No choice School

[number1miss]

Please give me some hope!

we did not get any of our choices, all choices were about 15mins away, however we were offered a school more than an hour way! I just don’t get it!

we want to appeal, any advise, tips?

can we apply to other schools, if so, how?

please help my baby is so devastated I feel like I have failed her

Where are you OP? And how had you choose the ones you put down.

Did you not get offered the catchment high school?

I would ensure you are on the waiting list for all local schools.

There is a good chance that you will get something more locally once all these initial offers are processed and further offers are made

Was that the nearest with a space? Were your choices realistic? Go on waiting lists for those and any others you may not have considered.

If you missed out on all your preferences the one you got would be the nearest one with spaces. But OP you need to give more info for people to help

Put yourself on the waiting list for the schools you'd prefer.

Did you apply to your nearest schools/catchment school? Did you look at the admissions criteria for each one. Sometimes even if you would have been successful in previous years, too many children mean that you aren't successful in the current year.

Wanting schools that are closer wouldn't generally be a reason for successful appeal.

The closet according to google maps is 0.7miles which was first choice, than 1mile and than 1.7miles
The school offered is 3.7 miles away

What are the criteria for the 0.7 mile school?

Find out where you are on the wait list (and make sure you are on the list and stay there)

How is 3.7 miles an hour away??

@LIZS i applied for the schools closest to me, closest was 0.7 furthest was 1.7 using google

It is walking

If she attends the school 3.7 miles away she is likely to qualify for free home to school transport.

@JoshLymanIsHotterThanSam walking is 1 hour according to google maps and 40mins by bus

Would you not let DC cycle to school?

Did you look at criteria other than distance? Where are you located

Accept the 3.7 mile school, apply for transport, go in the waiting lists for the others, you must be high up the wait lists given how close you are. There’s a lot of movement between now and Easter.

Are you in a very densely populated area? To not get into a school 0.7 miles away is unusual. When you get the letter check they have your address down properly, or the admission category your child is in. In a few weeks you should be able to check your waitlist place which should be very high and there is usually a lot of movement before the summer.

Even if you have applied to the closest school, there could just be a lot more children that qualified before yours.

Which means you will be even further away for the next school iyswim

As pp have said find out where you are on the waiting list. Ask the LA under which criteria and distance the last pupil was admitted. Just to check you are indeed further away than the last admission.

As others have said, check that your application was processed correctly: you were placed in the correct oversubscription category, the distance from home to school was measured correctly, etc.

You can appeal for all the schools you listed. To win, you will have to show that the prejudice (detriment) to your child in not attending the school will outweigh the prejudice to the school and the pupils already in it in accepting an extra pupil. Look for features in each school which would suit your child - curriculum, extra curricular activities, pastoral care or whatever.

Do what you can to calm your child’s devastation. Unless you can gain a place in another school through an appeal or the waiting list, they may have to attend the offered school, so try to find something positive to say about it.

Accept the place you have been offered, the worst outcome would be no school at all.

In the next few weeks schools will collate the acceptances they have received and waiting lists will be published.

Call the schools you wanted your daughter to go to and ask them to confirm your daughter will go on their waiting list.

There's a lot of movement, usually all the way into September. Don't panic.

As others have said you need to check the admissions criteria and if any of them have an admission zone. When I applied for my eldest where we were living at the time the closest school was not our admission zone school and we would have been very unlikely to have got a place, the admission zone school was further away than the next closest school.

My middle child was an absolute disaster of an allocations year - over 100 pupils had no school place at all on the 1st March, (it was eventually resolved, but there was still movement right into September and October.)

Did you go to the open evening for the offered school? Taking out the distance issue what are your thoughts on the school? Have any of her friends been offered the same school?

Schooling is very postcode sensitive in some areas, before I had kids I presumed people just went to the closest but it’s not always the case and you have to look at each schools admission priorities which isn’t always only based on distance.Your council should have a web page that links to historical admissions info for all local schools including sibling allocation, geographical distance etc etc….but tbh you’d be best talking to parents in your local area to find out your best next steps. All schools will operate waiting lists and have appeals processes but popular schools generally are oversubscribed.

If I had looked at the nearest schools to me none of them are ‘bankers’, one has religious criteria, one academic (grammar), one only usually goes out 1.2 miles, another only 1.5 miles and I live closest to the academic school which requires an entrance test, the others are not traditionally available on distance, despite being 1.3 miles from one and 1.9 miles from the other . DD would have ended up at a school two bus rides away if she hadn’t sat the grammar test, now she can walk to school. It isn’t always clear and rarely your closest school that is available you, at least in my part of London!

@PettsWoodParadise life would be so much easier if all schools had same criteria. It's no wonder people get caught out.
We'd only get into one non faith school on distance. We'd get into faith on basis of baptism but my DC never went to church primary so wouldn't want that. We have at least 5 more within 2 miles but wouldn't get in any on distance

Ring the schools to find out where you are on the waiting list. Remember that there is likely to be some movement, because there will be children who have been allocated a place at a state school but who will actually go to private school. In the next couple of weeks they will be declining the state school places and people will start moving up the waiting lists. How much movement will depend a lot on your area - how many go private, how many apply for both state and private, etc.

In the meantime, you accept the offered place. You don't want to end up with nothing, and if you get in off a waiting list you can decline the original offer at that point.

I'm exactly in the same situation, three good schools whiting 1 mile, and got offered one that is more than 3 miles away. My daughter was crying yesterday.

Sending love xxx