Secondary waitlist question?

[Fruits81]

Hi,
My son was offered his 3rd place school on 1st March.
It’s not a bad school but it’s single sex and he would much rather have got a place at our 1st choice which is mixed and closer.
We are automatically on the waitlist and I can’t find out where we are until April (agony).
A few children in his class also didn’t get the 1st choice (same school as us) mostly girls.
I’m wondering do waitlists order you in whether you named it first (ie we would be above someone who named it second) and also as it’s a mixed school how do they then deal with the waitlist as I’m guessing there needs to be a fairly even distribution of boys and girls? X
Desperate 🤣

I'm not am expert but where you placed the school on application has no impact on waiting list.

It would be discrimination surely to prioritise one sex over another in a mixed sex school.

It will depend on the individual admission criteria for each school and whether your child sits on the criteria.

Thank you.
The last few years we would have been in catchment.
The problem in our area is there are more better performing single sex boys schools than girls hence why our 1st choice is very popular and oversubscribed especially with girls
x

The school also has 5% more girls than boys enrolled at the moment.
I’m probably clutching at straws xx

As @Abccde the waiting list will be ordered strictly according to the admissions criteria, regardless of boy/girl or where you placed it on the form, and even late applicants are no longer disadvantaged. The order of preference makes no difference in being awarded a place in the initial allocations anyway- schools don't know where you placed them and you don't get priority for putting a school first.

Depending where you are, waiting lists can move a lot so don't be too disheartened. Would you have got a place usually? Or are you quite close to the usual offer area assuming it's primarily distance based admission?

My DC missed out on first choice last year and was finally offered a waiting list place during the summer holidays. Some friends were offered places in the first week of September. But this is London which moves a lot. I imagine some areas are more static.

Yes, you are clutching at straws re the gender balance, sorry! Definitely accept the offer that you have and fingers crossed for the waiting list

Thank you. It’s crushing, he is so disappointed.
Yes we are in a London borough, in the previous 3 year we would have been in catchment.
So glad you had a positive, I need to hear that!!
People have been saying there is lots of movement, just dreading to hear where we are on the list in a few weeks, as the school we really want is so very popular and I can’t imagine people turning places down, I need to stay hopeful xx

It's done on the original admissions criteria, so if you'd usually have got in you're probably quite high on the list. My LA have put the distance awarded for each school ( that does by distance) on their website so you might have similar to see how far off you were. One thing I did notice was almost every school catchment had reduced, but I suspect that that's at least partly due to factors specific to our borough.

The waiting list applications are dealt with in the same way as those that were offered places in the initial offer round.

1. EHCP where the school is named - handled outside the round but if somebody has a late plan, they get a place over and above the waiting list
2. Children in care/adopted from care either here or overseas
3. Any other admissions categories as per their policy

With 3., once the children are assigned the category, the only way of differentiating between equally categorised children is by applying a distance tiebreaker.

No school knows the order in which you put down your preferences, other than if they have offered a place and the result has been either accepted (it means the school were higher on the list than any other school the parent applied to and would have offered a place to) or it has come back No Longer Required (which means the school was not #1 on the parent's preferences, as they have been offered a place at a higher preference school).

The sooner parents accept their places, the sooner the waiting lists can be dealt with - it's far better to be in a position in a fortnight to know twenty further offers can be made straight away than to still have people who haven't responded one way or the other stopping the schools from getting on with it because they then have to be chased and given more time to respond before the next batch of offers can be made.

Thank you.
We have accepted our 3rd choice. I’m sure there are parents desperate for our place too as it’s a good school, just not what we had hoped for.
I am keeping everything crossed x

Not sure if it's national, but we have until 15th March to accept our places.

They won't offer any further places until after that date because they need to give everyone a chance to respond.

There will be some parents who decide to go down the private route who will have also applied to the state school system.

There wil be movement and it really does depend on where you are on the list.

Yes we have to accept by 15th March and then can check waitlist in April (feels like forever) x

Yes, waiting lists are held in oversubscription priority order. Co-Ed schools don’t have places for girls and places for boys - they’re just places - which is why occasionally in (say) small primary schools the number of girls and boys is very uneven.

Thank you. This a fairly large 270 PAN secondary school.
I am keeping everything crossed x