Did you go out of your way to get your child into secondary?

[pooodle]

Just curious. There seems to be lots of winners and losers this year.

Did you forward plan to get into secondary this year, ie, move, rent, go to church? Did it pay off? Or did you just choose your local comp and hope for the best.

Not so much forward planning as forward saving ...

church

for a long long time ahead

just got dd into a school that's in the top 5% of state schools in the country.

so for me it paid off

It was this time last year for me. Almost everyone else round here moves or goes private etc as local comp not regarded as 'good'.

Allocated local comp last year, went on waiting lists, eventually got place at excellent state secondary, via lottery.

I am the Queen of Continuing Interest Lists. Will have to go through all this again in 2yrs time.

wow nametaken, well done! i was lucky in that i left it too late to go to church - got the job a year before i had to apply and decided i wanted son to go to my school, but it is very good faith, and school need 2 years church attendence. i was able to gain place under exceptional needs, think i would have kicked myself badly for not preparing enough had he not been given a place.

primula how long did you have to wait with child in the comp to get into the other school? we have a couple of year 9's moving over, not sure if i would change that far in.

Pooodle - she got her place at end July. This was our first choice school - she was also close to getting a place at another school too. We were very, very lucky.

The waiting and fortnightly checking was awful, especially by that time. But we had by then made decision that we'd be prepared to move her in year 7 or later because it would pay off long term. In fact, by July we'd come to conclusion we'd have to wait till Year7.

We made conscious decision not to appeal as (1) positive outcome unlikely (2) stressful and (3) neither DH or I sufficiently confident in verbal articulacy department. I do know one other parent who successfully appealed and I suspect some economies with the truth there.

There were several 'waves' of place releases: 1 month after allocation day; quite a few up to end May; then nothing very much at all until July. There are 2 other pupils in DD's secondary class who got places then - largely because many parents had both good state school AND independent school offers. July is induction day time and therefore finally make-up-your-mind time. Last year 2 pupils from my dc's school did not get their 'good school' places until early September - not uncommon for some parents holding onto state and independent places to 'forget' to hand back state places).

Word of warning about forward planning; our LEA tweaks admission rules every year or so which does change things a bit. Last year's partial lottery put cat among pigeons though it actually worked in our favour.

Good luck!