Struggling to accept our catchment secondary

[RudsyFarmer]

I know I have to get my head around it. I have no choice but to accept it. Does anyone know if it’s possible to add the child’s name to a non catchment secondary waiting list to see if an in-year place comes up?

I don't think you do have to accept it - it might depend which local authority you're in but my eldest is not in our catchment school. We applied at the usual time, just listed first choice (non catchment), second (also non catchment), and third choice as the catchment school. We were given third choice (do not check the portal at 2am on allocation day! You will not sleep) anyway long story short we went on the waiting list for first choice, three weeks later we were in and he began year 7 along with everyone else. And is thriving. Best decision I ever made despite the stress.

I am confused. Is your child in y7 now?

Are you applying now @RudsyFarmer as in, your child is in year 6? Yes as @Neighneigh says, you can put a non-catchment school down first on your list - just make sure you put the catchment on there somewhere (third or whatever is lowest) so you get it if all else fails.

Plenty of DC round my way go to the next village where there is a very popular school for which we are not in catchment.

Or is your child now in year 7 at the catchment school? Even so, you can still go on the WL for the preferred school. A lot of people don't want to move by this stage so you may be lucky.

I’ve been told not to play that game as catchment school fills up with 1st choices and the school we’ll end up with is one that gets set on fire regularly.

The one I’d prefer is out of catchment with zero chance of getting in without an inyear place. Im just wondering if I can email them and ask to go on a waiting list 🤔

Child in year 6 currently.

That is blatantly untrue. Every Local Authority has to operate an equal preference allocation. In other words, they have to treat each of your preferences as 'first preference' and only if you can be placed in more than one school does your actual preference matter.

In England, there is ab equal preference system... schools can't discriminate between first second and third choices. All applicants are listed vs the entrance criteria. Preference only comes into play if you qualify for more than one school.

I thought the same having read posts on here, but I’m too frightened to do that now.

Everyone I know if writing this one school down as first choice with no others. Ideally I’d like to list another school first and the catchment school second, just so we can sit on a waiting list. I’m told if I fo that it will fill up on first choices and we’ll end up with the only school that has places which is the one that gets set on fire.

Why frightened? You have nothing to lose if you put a dead-cert school on the list but with your preferred one(s) ahead of it.

The people who do have something to lose are your friends who are only putting one school down and failing to express any preference for what happens if their DC does not get a place there.

Stop listening to what people are ‘telling’ you and go read the LEA criteria.
As others have said, you are assessed for each school place you have put. If you could have a place at more than one that’s when they fall to preference.

If someone with a lower priority (ie further away or what ever your criteria is) puts the school as 1st choice but you put it as your third choice, you would still get it over that other person if you can’t have your first or second choice.

Waiting lists open after the offers have been made. You can join any waiting list you want even if you didn’t put it on your application. Places are still given in priority order though not first come first served on the list.

Did the Bison tell you that?

@RudsyFarmer but you're being told that the law says they have to treat each of your preferences as if it is the first preference.

So you can put wildest dreams school first, great school second, catchment school third. You will still get catchment school if you can't get wildest dreams school or great school.

What you must not do is what you are being told others are doing. You must not list only schools which you have no hope of getting. You have to have one school which you are likely to get. If you don't, then you will be allocated any random school with places.

Schools do NOT ‘fill up on first choices’, they fill up with applicants in the order with which they meet the published admissions criteria.

Seriously: put the schools down in the exact order to prefer them. Use every space, but put your catchment school in last place.

If a miracle happens you might get a place in one of the schools higher up your list.

You might get a place once the waiting list starts to move: usually shortly after the acceptance date.

Most local authorities automatically keep you on the waiting list for all schools you put higher on the list than your allocated school.

Seriously, if you fail to understand the system and listen to ill informed people in the playground you will mess up your chances.

1. put the schools down In the exact order you like them. THERE IS NO WAY YOU CAN DISADVANTAGE YOURSELF BY DOING THIS
2. Make sure that there is one school on the list that you will definitely a place in based on admission criteria. Your catchment school. In last place if you don’t like it much
3. If you get allocated this school , accept it, but check the arrangement for staying on the waiting list for higher choices.You will not disadvantage yourself by accepting the place while remaining on the waiting list

It's done on a computer - the schools don't see anything until the end. Put the two you want the most, first and second and the catchment last.

I hear these people peddling these rumors all the time.

That and "put only one and they'll have to give you that." 🤯

Yes you can go on waiting list for any school in your local authority

Its not a game it works exactly like it says on the tin. List the schools you want in order of preference just make sure a school you are a dead cert for is somewhere on the list.

