Can you be offered 2 secondary schools?

[Worriedteacher1]

My friend tells me her daughter has been offered 2 different grammar schools. They are in different LAs, but still... surely each child is only allocated one school?

it could be as @QuarterMileAtATime says. DD got into Nonsuch (closest school to us) but got an email from Wallington today making it very clear that if we wanted a place and went on the waitlist we would likely get it.

EIther that or its independent schools not state

is one a faith school and one not? The application processes are separate

Only if one or both of them is an independent school. State faith schools are part of the normal state coordinated admissions scheme.

@Worriedteacher1, you're not in Telford and Wrekin, are you? Not sure whether the same still applies, but offers from Thomas Telford used to be made in parallel with the normal coordinated scheme, as it is a City Technology College. That is the only state system incidence apart from the first year of operation of a newly opened school that I have come across (and even there, some new schools do make it into the coordinated scheme from the off)

I'd forgotten about CTCs. There are only 3 of them left - BRIT school in Croydon, Emmanuel in Gateshead and Thomas Telford. It is possible to get an offer from one of these as well as an offer from another state school.

Loads of people on the 11+ thread were offered 3 grammars. And then you get offered 1 through the council application, announced yesterday.

sorry, but you are mistaking qualifying for 3-4 grammars (usually in sept/oct time) with being offered a place at 2 schools by the LEA in March.

My guess is that because the schools are in 2 different LEAs, they have, by mistake, filled in 2 forms, thinking that you had to apply separately.
That should have been picked up, but maybe not?

We only applied for one grammar and DD got an offer from there. We had all schools on the same application form whether out of area or not. If she had applied for two grammars and met the threshold for an offer for both we would still only be offered the one ranked highest not both.

You can score high enough to qualify for both and if you change your mind get offers from both but you would have to reject first offer and go on list for other grammar then when someone turns down a place you could be at top of waiting list as its by score and get an offer there. This went on a lot in our area.

Only people I know holding two offers at same time one was private, one state. Some people also said there child had got into grammar when they had just made the passmark whereas much higher was needed to get in.

I'd forgotten about CTCs. There are only 3 of them left - BRIT school in Croydon, Emmanuel in Gateshead and Thomas Telford. It is possible to get an offer from one of these as well as an offer from another state school.

I didn't know BRIT was a CTC. But you can only go there aged 14. There is also the JCB school in Rocester also for age 14.

The JCB Academy is a UTC; there are a few more of those, but with a little less than uniform record of success.

It is possible to receive an offer from 2 different grammar schools if they are in two different boroughs.

Our daughter had an offer from a grammar school in Bexley and also from a grammar school in Kent. Both e-mails came from Greenwich Council admissions and the second offer was called “Secondary Transfer 2020 - Double Offer - 203-2020-09-E-….”

The admission lady I spoke to mentioned that double offers happen sometimes, but they are rare.

Regarding independent school offers one could have as many as they choose to sit given the student did well in all of the exams. And if you sat 4 independent exams and receive the offers from all 4 schools it gives you a nice negotiation leverage when choosing your preferred one.
However putting your DC through a high No of exams is quite stressful, also if some of the schools are not quite local (City for Girls and BHH for instance) they could have exams and scholarship events on the same dates.

@Akhira, your LA should only have passed the second offer on to you, if it was a higher preference than the school you were offered initially and you were on the waiting list for it. The whole point of the Coordinated process with regard to offers is that each applicant is only offered one place, which is their highest ranked school for which they qualify. Were you genuinely offered both schools on eAdmissions on national offer day?

"The admission lady I spoke to mentioned that double offers happen sometimes, but they are rare"

They are rare because they are an error, but errors happen sometimes.

Your home council should coordinate which schools your DC qualified for, whether the school is in your borough or not, and turn that in to a single offer of whichever you placed higher in your list.

It sounds as if a new and insufficiently trained staff member did the wrong thing. And that should have been caught by their internal processes, but sometimes mistakes slip through

Perhaps it was an error, it could have been the council’s glitch or possibly one of the schools didn’t calculated the cut off pass marks correctly initially. All in all we were offered to choose from two very good grammar schools and it was all that mattered.
Going back to the initial question posted at this forum – yes, you could be lucky to receive two grammar schools' offers if the schools are in different boroughs.

If you picked what had originally been your lower preference school, when the Admissions Code is clear younshouid have been offered only the highest choice for which you qualified, then that gives whoever was top of the waiting list at lower preference school grounds for successful,appeal (because an error was made which cost them a place)

It is staggering that an error of that magnitude was not rapidly corrected.

So, did your home LA literally contact you and say, 'Ooh, look, both these schools are a 'yes', so never mind the order you listed them in on your CAF, we are giving you the opportunity to choose'?

She may have got offered her second choice first, then her first choice was able to offer a place. You would for a short time have two offers.

Similar happened with my child. We had two offers whilst we decided.

Same. We had two offers almost straight away because one of them was a mistake which was quickly rectified. One offer from eadmissions and one via email from our home LA. In order to accept the second offer via email, we first had to decline the one on the eadmissions website and then accept the email offer.

We have since also had an offer from a grammar school which we had ranked higher up our CAF. That was from the waiting list. We had a week to decide, so also technically had two offers at that point!

As others have mentioned, it could be to do with the language or to do with being at a particular stage of the admissions cycle.

DD1 had guaranteed places at two state schools in different boroughs (1 grammar, 1 on subject aptitude). We knew about the guaranteed places before the application deadline so DD chose which one to put as first choice. I can well imagine a scenario whereby she might have said, 'two schools offered me a place'. When 2nd March arrived, she was officially offered a place at her first preference school.

A local friend's DD passed the 11+ and on 2nd March was allocated a place at her second preference grammar school. By July, her first preference grammar school contacted her parents to let them know she had reached the top of the waiting list and could now be offered a place. For a few days, she technically held two offers from two different grammar schools.

By July, her first preference grammar school contacted her parents to let them know she had reached the top of the waiting list and could now be offered a place. For a few days, shetechnicallyheld two offers from two different grammar schools.

Yes, but unless you are in one of the areas which (?used to, not sure whether any still do) automatically withdraw the lower ranked place once a higher ranked one comes up, that is a very normal state of affairs, not 'very rare'. The original presentation implies that both were offered in a You've got both of these sort of way, not, We made you a single offer on national offer day, in accordance with the Admissions Code, now a place has come up at one of your higher preference schools, you have x days to let us know if you want it instead?

You can if you've been offered your second choice school and then afterwards, get offered a place off the waiting list for your first choice school.

You get offered one state school place HOWEVER if a place becomes available at a school higher up your list that you are on the waiting list for, they might call you and offer you a place too but you'd have to pick one and relinquish the other.