School offers day 2023

[UsernameOfMine]

So.... secondary school offer day is almost upon us. How is everyone dealing with the wait?

My DD is thinking about it far more than I would have hoped, is counting down the days and asking everyday if they will come out early. She's angry at the council that they can't sort the whole process out in a week. Apparently it's "not that hard to sort it out"🤔 I have tried to explain the process and that it's not just her it's every other child in the district (and neighbouring district as we've applied for schools there too), but she's just being impatient to know.

I'm thinking about it...but I thought I'd be worse with her been dc2 and wanting her to go to the same school as dc1. (No sibling priority at that school) but she's got a good chance of it so trying not to stress.

So how about everyone else?

To reassure people as well, DD chose a school and requested a class where she was with nobody she knew in y7 and she has thrived. She made lifelong friends. Equally, I see y7s settling in every year and they very quickly make new friends. A good school works very hard to make transition work.

That probably didn't make sense. DD chose to apply to a different secondary school to the one most of her peers selected. And when asked if she wanted to be in a class with anybody in particular, specifically asked to be with nobody she knew.

@ShowOfHands I've never heard of catchments like your describing. Here at all non faith schools the oversubscription criteria is sibling priority and then its whoever is closest in distance in metres (as the crow flies) until all the places are filled. The council sorts it all here. Your wait sounds stressful. Why do they have specific feeder schools?

*you're

Where I live we have always had feeder schools as part of the allocation criteria but recently there has been a trend towards changing the order so feeder schools are first priority after looked after children. In all cases locally the feeder schools have been part of the high schools MAT.

It all sounds really stressful for you @ShowOfHands. Hopefully you'll be lucky and get the place you want.

There have been feeder schools since I was a child. It's just the way it is here.

DS almost certainly won't get in. There is a staff priority but you need to have been working there 2 years and I've only been there 18 months.

God it's stressful!

Does that mean his position on any waiting list would change when you hit the 2 years service @ShowOfHands? Appreciate that isn't until September but if 'children of staff' is relatively high up the criteria might that put him near or at the top?

Maybe so. I hadn't thought of that. All I can think is the fact that I can't work and be getting DS to a different school. I almost can't worry about it anymore. It's so draining.

@ShowOfHands Ah I think this will all work out good in the end. If you dont get a place initially, you could always appeal, stating all the reasons you've stated on here. Surely, if you work in the school, there has to be an element of "its not what you know, its who you know" once the official list comes out...

So bored of this wait now. I guess this time next week we will either be celebrating or making the best of it

I really hope things work out for @ShowOfHands and everyone else on the thread, but I really do think that the days of "it's not what you know but who you know" are long since over. Pupils have to be admitted strictly by the admissions criteria nowadays or anyone who should have got the place ahead of them would have a very strong case at appeal.

There's no case of not what you know but who you know and there's no way I would ever let such a benefit go unreported even if it existed. It's regrettable for individuals such as DS, but the system is above manipulation in that way and so it should be 🙂

Yeh that makes sense, fair enough. @LockInAtTheFeathers @ShowOfHands
One week to go....

Trying not to think about it too much. DH is entirely uninterested in my worrying apart from when he (un)helpfully observes 'I've got a bad feeling about it.'

I've made a mental list of all the positives of choice #2 but it's not that helpful because regardless of the positives DD will be very disappointed. It's hard because she'll get over it and be fine where ever she goes. I just don't want to deal with the upset between now and whatever point in year 7 she realises she is happy at school #2.

6 years ago I was nervously counting down the days, she was my first and we were applying out of catchment. Thankfully she got a place. We then moved towards the end of her first year right next to the school.

2 years later it was number two, he got a place, but that year was an absolute mess with allocations - over 100 children had no school offer at all on the 1st March, it did eventually work itself out but it was a very stressful time for many parents. (It was a combination of a blip in the birth rate and less children applying to schools out of area)

So we are here again now with the third, we can see the school from the bedroom window and number 2 is still there. I am just panicking that I didn't actually submit the application.

