If you don't get in any school, can you choose among the undersubscribed ones or must you accept what the council chooses for you?

[PForParent]

We are in London (I mention it as I have no clue if the rules are different outside of England)

Suppose you apply to six state secondary schools, and don't get it any of those.
Suppose there are 3 undersubscribed state schools within a commutable distance, none of which you had applied to.

Must the council give you a place in the closest school? Or can they give you any of the 3?

If the council gives you a place in one of the undersubscribed schools, can you say: "Thank you, but I'd actually rather go to that other undersubscribed school" ?

Or is the only option to accept the place you were given, ask for a transfer, and possibly do a couple of weeks in the school chosen by the council before the child manages to transfer?

Of course there's a strong argument to be made to use the 6th option for the "least worst" among the undersubscribed schools, but that must be weighted against the odds of getting into a school you may like more.

Thanks!

If you know a school is undersubscribed and therefore has places available to start September then you can choose to go there. I’d contact the school to confirm the place and ask the process and same to the local Council. There should be nothing to stop you moving to any school that has space.

Can only comment on rules in leicester(shire). Friend was given a list of schools to apply to that had spaces in the county. I said try undersubscribed ones in leicester city and she contacted one directly and went to look around (would have had to go via the online portal once she knew there was a place). Got her son into one she preferred.

@Facecream24 When you say contact the school, do you mean before the school year has even started?

@Facecream24 , @Hazlenuts2016 Do you know to what extent the rules on this are the same for all of England (if not the UK), and to what extent they change from school to school?

yes contact the school you want now. Confirm they have space for starting Sept, tell them you want your kid to go there but they’ve been allocated another school and ask their process. They might tell you to contact the Council, they might be more helpful - that definitely does vary school to school! All schools want all their places full - they get funded per child. Each child is money to them really and they don’t want to be undersubscribed as that means less funding. It’s the same across England for state schools, can’t comment other countries.

Sorry, no, but I would imagine schools do want places filled. There is a lot of movement early September as well once they start. If people can apply for schools out of catchment I can't see why it would be a problem?

Yes. If you don’t get into any of your six choices in London then you will be allocated your closest school with an available place on offer day. But you can then fill in an ST2 form immediately, naming your preferred undersubscribed school and, provided there are still places, you will be allocated it within a few weeks, well before your child actually starts school. The form will be available on your local authority’s website under the school admissions section.

Undersubscribed state schools (except for grammar schools) have to accept any student who applies for a place, so you can choose. This is based on the School Admissions Code so it's applicable for all maintained schools in England. What will vary by school and LA is the specific process for applying for a school at this stage, but you should be able to find that on each school's website or the borough's school admissions site.

ETA: If the school is undersubscribed now (they haven't offered up to their PAN) you don't need to wait, you can go ahead and submit an application. Schools cannot hold empty places just in case a higher-priority applicant comes along later.

@DawsonsGeek is right, but there is of course a risk that your favourite of the nearby undersubscribed schools ends up full this year (assuming you are planning an application for the autumn rather than you have made one and are trying to switch now - ?)

We will be applying in Oct 2025 to start Sept 2026

@SheilaFentiman If I understand correctly, what you are saying is:

Let's say that family A applies to this school which is currently undersubscribed, and they live farther away than me

If I put the school as one of the six options, I will have priority over family A

If I don't, there is a risk that family A gets in, the school is oversubscribed and may not have room for me, even if live closer than A

Right?

You need to check and compare the admissions policy for each school. Please don’t rely on the general consensus here. Each school can set there admissions policy how the see fit. Generally speaking looked after children are given first priority in our whole county but the rest vary greatly between schools. One local school puts catchment area as the 2nd criteria another has distance to the school as 5th and prioritises things like siblings, SEN & medical needs. Check each of your schools and work out where you’ll stand in each one.

That’s right.

After Allocation day you go on the waiting lists for any schools higher up your preference list than the one offered, and if not offered any of your preferences the LA will offer the closest school that can admit.

You can then go on the waiting list for any other schools you would consider, whether you applied in the first place or not,

But at that stage everyone else without an allocation, or a preferred allocation, would be doing the same.

With 6 preferences to list I would always say put a school you feel confident will admit you as a ‘banker’ in last place if it is your least preferred.

@PForParent yea exactly as you post.

Yes, exactly.

Undersubscribed schools must offer places to every applicant (presuming they're the right age for that year, obviously) without regard to any oversubscription requirement, and schools must offer up to their PAN if there are applicants for those spots. Schools cannot hold empty places for later applicants per the admissions code. So if you don't apply to a school in the normal admissions cycle then the students who do apply will have priority before your child regardless of whether they live much farther away (or whether your child has a sibling there or any other criteria).

Are you thinking of not putting a school you want in your six choices? I'm curious what the reasoning behind this query is.

@GravyBoatWars Are you thinking of not putting a school you want in your six choices? I'm curious what the reasoning behind this query is.

