How to predict furthest distance offered

[KimGa]

Son currently year 5. Will apply for secondaries this autumn.

The outstanding one in our town offers by EHCP first, then siblings, then distance. The distance offered was stable for a few years but has reduced in the last two.

We live 0.9 miles away. This year they offered to 0.6 and are nearly up to 0.8 on the waiting list.

The year before they offered to 0.8 but hardly any movement on the waiting list.

I’m trying to move closer because we really want him to attend, all other choices bad. Trying to predict what our year will be like because we like a house at 0.63. But what if we moved but then still didn’t get in, is it too much risk?

Has anyone got any clever ways of finding out sibling info/birth rates etc? Local authority says it is a high birth rate year like the last two but no specific info. School says they can’t know about siblings until the admissions come in. I’m trying to guess by making a list of those I know at my son’s primary who would go ahead of us, but two other schools locally will have applicants applying so a lot of unknowns.

There is no way of predicting this at all. There’s far too many factors to take into account. The last admitted distances for one school in my area dropped by 6 miles between years. A combination of more siblings, new housing development, problems at another school which meant parents chose this one over the “normal” one, and a high birth rate year.

If you will only consider that school then I would live as close as possible to it but even then there are no guarantees.

You cannot know. Siblings, EHCP DC and birth rate in catchment are too difficult to work out. Also what about adopted and looked after DC? They usually get priority over others too. Some schools even do DC of teachers. So lots of unknowns. Live as close as possible - well within distance cut off.

The most reliable way is looking at previous years' distances and stop there. You have no way of predicting who is going to move into the area closer than you, and what age their children will be. But even if you didn't get in initially at that distance you would be high up the waiting list so would probably end up with a place anyway.

You can see if there are new developments within 1/2 mile. That can add new Dc. You might be able to work out if all primary schools are full in Y5. The LA might publish vacancies. That gives you an idea. However the DC in the primary schools might not be in catchment but if they have all got vacancies and no new building, that might inform where you live.

You can't know. I did get more years of data by ringing up the admissions team once, but it's hard to do much more than that.

Look at any recent Ofsted reports for your school and surrounding schools. One good or bad report can massively swing applications. Our Outstanding primary went from rejecting in-catchment children to having spaces when 2 neighbouring schools had small improvements in their reports.

0.63 sounds incredibly close for secondary, but I guess it depends on your area and how big the intake is. There will. be a hard limit on the number of 11 year olds' homes there can be within such a small area.

Do you know how easy it was to get into your preferred primary school back in Reception compared to previous years?

Look at the distance the primary schools went to the year he started compared to other years - that will give you a little bit of an idea (although obviously a lot can change in the years in between)
I would think 0.63 would be fine if it normally goes to 0.8.

@KimGa there are two things you can do which will help.

1. Google the name of your local authority and the phrase "school place planning". If you're lucky you will find a link to a 5 year strategy for school places, which will have cohort size predictions, and it may also mention planned bulge classes or new schools in the pipeline. If Google doesn't help, you could also hunt for it on your LA website, within the committee documents for education or planning and performance. Our local authority's strategy is based on birth rate, known housing developments, and previous years' patterns of state->private transfer. It is for the whole cohort, not by school, but it will give you an idea about whether your local bulge has peaked or still rising.

1. The published furthest distances will be for National Offer Day on March 1st. So put in a Freedom of Information request to your Local Authority and/or to the school to ask for furthest distance offered by Sept 1st in previous years. This will help you see the typical waiting list movement - if there is a big increase in distance it show there was a lot of churn which might give you some hope.

Btw, don't look at maps on third party websites like Estate Agents - they're often very innacurate because they just scrape the data of council websites without knowing the local context, or sense-checking against the admissions policies of individual schools. I'm sure a lot of people are losing thousands of pounds by basing house-buying decisions on them.

No way to predict this.
Last year our furthest distance was around 1.5 miles. This year it was about 12 and quite a few in between. It varies wildly each year and with random changing circumstances of the applicants.