The schools don't know your choices. Each application is sent off on it's own without any reference to what choice the parents put it down for. The preference system is just there so if you get more than one offer to a school, the council knows which one you want the most. Again, the council not the school

We were in the exact same
Situation except the 'rumours' were in fact told directly to me by the head teacher of Our catchment school who said we would have to put them first of not get in. I rang the council who confirmed the equal preference legalities but it took several phone calls and emails over the course of a week. And I am left wondering what why I was told that by a head teacher.

There are some headteachers that say things like this because they are trying to get bums on seats, they may know they are perpetually peoples 2nd or 3rd choice so are not always full. A not full school is bad news for them financially.

This thread is a revelation. Every admissions person/Head I've spoken to on open days have said that they "fill up with 1st choice" and if we don't put them as 1st choice we won't get in. So this is extremely useful to know.

We are in a shitty position in that one area on the edge of town doesn't have a catchment school, instead ALL the town's schools are listed as our catchment schools. It's reported every year that several unlucky kids end up in the two schools 8 miles either side of the town (which are 1hr each way in crap traffic with no direct public transport).

You can’t go on a waiting list at this stage in y6 because the applications aren’t in, places haven’t been allocated and there is no waiting list yet.

Your catchment school will take people in the order that they meet the criteria, it doesn’t matter if they are first choices or not.

Just say you apply for schools A, B and C and each school has 200 places.

School A is very popular and you are low down the criteria for a place. Your child is 500 on the list and isn’t offered a place.

School B is also popular, but you are higher up the list (eg on distance). Your child is 250th.

School C is your catchment school. Your dc is high up in the criteria, 50th on the list. You have put it third but you still get the place. There will be people lower down the list who have put it first.

However, when they look at the people who applied to school B, 50 dc who are ahead of you on the list have actually put school A or school C as their first choice and are in the top 200 so are offered a place there instead so your child shoots up the list and is offered a place at school B. The place that your child could have got at school C goes to a child another child.

popular schools do “fill up with first choice” dc in the sense that if one school is really unpopular and is undersubscribed then whoever puts it as their first choice will be given it. It’s not so much “you have to put this as first to get a place” it’s “if you put set on fire school first then you won’t get an offer from us because you will get one from fire school”. If a school has 1000 applicants for 200 places and another school has 180 applicants for 200 places then everyone who has applied for the second school as their first choice will be allocated it, even if they were in the top 200 for the over subscribed school.

Where you have ranked a school on your CAF is between you and your home LA.

For each school you list as a preference, your DC is ranked according to that individual school's oversubscription criteria. No school is told where you have ranked it, just that you want a place, please. (Here we are, over a decade since the 'first preference first' system was outlawed...).

Your home LA then collates the responses and then - if there is more than one school which says yes, looks to see which of them you ranked higher / highest, and that's the offer you get on March 1st.

If you really, really want a school, however unlikely you are to get it, put it first. You might be lucky. But as @Zwicky says, if you don't put it first and somewhere you listed above that dream school can also offer a place, whether or not the dream school can offer is irrelevant.

Which is why you put the local / catchment school you would only really want if all else fails, whose only redeeming fearure is proximity, on the list below others you would prefer, but on the list to (hopefully) stop your March 1st offer being an equally unappealing school two changes of bus away.

This thread is a revelation. Every admissions person/Head I've spoken to on open days have said that they "fill up with 1st choice" and if we don't put them as 1st choice we won't get in. So this is extremely useful to know.

@DuranNotSpandeau this is apparently not unusual. You would think teachers, especially head teachers, would know what nonsense this is - yet every year on MN people are still thinking this.

@RudsyFarmer and anyone else - yes, put however many schools you can down (3, 4, 6) - put the one you like best first. Put your second fave second. If there is a very local/catchment school that you’ve not put, put it as your last choice, even if you are not keen. Better than a less-good school 5 miles away.

If you live 500m away, and if there is no space at your preferred schools, you will get the catchment (IF you put it on the form) before ppl who live further away - even if they put it first. We promise this is true.

Those ppl in the paper each year “my son has to go 10 miles to a crap school” listed just one impossible school, or anyway not their local school.

Those ppl in the paper each year “my son has to go 10 miles to a crap school” listed just one impossible school, or anyway not their local school.

There was one of those in the paper in my county this summer. Miles away, inconvenient journey by public transport that it was quite unreasonable to expect little Johnny to do. The local council, instead of saying they couldn't comment on individual cases, came out fighting, saying the family had only applied for one school, a very popular and over subscribed one, and the boy lived too far away. So that was that family told.

@HonoriaLucastaDelagardie greaaattt name!