Awkward meeting with headteacher

[Lindaelisa]

Hi,
just really confused about something that recently happened and want your opinions and knowledge please. Basically my daughter was on a waiting list for a school place and we recently received an email from the school to go for a meeting to discuss a possibility for a place with the headteacher.

we accepted to go for the meeting and it turned out to be an interview like meeting with the headteacher, asking question why my daughter choose the school and what her interests are etc. at the end of the meeting, we were told that if the child decides to move then we will get contacted to receive the offer as it’s not for sure, and when asked how long we were supposed to wait, the answer was not sure but as I insisted it couldn’t last longer than a week, which was then agreed.

From my experience you are normally offered a place before you go for a meeting but the whole situation seemed really awkward and it made us both feel very strange as we didn’t like the approach and I was personally not expecting the meeting to end like this.

I just would like anyone with similar experience to let us know if this normally happens and if they have gone through something similar? Did you have to go for a meeting before being offered a place on the waiting list?

thanks in advance

Yes, it's perfectly legal as long as you still offer places strictly in line with your admissions criteria. I think some people who criticise schools for their practices don't realise just how fickle some parents can be. One example (of many). We had a parent apply to us because they were pissed off that their school had requested a fine because they'd taken two weeks out of school to go to Florida. They wanted to uproot a perfectly happy and thriving child from school for no other reason. Technically, we should have had no conversation at all when they applied, waited for the place to come up, offer it, and enroll the child. Instead, before the place came up, we invited the family to look round the school (which they'd never bothered to set foot in before applying), and when they started slagging the current school off about the Florida trip, we made it clear that we'd have done exactly the same thing. They promptly withdrew their application. If they hadn't, then we would have offered the place to them when it came up, in line with the admissions code. I'm quite sure that if we'd mutely followed the process, they'd have taken the place and moved the child, and quite possibly moved her again next time they got an unauthorised holiday fine.

This is not an isolated example. Parents often used to apply for places for the most spurious of reasons, on a total whim, when their school had pissed them off for some reason (child hadn't been read to that day, child's jumper had got lost, child had had a falling out with another child). Either that, or they applied because they wrongly thought we could offer much better support for their SEN child (eg a full time one to one when their child had no funding). Perhaps you think it's wrong, but personally I don't think that a conversation prior to offer in that situation is unreasonable. I certainly think it's in the best interests of the child. It absolutely doesn't mean that the school wouldn't follow correct procedure once a place became available - we would then always offer the place in accordance with criteria, however bonkers we might think the parent's reason for moving might be.

This does sound odd and open to different interpretations. PatriciaHolm has already outlined what the admissions code says.

@difsa a 'conversation' often happens, but it cannot be used as a reason to give or withhold a place. That has to be very clear in all of the schools actions. Major changes occurred to the admissions code in September 2021.

What @PatriciaHolm said is right - schools should not interview before allocation and to do so goes against the Admissions Code.

In my experience though some admission authority schools do meet with parents before they advise the Local Authority that they have a vacancy.

However, in this case I would suspect that they know that they have a space but they haven't finished making sure that the leaver is has been off rolled properly. i.e. the child has informed them they were leaving on 30/9 but then have to check with the new school etc on Monday to ensure that the child is on roll before the vacancy truly exists.

The school started their enrolment processes in advance by having the meeting because there is a national census on Thursday this week - school's funding is calculated by bums on seats on Thursday. We find a lot of schools scrabbling around and whisking kids on roll the few days beforehand - I would hazard a guess that this school is preparing to get your DD on roll before Thursday.

I have a friend here in Ireland who's child started secondary school this year.

My friend applied to a secondary school a few miles away from her home. She had a number of reasons for not wanting to send her child to her nearest secondary school. A child will start secondary school after 8 years in primary school so they will be 12 or 13 by then.
The school she wanted to send her child to is a large popular school with good pastoral care, good results, offers a large number of subjects for exams, has good sen provision and good extra circular activities.
This school could have places for say 120 pupils but end up with 250 applications for places.
So this school generally will only take pupils of 13 years old and wants an application form sent in by X date which is the same date for other secondary schools in the area. Parents could be asked questions by the school staff when they call to get an application form. I know my friend got her child into this school. A few days before the school had a meeting for all the parents where they were shown around the school and also made aware of the school rules ect.
I know also that my friend was asked a lot of questions about her child, what their child is like, their academic record and had to get forms filled in by the primary school also.

I know that certain schools can be very popular because they have good exam results. One lady I went to school with lives in a city in Ireland. She wanted to send her child to X school. Both her and her husband had an interview with the school principal and they were asked a lot of questions about their child and their childs academic results in primary school. The principal also wanted to find out about the family and to get an idea that the family knew about the school, it's ethos and rules. It was a chance for both of them to decide if it was the right school for the child. This school gets very good leaving cert (Irish A level) results each year. Because of this parents want their kids to attend here and their is a lot of completion for places.

I think it a good sign if school staff or school principals talk or interview parents who want to send their child to their school. To me it shows that they are interested in finding out about parents and possible new pupil coming into their school. If you are a parent or parents who will meet a principal, answer and ask questions in regards to your child and the school it shows how interested your in your child's education ect. Along with this you get a better idea of a particular school will suit your child or if another school could be a better fit for them.

Grammarteacher it's a school run on Michaela lines, the head is on a power trip & has been from the day the school opened, kids get detention for everything from not making eye contact when speaking to a teacher to losing a rubber in their pencil case. School runs from 8.35 - 5.00 Monday to Thursday & 3.45 finish on a Friday. The poor kids march round school like robots, no sitting with a friend at lunchtime, they have set places & a teacher sat on each table who gives a subject that must be discussed, if pupils don't join in they get detention. The less able kids get detentions because their work isn't up to standard, no SEN provision. A lot of pupils have left because they are nervous wrecks from the pressure they are under.

But my point is that it's only the OP's inference that this was an interview to determine whether the place would be offered. It's entirely possible that it was a 'conversation' as outlined above, and that the reason for not offering immediately (as others have guessed) is that the school cannot legally offer until the child who they think is leaving has actually left and been enrolled elsewhere.

Irrespective of whether the 'interview style meeting' was questionable,the problem is that it's been a week and OP still hasn't heard.

Yes, but the place might not be confirmed yet. For example, there might be a child leaving at the end of half term. The move could be totally confirmed (house sale gone through, notice given in writing), but the school are not allowed to off-roll the pupil until they can confirm they've arrived at their new school on the first day after half term. But it's annoying to only start the process of offering a place at that point - much better to get a new starter within the first day or two after half term, so they don't miss out on topic stuff etc. In this situation (when it's very unlikely the move will fall through, and very likely that a child would stay at the top of the waiting list, eg in the case of a sibling), we would often have the conversation first, to check the family still wanted the space and give them a heads up that the move was very likely to happen, so that we could get everything sorted out in a day or two once the place was actually confirmed.

Sounds like this might be what's happening here, but perhaps not communicated very well!