Help for someone who rejected school place

[BettySundaes]

School admissions experts or someone with direct experience please.
A friend rejected a secondary school place for DS, has been stubborn and only wants 1st choice but the wait list isn’t moving and is now panicking.
She has reluctantly widened her search and found a school with places but they won’t process the application directly and say she needs to go through the co-ordinated process. Does she need to submit a whole new application – she’s worried this may affect her waitlist place for the school she is still on the list for, or they will refuse to help her completely.

Yes because she's said she doesn't want a school place. Admissions will assume she's sending her dc to an independent school or is moving or home educating.

Yep you need to accept the one you have been offered and then appeal.

GertiePie, Yes to refusing to help, or jeopardising waitlist place?

Her waitlist won't be affected. She can stay on that list even if she accepts another place.

The school are correct, in the normal admissions round the LA hold the waiting lists and co-ordinate applications until the start of term. So she just needs to apply for that school via the LA, and tell them she wishes to stay on the waiting list for the other school.

She has already rejected the offered place.

Who does she think will refuse to help her? What is she planning on doing if she doesnt get into this school she has now found or the one she is on the wait list for? She needs to contact the admissions people at the council explain she has messed up and do what they tell her to do.

So the LA will still help her - I hear often on here that they wash their hands of you?

Hellocatshome, she was just going to wait it out, as I said in my OP she is very stubborn and blinkered.

Well, they have no obligation to proactively find her another place, in that sense, but she can apply to any school she wants and if the school has a place, they have to give it to her. So she should apply for the other school, and assuming they have places at that point, she will be allocated one.

Yes, they will help her. I rejected the offer. I asked the LA which schools still had places, they told me, I picked one, told LA I wanted that school then a week or so later they sent a letter saying my application to that school had been accepted.

Phew - I'll tell her to get on it with LA - I wasn't sure if they would have wiped her from their system. Hopefully she is not seeing a bit more realistically.