We need to decide if we want to use the sixth option:

for a school which we like more than the undersubscribed one, where getting in is hard but not impossible; we would have got in in 2 of the last 4 years, and the catchment seems to shrink and enlarge randomly (it's not like it's been constantly getting larger or smaller), or

for the undersubscribed school - the rationale there would be that, if we don't, we risk ending up in a school we like even less

How under subscribed is the under subscribed school? As usually it's best to put a school you'll definitely get into down as last choice, but if

1. Your under subscribed school is really under subscribed and you expect it to be so again this year (no local schools closed down or anything) and
2. You and child can cope with being "unplaced" for a day or two while you get a school sorted out

Then you can put the school you like a bit better with the randomly changing catchment down as your last choice. And if you don't get any of your choices you can still get into the under subscribed one.

@PForParent what about the other 5 choices? Do you have any other schools on your list that you think your DC will definitely (or as close to definitely as possible) get into and you will be ok with?

@GravyBoatWars No school is a slam dunk.
Based on the March 2025 results, we would not have been accepted at any school.
Of course waiting lists move. The big question is to what extent it will move less than previous years, because of VAT on private schools, and to what extent more because many families have been leaving London + fewer births (primary schools have been closing left right and centre across London for this very reason)

Based on the September 2024, Sep 2023 etc results, in each year we would have got in one school, but typically not in the same one.

It's a bit random - there is no school which is close enough to us that admission was guaranteed every year.

Unless you feel that all of the undersubscribed schools are equally awful and you don't care which you get assigned to, I would use your 6th choice to select the least worst option from them, especially if the one you find least awful is not closest to you. It sounds like otherwise you're basically looking at putting down six choices where the most likely one is still only a 50/50 chance, and I wouldn't want to do that. I would actually consider removing one of the first four choices and adding both of those schools you're deliberating between in 5th and 6th.

Keep in mind that once initial offers go out and schools turn to the waitlist to fill places when offers get declined there is no advantage between students who put the school down as a choice in their initial application and students who applied to go on the waitlist after national offer day, so any hopes of getting in to an oversubscribed school through waitlist movement aren't based on what you put on the CAF.

Yeh agree with @GravyBoatWars - put the likely and most often undersubscribed school in sixth place on your form. Are there actually five other schools you might get into which you would like your DC to go to? Can you tell I don't live in London haha!

Six preference slots is nice anyway – where I live you get four. But that's fine as tbh there are only four secondary schools that are a reasonable commute (walkable or a short/medium walk and a short bus ride).

@GravyBoatWars once initial offers go out and schools turn to the waitlist to fill places when offers get declined there is no advantage between students who put the school down as a choice in their initial application and students who applied to go on the waitlist after national offer day

Thanks for clarifying this - it's an important point and I'll confess it wasn't clear to me at all

You're welcome, and I agree it's an important thing to keep in mind. This is the School Admissions Code's section on waitlists:
Waiting lists 2.15 Each admission authority must maintain a clear, fair, and objective waiting list until at least 31 December of each school year of admission, stating in their arrangements that each added child will require the list to be ranked again in line with the published oversubscription criteria. Priority must not be given to children based on the date their application was received, or their name was added to the list [emphasis added]. Looked after children or previously looked after children allocated a place at the school in accordance with a Fair Access Protocol must take precedence over those on a waiting list.

So if you have your DC added to a waitlist on national offer day they'll be ranked on the list exactly as they would have been if the school was on their CAF originally.

You can, but in some areas undersubscribed schools will have filled their places with people who didn't get any of their choices by offer day so it would be a case of going on the waiting list. I think it is getting better but for my son's year my borough didn't have enough places for every child in the borough so some didn't even get an offer initially (they eventually found some between the natural movement and adding a bulge class somewhere).

@PForParent I'm in London too. If you name your borough you will get more specific advice. Either way, I recommend you look for your council's press release from National Offer Day this year. You might also be able to find the text from their offer letter online too or ask a friend with an older child to show you it. If either of these say that some families were left without places in the initial offer then that is a big warning sign. It means that there were more applicants overall than places and the LA is relying on movement to the private sector to create the additional spaces it needs. This happens every year in my borough. The families who are left without a place are usually the ones that didn't put a realistic final preference. You can be sure that they won't get their preferred "unsubscribed" school because the schools are only undersubscribed on applications, not on allocations or final acceptances. Don't get caught out!

I applied for 6 schools, at the time we didn’t get into any of them we were allocated the closest school with space. I did ask if we can choose another one - recommended to accept the place you had. Reapply and then on the second round if a space was available they would let you know.

Luckily we got a space from the school we wanted as eventually we moved up the waitlist!

Are all 3 in your borough?

we have around here 2 underscribed schools in different boroughs and they will always allocate to the one that it is your council

often then get filled and the council will want to prioritise its constituents