Do you always have to accept a place, even if not your preference?

[CForCake]

FWIW We are based in London (not sure if the process works differently elsewhere).

We have 6 choices for state secondary schools.

There is often quite a bit of movement in the waiting lists, I guess for a combination of families going private and families moving in and out of the area.

My questions are:

• Let's say that on national offer day I get my 6th choice. I must accept it, right? In other words, if I don't accept it it means the council will no longer give me a place anywhere and I'll have to go private or homeschool?
• Let's say that I have accepted the 6th choice. Then the 5h choice becomes available. If I refuse the 5th choice, will I still be considered for my 4th, 3rd etc if places become available there?
• Is the communication via the council only? Do I log into the eadmissions website, and is that where they tell me where I am on the waiting list, and where I have to accept or refuse a place? Or is communication with each school directly?

@CForCake It's not a "choice" you're given or sharing, it's a PREFERENCE. It's a really important difference - the local council must offer your child a place and you can only share what you prefer. You're not choosing a school if it is a state school. If you have the mindset of choice you're going to be disappointed.

Let's not get hung up on semantics. Expressing preferences is a choice. I am very well aware that the only thing I am entitled to is a school place in a school, but it may well be a school I hate far from home. I am well aware that, once the council finds me a school place, no matter how far and no matter how much I may dislike it, it owes me nothing else.

Hi, I thought once you accept a place, you are taken off the other lists so places can become available for other people and they can move up the waiting list?
Can you appeal for your first choice? (We had to and won.)
Do you want the sixth choice enough to accept it?

@OneCoralHare Do you want the sixth choice enough to accept it?

What do you mean? It's not like I have much of a choice. I won't go private, nor will I homeschool.
If I understand correctly, rejecting the 6th preference does not prevent me from remaining on the waiting list for the other schools, while rejecting it means the council no longer owes it to me to find me any school, so I do not see any reason to refuse the 6th preference, if I do get that on national offer day.

On what grounds did you appeal for your first choice? As far as I can tell there is nothing irregular in the admission policies of the school in questions, and I cannot think of a reason why I could ever appeal.

You can appeal on any grounds. The cases most likely to succeed will be those showing why only that school can meet the child's needs.

As reassurance... when you recieve the email on offers day (or letter) it will tell you exactly what to do next. Whether that's to officially accept or decline, to be added to waiting lists, to apply somewhere else etc. So don't worry at the moment.

Yes you accept and then you can join even more waiting lists for any school after 1 March. So you can be on 20 waiting lists if you want! For now, you hopefully included some realistic options. Always accept a realistic option you get so you stay in the system. Be prepared to accept last minute for higher choices and better schools even into early September of year 7. Some kids do not show up!

This is incorrect. Waiting lists are held in order of admissions criteria and whether you have accepted a place elsewhere or not has absolutely no bearing on your list position. There is no ‘gamble’ involved in whether you should accept the school you are offered- the advice is always to accept it, keep it as a back up and remain on waiting lists for all schools you prefer.

@Araminta1003 Are you familiar with the process in Wandsworth? The council says they will automatically put you in the waiting list for the other higher ranking schools in the borough, but not for those in other boroughs. I have been trying to contact the other borough and the other school in question, but it's impossible to get hold of them. And I have not been able to find this information anywhere.

@TheNightingalesStarling You can appeal on any grounds.

OK, but I'm not going to appeal just in case because I have nothing to lose. There needs to be a modicum of a remotely plausible reason for appealing. Appealing just in case is a very unfair thing to do, which puts unnecessary strain on the system, in my view

The cases most likely to succeed will be those showing why only that school can meet the child's needs.

Doesn't apply to our case

Have you looked at historical admissions data and how the places have been allocated and the distances at each round?

This will give you the biggest indication of your chances of success

Sometimes distances get shorter as people move into the area /catchment

So no specific subjects or activities available there? Basically you cannot do anything until after Offers Day. Are any of your six usually undersubscribed? Or is there a possibility you would get none of those and allocated a 7th?

I have, of course, done plenty of research. Based on what happened the last 5 years, I am certain to get my 6th preference, and very likely to get 2 or 3 higher-ranking choices when the waiting lists move. That was not the question. The questions were on how waiting lists work and are managed.

So my child was initially offered a place at our 2nd choice of school. We then had an email to say did he wish to stay on the waiting list at his 1st choice. We said yes. A few months later we had another email saying the same thing, and said no, on the basis that both his friends had also got the same school and he was happy to be going with them and he'd had a couple of visits to the school by then and was looking forward to going there, so changing to our first choice would potentially have moved him away from his friends and meant he'd not had the visits to the school, and was left going to a new school instead of the one he was picturing. You will stay on the waiting lists for all your choices for as long as you want. You can also reject a second offer, but say on the waiting list for another school e.g.. you applied for A B C you get an offer for C and go on the waiting list for B & A. You could accept the offer for C, come off the waiting list for B, but stay on the waiting list for A.

Some of the "advice" on this thread is wrong.

