Didn’t get into any choices, placed into Catholic School - help

[morozova89]

Hi everyone, I’m really hoping someone might be able to offer some advice about secondary school appeals in London.

My son has been allocated a place at a Catholic secondary school, which we did not put on our application list. We are a different faith and not Catholic, so being placed in a faith school that isn’t ours feels very upsetting and uncomfortable for our family.

I’m also a single mum and have had to navigate this process on my own, and unfortunately my son’s dad hasn’t been helpful with any of it. I’m originally from Ukraine and not very familiar with the UK school system, so I did what I thought made sense at the time.

We listed four schools, three of which we genuinely believed were realistic choices based on distance and admissions. Sadly he wasn’t offered any of them. I realise now maybe I should have listed more, but I honestly didn’t know.

What has made it even more shocking is that all of my son’s close friends were offered places at our number one choice school, which is in our catchment area and part of the same federation as his current primary school. I know friendships aren’t a ground for appeal, but it has made the outcome quite difficult for him to understand.

My son was born in the UK, is in Year 6, and is doing well at his current primary school, so this has been a really confusing and upsetting situation for us.

I understand that appeals are usually made for a specific school rather than against the one offered, but being allocated a faith school that isn’t our faith and wasn’t on our list feels particularly difficult.

If anyone has experience with appeals, waiting lists, or what steps I should take next, I would be incredibly grateful for any advice. Thank you so much. 🙏

btw we are in London.

It isn’t a bad school. It’s an ofsted “good”. I just don’t feel comfortable with my DS going to a Catholic school.

They said due to oversubscription. I guess we were unlucky.

Thanks everyone who encouraged me to not be too down about the “Catholic” element - I’ve now arranged to go see the school with my DS tomorrow, and so far they’ve been very pleasant and accommodating in our communications, which gives me hope.

I guess I was just scared they’d make him do prayer or something every morning, force him to go to mass etc. I want my DS to remain the curious open minded child he is and am afraid of any kind of faith related “indoctrination”. Doesn’t seem like that is even possible here in England which is reassuring.

That isn't good enough. They need to tell you what category he was placed in and why he was declined. I would go back to them and ask them which oversubscription category he was placed in and what distance they had recorded for your address.

Just had another look on how places were allocated and my son ticked off two of the key criteria (distance + attending feeder primary)..
the other higher criteria were siblings, EHCP etc

I Imagine this is something to pester my local authority about in terms of 1/ where we are on waiting list 2/ why we didn’t get in?

Catholic schools are full of children from different faiths -often parents of different faiths would prefer another faith school, even if different from theirs, so there is often plenty of other Christian, Hindu etc children. Might be worth chatting to the school about your faith and other children of the same faith already there.

OP and the boy's dad are atheists.

HI OP

Was there a banding test for the school? The document you link talks about bands.

So what?

Religious education in England is about learning other faiths, without preaching any specific faith as The Truth. There is no indication the OP is against that.

The OP was understandably worried about daily prayers etc. That's very different.

@morozova89 I ask about bands because you mentioned the furthest distance was 0.967mi - but in the school which has that as a furthest distance, that is the Band D furthest distance. The other three bands have a smaller distance.

Well but you are talking about RE. And RE as I mentioned is part of national curriculum. Trust me RE is not a subject filled with prayers in Catholic schools. Prayers are usually during the our with Tutor and are 1-2 min long My son is in Catholic school

Yes, they had the CAT4 tests in first term. I found it very strange his primary school didn’t give us the results for that though, I was told by other parents they don’t have to?

My DS has a tutor and they’ve been doing mock SATs for a while now, based on that and his school report I know my DS is above average in maths, average in English. He does well and is very good with his critical thinking. But I have no idea what his CAT4 results were and how they might have affected our secondary allocation..

I obviously have nothing against learning about faiths? He already has had RE at primary. It is more how the school presents Catholicism to the students, how accepting they are of someone like our family who are atheist, the “culture” of the school itself, so to speak. I don’t want my DS being the only atheist / someone who questions the bible and whatnot in his class. I think that’s a reasonable concern..

