Number of places given to siblings - 110 out of 180

[confusedinlondon]

The furthest distanced offered to students, at our preferred secondary school, reduced dramatically last year.
the admissions officer explained it was due to a higher cohort of siblings which meant there were fewer places for other students. She said out of 180 places 112 went to siblings.
is this normal?
There have been lots of rumours of ppl renting a house near the school and then leaving as the school gives preference to siblings.

Depends how desirable the school is. If it was somewhere like DAO I really wouldn't be surprised a lot of people strategically put their older in to avoid the 11+ gauntlet for siblings.
I know three people/neighbours in our area who have done this.

In terms of renting again fairly common for certain schools...

There's always blips... I've heard of primary schools having whole classes of siblings. But then there's less siblings for a couple of years as then there's no eldest kids in the family for siblings to follow.

Looking at the allocation for my county last year, siblings seem to be, on average, around 30-40% of intake, so that seems high, but not unbelievably so. It could easily be a combination of last year being a high birth rate year, and possibly a bulge class or so at some point in the upper years of the school.

In our area the order for allocation of places for most school is

living in catchment area with sibling
living in catchment without sibling
living outside catchment with sibling

this was changed to stop people living outside catchment getting one child in and then taking places meaning catchment children without siblings couldn’t get a place

If it's a desirable school then yes I suppose so. Especially if it's the only desirable school around.

There's always blips like this in some years. You obviously know it's unusual..

At my dc's old primary school we knew siblings who didn't get places. Catholic school, so perhaps slightly different rules. Years when over subscribed- 1st priority was to kids in LA care; 2nd Baptised RC children; 3rd non RC Baptised Christian children; 4th non Baptised children with siblings. It was tight as its a feeder to an RC senior school with a 60% level 5 pass rate, so very popular, but with capacity of only 1 class per year.
We didn't see people moving homes temporarily to get into the school, as the catchment area was quite wide.

Does the sibling rule come after LAC or SEND too?

LAC will always come before siblings, as per the admissions code. Only exception would be If the school has religious criteria - they can, if they wish, prioritise LAC of the the faith first, then children of the faith, then other LAC before other children (although many don't).

Children with an ECHP that names the school would be allocated a place first essentially. There is no seperate criteria for this as it's a different admissions process.

Doesn't seem wildly unusual to me. Assume in a year group the vast majority of kids have siblings, then half will have an older sibling, half a younger one.

I agree this is a fairer way to do things.

Quite a lot of the secondaries round here don't have sibling priority (on the general idea that pupils travel to school independently so don't need to be placed together as they would when younger).

Several near here primaries have started to introduce catchments, because the number of siblings (some from quite a distance) was becoming problematic (local children not getting a nearby place at all, traffic congestion)

Manchester is sibling priority & then distance so prob 50% + siblings based on most having 1-2 siblings. People defo rent flats & tell lies to get 1st in some schools. Stockport next door LA is catchments ahead of sibling which stops it to a great degree.