Made a stupid mistake

[Adizzy]

I made a stupid mistake and put a school I didnt on want on my preferred choices.

I’m such an idiot. I’ve been upset all night over it.
I tried calling admissions to remove it after I spotted but it was after the deadline and the lady said it would be treated as a late application.
I thought it would be better to let it go through and hopefully I would get in my other choices.
We didn’t get our other choices.
Now we have been offered the school I put down as a mistake. It’s a school that’s not got a good reputation and even his teacher told me not to apply for that school. He is the only one in his clas going to the school.

I feel gutted and I’ve let my son down. He’s upset.
How can I have made such a stupid mistake? I just feel I’ve made such a mess.
I’m going to have to go through the waiting list process. I can’t appeal as I put it as my preferred choice.
I’m just so upset and beating myself up about it and feel ashamed to even admit to anyone what I did. I wasn’t paying attention and paid the price for it.

Argh typo in my post! Basically if you can show the school can meet child's needs more effectively and demonstrate the school can manage with admitting extra child you can be successful at appeal!

It may be "awful" but it's close.if you hadn't put it you may have been given it anyway. Or you would have been given an awful school miles and miles away. It would have had no impact on your first 2 choice schools.

Go on the waiting lists for your preferred schools and fingers crossed x

Ratatouille in the letter I have it's says only 4% of appeals are successful.

My mum reckons they put that to put people off......

who knows?!

You can go on the waiting lists though whilst you are deciding whether to appeal.

There will be lots of shuffling around and accepting/declining of places for months, at least put yourself on the waiting lists where you would prefer for the time being.

Then do your investigations/see the school you have been allocated and it may be the picture becomes clearer.

JiltedJohnsJulie I don't get this- the OP would have been allocated any old random school in that instance, could be miles away?

If there weren't places at school 1 and 2, not putting down a school 3 wouldn't make any difference except you would get whatever the LA allocated you instead of a local school.

Your DB is wrong- if you had not put down school 3, you would have had a school 4 or 5 that might be very undesirable for different reasons.

I feel so sorry for the people who work in admissions. If you put a school down on your list, then yes they are likely to give you that school! It's really not that difficult to work out...

I agree with others. If you hadn’t put school 3 on your form then your application would be put at the bottom of the pile so to speak and your child would have been allocated a place at whichever school still had places once everybody else’s choices had been allocated.

So you could have ended up with an even worse school miles away.

@Adizzzy, just to reassure you:

"Looked after children (in Public Care).
Kids who have problems etc. So the school has an issue with behaviour and attendance."

The law states that all schools must accept any child who has been Looked After by the Local Authority (fostered or Adopted), without question, which is why it is number 1 on every admissions criteria for every school. Similarly, every school must accept any child whose EHCP names that school, which is why it is criteria 2 on every admissions criteria. So every school will be the same, but the numbers of children will be relatively tiny that this applies to.

Regarding appeals - you can appeal for your preferred school regardless of why you made your choices. You don't even need to say why you put school 3 on the list in the first place.

OP look at the criteria for your preferred schools - they too have looked after children at the top.

Basically if you can show the school can meet child's needs more effectively and demonstrate the school can manage with admitting extra child you can be successful at appeal!

Technically that's correct, yes, but the reality is that it's very, very difficult to win an appeal on this basis. And there is nothing in what the OP has said so far that would indicate that she has a strong case along these lines.

I don't want to be discouraging to the OP at all, but there is no point in pinning too much hope to the appeals process, because realistically, the chances are very slim.

I totally dismissed it. It’s a small school and has classes of 16.

If it makes you feel better, there are parents who would bite your hand off to get a place in a school like that!

Also, and I cannot stress this enough, don’t just go on hearsay on the suitability of a school.

You yourself admit you haven’t visited it and your DS likes the look of it online. Every year, parents are pleasently surprised by the school they have been allocated, once they get to know it better!

Reputations of schools are hard to change, even once a school has improved and vice versa. So many outstanding schools haven’t been physically inspected in up to 10 years, for example!

Hope it all works out for you and your DS, OP

blue25 I see what you mean and after all they ask you to put your Preferred school, but it's not always the case.

As others said if I didn't put it down I may have been allocated it anyway as it's the closest or a school further away that's worse.

There’s another thread here.
Exactly same situation but from perspective of aunt really angry with her sister on her nephew’s behalf

None of this explains why my dd didn't get any of her choices at all. We put 4 schools all of which she was happy to go too and she didn't get any of them.

unless a mistake was made then that means that all four of those schools had more applicants than there were places and the children who got places were higher up on the admissions criteria than yours was.

In a few weeks once places have been accepted the local authority will publish a lost showing the number of children admitted in each admissions category and the last distance admitted in each criteria (as distance is usually used as a tie breaker)

@Ratatouille76 your DD must have been further away than the furthest admitted applicant at each of the 4 schools. Did you put your nearest school as one of your 4 choices?

If it makes you feel any better, OP, dd's friend's parents decided not to put a third choice on the form, because they only wanted one of two schools and they were concerned that putting a third option would damage their chances of getting into one of the first two.

It didn't help them at all. They didn't get into either of the first two anyway, and spent a very anxious period when their dc had no school at all, and they didn't know where she would end up.

In the end, she was allocated a place at the school which they had chosen not to put third on the form. It didn't have a good reputation at all, and they were really concerned. As things have turned out, though, the dc is now a few years in and she seems to be doing really well!

Lougle I'm thinking the same for the case of *
Ratatouille.*

It seems to be based on distance which is what has been applied to my case.

AlexaShutUp
Im hoping this is the case with school offered.
DC primary school was failing when offered to me and I appealed for another school. Didn't win and ended up there.
It is now a good school new headteacher turned it around.

Also can someone tell me what they mean by measuring distance from a school "by the crow flies"

???

Straight distance between two points on a map ie. Not necessarily along roads or footpaths.

It just means the most direct route looking at the distance from the sky rather than road route IYSWIM.
To answer another question- you can absolutely ring up schools (or the LEA in some incidences) that you haven't listed in your original 3 preferences and ask to go on their waiting lists. Not just your 2 top choices.
Do you have grounds for appeal?
Is there anything medical or something that the top 2 choices provide that your child needs and the offered school doesn't?
I've read nationally 29% of appeals are successful.