Online application for secondary school failed to submit

[NH78]

Hello

I am unbelievably stressed and any advice would be greatly received.

We completed and submitted our application form for DS secondary school on 28 October - three days before the deadline.

On 14 December I accidentally logged into the e-admissions website instead of DS school to check his dinner money account. Once logged in, to my absolute horror, I saw “application not submitted”. I could not believe it!

I immediately re-submitted the application and emailed the LA e-admission team and explained what had happened - their response was simply that the application is late and will not be looked at until after 1 March (National Offer Day) when all on time applications are processed.

I emailed the Headteacher at DS school, who emailed the head of admission’s and asked that under the circumstances our application could be considered as “late with good reason” but this was refused.

There are three decent schools near us and one bad one, which always has spaces left. As our application will not be looked at until after 1 March, it is inevitable he will be offered a place at the bad school.

I am distraught. I haven’t spoken to DS about this - he is going to be crushed!

We will obviously appeal but not sure on what grounds.

Has anyone been in this situation before?

Any advice would be appreciated!

Many thanks,

NH78

It was a reminder to submit an application that had been started but not submitted. I would have been surprised to receive this message and it certainly would have prompted me to double check. I would imagine it would prompt anyone.

I thought the same, thanks

Why don't you do a FOI request and ask how many complaints they've had about their school application system? Also ask what errors have been recorded in the past couple of months. You may well find that you aren't alone and there are serious underlying issues.

You may be lucky at appeal - but I don't know if anything actually went wrong.

You registered an account and signed up for text notifications.

It only became an application when you put your preferences in - if you didn't put them in before the reminder email all you had done was register an account, you hadn't started an application and so they didn't send a reminder.

Applications effectively locked in on 10 December - new applications can't be added to the process - that is why the last date for 'late with good cause' was 9 December.

Some boroughs have a second round, some just offer immediately after 1 March with each vacancy that comes up.

Our authority will offer places to late applicants if the school is undersubscribed - but in my experience, people who live less than half the furthest distance offered are very likely to be offered pretty quickly from the waiting list.

The eadmissions website states under the heading “Important dates” that an email reminder and text reminder would also be sent 24 hours before the deadline. I didn’t receive either of these. Had I of done, it would have alerted me to the problem.

We did put our school preferences in on 28 October. However, entering school preferences is in section 5 of the application. In order to get to section 5, I had to press “start application”. How can an application not be deemed as started until you complete section 5. That’s finishing the application not starting it. Can anyone shed any light on this? Thanks

It's not that complicated. You did start your application. You tried to submit it, by pressing the final "submit application" button, but you didn't do any checking to ensure your application was successfully submitted. It is possible that you didn't actually click the button properly, or that you clicked it but you had a web browser/internet issue and the submission didn't go through, or possibly you submitted it correctly but there was an error at receiving end which meant it wasn't successfully processed. Regardless, your application has been regarded as too late for the main "on time" applications.

The only thing you can do now is wait until after 1st March and see what school you get offered, then appeal if it's not the one you want. Get on the waiting lists for any schools you'd prefer to the one you've been offered, and go through that process as well. If you live close to your preferred school, it's likely you'll be near the top of the waiting list. There is likely to be some movement before September as some children might take up private school places, or have other reasons for not taking up a school place.

Which part exactly?

We did.

Go away!

Very clever

It's easy when you're a busy parent to not realise you HAVEN'T received an email. Try not to blame yourself too much OP. Fingers crossed you get through on either appeal or waitlist.

Late. Your responsibility.

OP - hope for the best, plan for the worst.

There could be admin you could be doing now so that when you get your school allocation on the 1st March, you are ready to go on what to do next.

@NH78 You should do this, if only to clarify in your own mind whether the system is faulty or not.

Exactly what Post Office said to the subpostmasters who had problems with Horizon. That attitude (computer says no) led to the biggest miscarriage of justice in history.

My year 10 son said exactly the same to me in relation to the failure of his homework to submit on time! 😂
Did he? What a liar he is. Poor you. I'm sure your expertise in haranguing people must have come in handy that day.