are both faith schools. If he doesn't get in to either would I have an argument that ds is entitled to faith education as he baptised etc thanks

obviously, the best way to choose schools is to put the school you want the most as your first choice.

Then list the rest of the schools by how much you want them as alternatives.

The most important thing is to put a school that your DC has the highest chance of getting into (local school, all kids on your street/area usually go there), in the last place on the list, This is so, if you don’t get a place in any of the other schools listed, at least you know your DC won’t be given a place in a school miles she miles away.

You could use the argument at appeal that your DC is entitled to a faith education if you end up getting a place in a non faith school, but I’m sure you would be have to explain in more detail how that disadvantages your DC.