Let's say that on national offer day I get my 6th choice. I must accept it, right? In other words, if I don't accept it it means the council will no longer give me a place anywhere and I'll have to go private or homeschool?

You don't have to accept it but, if you don't, the council is not obliged to come up with another place for you. You should still be on the waiting list for your higher preferences, so you may get a place that way. However, if you don't, you will have to find a school with places available, go private or home school.

Let's say that I have accepted the 6th choice. Then the 5h choice becomes available. If I refuse the 5th choice, will I still be considered for my 4th, 3rd etc if places become available there?

Yes. If you are offered your sixth choice, you should automatically go on the waiting list for all your higher choices. If you are then offered your fifth choice and reject it, you will be removed from that school's waiting list but it will not affect your position with other schools.

Is the communication via the council only? Do I log into the eadmissions website, and is that where they tell me where I am on the waiting list, and where I have to accept or refuse a place? Or is communication with each school directly?

For the normal admissions round, all communication should be through the council. However, once term starts it may change, particularly for academies and VA schools. You may then need to talk to the school to find out where you are on the waiting list.

OP- we’re in Wandsworth. We got offered 2nd preference. We declined it as had decided on Private but we were automatically put on the waitlist for our first choice ( which was not a Wandsworth school). When we were offered a place at our first choice we had to accept or decline it.

I think one of the key things to understand is that for wait lists (so the lists kept for people wanting spots at a specific school who were not offered one on national offer day) the date of application and where/if the school was listed on the initial application are irrelevant, as is whether the student has accepted another school place. An applicant who put a school down as 1st preference in October and an applicant who asked to be added to the wait list along with 10 others after offer day are treated equally... they're ordered based on the school's oversubscription criteria in its admissions statement. If a new applicant is added into the list in July they're stuck in based on the same criteria, and that usually means they go above some students who ranked the school high on their initial CAF. Similarly, a student who was offered their 6th choice and declined can go on the waiting list for their 1-5 choices but will be treated exactly the same as if they accepted that 6th place to ensure they didn't end up without a place at all. When a spot opens it goes to the person at the top of the list at that time, regardless of when they were added to the list, what preferences were listed on their application back in October, or where/if they're holding another place.

It's also important to know that if you decline the school offered to you initially then you are free to go on any waiting lists (and will be treated equally to all other applicants, see above), but the LA is not obligated to find you another place and the fact that you've chosen to leave yourself without a place at all by declining the offered one does not offer any advantage on waiting lists.

Things that are LA and school specific: which waiting lists unsuccessful applicants will automatically be added to (if any) and which they need to request to be added to, whether offered places from waiting lists are automatically accepted resulting in being removed from other waiting lists, and whether schools or LAs manage the waiting list.

@FlockofSquirrels An applicant who put a school down as 1st preference in October and an applicant who asked to be added to the wait list along with 10 others after offer day are treated equally...

Yes, this much wasn't clear to me. This thread has clarified it, and I have thanked the posters for it.

I suppose the exception are the schools which are partially selective and assign places based on a test. In those cases, if I understand correctly, the school will keep two waiting lists: one for the test, one by distance, and you can be on both, if you took the test of course.
The difference is that it shouldn't be possible to go down on the test waiting list because those who didn't take the test cannot be added to that waiting list later.

Schools may keep multiple waiting lists, yes. Sometimes that's because they have a selective pool and sometimes it's not selective but rather banding - a school that uses banding for admission will keep a waiting list for each band.

However, it's not uncommon for there to be a late sitting of tests used for partially-selective or banding admissions criteria. This is actually the case for the Wandsworth Y6 test - there's a December sitting. So there will be some students who have scores from that sitting that allow them to be placed higher on waiting lists than students who sat the test prior to the October CAF deadline. And with tests used for multiple schools (and ones that all area students are encouraged to sit) like the Wandsworth there will inevitably be a few well-scoring testers who change their preferences after application day and end up going onto a waiting list, pushing others downwards on the list.

@FlockofSquirrels I don't think the December sitting of the Wandsworth test is a good example.

Those who took the test in Sep 2025 got their result in Oct 2025, before the application deadline.
Those who take it in Dec 2025 will get their results by Xmas.

But both results will be available before National Offer Day in March 2026.

There are no preliminary school offers and no preliminary waiting lists published before the Dec 2025 test results come out.

I wonder what happens if someone who didn't take the Wandsworth test wants to apply, after national offer day, for the waiting list of a school which uses the test for banding.

There will be applicants who submitted their CAF preferences before sitting the Wandsworth Y6 test, and the results of the December test can and do lead to changed preferences. It's also not uncommon for students whose families are planning to (or just considering) a move to the area to sit with the intent of submitting a late application. So while moving down a waiting list for selective or banded places is less common it absolutely does happen.

Usually for schools that use a test for banded admissions any applicants who don't sit the test can't be offered places until all of the applicants who were placed in bands have been offered places (so effectively won't be offered a place as long as there's a waiting list with banded applicants still on it).