Catchment areas are strange - I think people often think that there are perfect circles around schools with them all being evenly spaced apart, we have two schools on each side of the main road (though the one is further down a side road), the main road is the catchment line, so someone can be yards away from the one school but it is still not their catchment school. The difference between them and someone else is literally the width of the road.

I've been counting down the days since DD did a test in October! This is an unusual set up for a state school with multiple entry routes including feeder school and exam. She is in a feeder school so in theory ok but who knows. I haven't however mentioned it to her for months but last week at school the teacher said "oh not long now" so now she keeps asking!

So true about catchment areas. My dc primary school, the edge of the catchment area is actually the periphery wall of the school grounds on one side!

Our catchment school is three miles away. There are three closer high schools albeit that includes one faith school that doesn't have a catchment. It's frustrating that we would have no chance of getting into the school she could walk to.

I had no idea until this thread that different parts of the country had different catchment rules. Here the catchments change yearly as the measure it in metres from the school gate as the crow flies in a circle until all the places are filled. So the kids that live closer in distance get a place.

I feel sick here. Since submitting our form (only allows 3 choices) one option has been rated ofsted inadequate, one has been investigated for financial misconduct and is waiting for its ofsted to be published, and the 3rd is rumoured to be challenging it's ofsted result.

I am now completely doubting myself 😪

Yes, that is how it works in a lot of LAs. That isn't strictly speaking 'catchment' (just last distance allocated), though lots of people do use that term for it, which can cause confusion on here as to which system people are dealing with! As described by others, some LAs have fixed catchment boundaries for each school, with admission rules usually along the lines of Looked After Kids, Siblings in catchment, Other kids in catchment, Siblings out of catchment, Other kids out of catchment, with distance being the tiebreaker within each category. Feeder primary schools are also sometimes and sometimes not a thing within either system.

Catchment is colloquially used to mean two different things:

A) The area from which a school normally draws its pupils, hence 'shrinking school catchments'. This is broadly circular.

B) A defined priority admission area which can be any shape

I live in Hants where we operate B. We also have 'linked primary schools' which in terms of admission criteria sneak in between living in catchment and living out of catchment.

Best wishes to everyone applying for a school place. Remember Accept your offered school even if you then appeal or decide to take up a private place. No good comes of turning t down with no other school place in hand.

Every school around us has their own set of admissions criteria. Some have priority catchment areas, some don't. Some have feeder schools and others don't.

DC's teacher was asking the children in class which schools they had applied for....and it makes me wonder how stupid misinformed some people are.

Child 1 parent....put choice 1, choice 2 (waaaay out of catchment) and then choice 1 again

Child 2 parent...put one school choice. (Sibling attends but they aren't in catchment. Admission criteria is priority area siblings, rest of priority area....THEN siblings out of catchment)

i work with one mum who has not put her nearest schools, she's put schools in the next town over (who are very oversubscribed, has catchment areas, furthest distance is usually something silly like 0.5mile away) as her DC "will need to go to their dads after school" on the one weekday she works. I asked if she was using dad's address then, no she was using her home address.

I know we had an email from school reminding everyone to use all their 5 choices and to put the school they are pretty much guaranteed a place at (even if they don't like that school) otherwise they are likely to have an obscure bad rep school miles and miles away. But even then it seems people have ignored that advice or not understood it????

GOOD LUCK to them, but I anticipate a few sad/annoyed faces on offer day.

@UsernameOfMine that's because every year people ignore advice & think they can trick the system

DS will be happy with anything on the list but I'm getting nervous. We're pretty much guaranteed to get our 5th choice as it's our closest and we're easily in distance offered last few years and I wouldn't actually mind that but there's something depressing about potentially going that far down the list. Our top 3 are grammars and I'm really paranoid I've forgotten to submit a supplementary form even though I'm sure it was just saying he needed to actually sit the exam (which he has).