It does sound like you made a very reasonable decision in listing this school as your first preference and you've been unlucky not to get a place. Or it is possible an error has been made. Of course there has to be a line drawn somewhere. I remenber when my DD started secondary school she was very upset that one of her best friends didn't get a place at the same school when the girl's next door neighbour did. But the neighbour was the last person to be admitted and friend was the unlucky first one to miss out. It could be the same for you. It's definitely worth asking though.
Either way, don't lose hope because it seems likely that you will be at or near the top of the waiting list and in a big city with a mobile population it's very possible that a place will come up before September. But the offered school may well not be what you are imagining either. My husband went to very strict Catholic schools in the 70s/80s which is probably similar to what you're thinking of - lots of the teachers were monks/nuns and there was a very strong emphasis on Catholicness (if that's a word!). But the school he is a governor of now is nothing like that, not even all the teachers are Catholic. Yes, there are pictures of the Pope and statues of Mary etc and occasional church services but not all the children attend those and plenty of them are of other or no faith. One of my muslim colleagues actively chose the RC school for his children, based on the standard of the education, the facilities etc and as far as I know he's been very happy and the different religion has been a non issue. You may well get a place elsewhere anyway, but don't imagine the worst at this stage.

Most schools in Hackney require a Cognitive Ability Test and then process applications by the resulting bands.
Many schools in Wandsworth do something similar with the Wandsworth test

So the distance cna vary within each band.
Often, the maximum distance for the top band tends to be greater, simply because there are fewer kids in that band.

OP, did you want Mossbourne for your child?
If so, how much do you know about the scandals and the emotional abuse there?

I myself had started a thread on this

@morozova89 it isn't about whether he did well, badly or in the middle on the CAT test - a school that admits by banding will have to take a number of pupils in each band (it may be 25% each band, or some other distribution).

If that is the case and you are in Band A, say, then it doesn't matter that Band D admissions go out to 0.967 miles if Band A admissions only go out to 0.35 miles. Waiting lists are held by bands and it could explain why your neighbour got in if you didn't (if their child was Band D which goes out the furthest).

Does your letter say anything about banding?

Yep, however it was never made clear to me what result he got (his primary didn’t say anything, we just got our usual terms report) and how they went about selecting children from each band? How many, was it random allocation?

yes, I have friends whose children go to MVPA - I know it has had awfully bad press / reputational issues. I don’t take those lightly. Unfortunately in our area we don’t have much of a great choice, and moving for the foreseeable isn’t an option due to nature of my work / my housing situation.

Like I mentioned, we are going to go see the Catholic school in person and maybe we will both think it’s great after all. It’s hard to say without knowing anything about it beyond it’s website..

The document you linked shows the allocation order within each band - it's not random:

Education, Health and Care Plan
Looked After Child
Child Protection Plan (nearest)
Children of staff
Sibling
Attends Named Primary
Distance

However, as every band went down to distance and past the named primary school, if DS is at that specific primary, then you should have got in ahead of distance applicants.

@morozova89

The Catholic schools also have admission criterion for other faiths and no faith. It is very likely he will not be the only one. The national curiculum for RE sibject is covering all faiths and atheism.

I would strongly recommend meeting the admission manager at the Catholic school where your son is accepted and express all your concerns. Or at least make a phone call.

Every Catholic schools functions slightly different way. In my son's school there is more about service to others, empathy and kindness than cathehism.

This is sounding more and more as if an error might have been made. Speak to the admissions team (and I appreciate they are busy at this time of year) to double-check which admissions category your child was placed in (especially if he attends one of the named primary schools), which band, and the distance at which the last place was awarded in that band.

I dont think this is quite the issue you think it is. Our kids have to pass through one CofE school in our village and we are atheists and our kids have been raised aetheist and knew these views from the get go. DS has managed to do 4 years at a CofE junior school going through the religious motions whilst being critical of it all in his head/in conversation with us and DD will too. Several friends and colleagues - all atheists have been through the same school and come out still as curious, confident, critical-of-religion and still-atheist kids. If anything it's been a good life lesson ion "some people choose to believe" and has provided many a moment of light relief at the dinner table exchanging stories and laughs about what happened at school. For all of us - remaining in the (outstanding and TBF only) junior school in the village, short walk from us, full of mates from infants and mates to secondary has outweighed any impacts of the religious element.

OK, so with banded entry the distance varies a lot in different bands - which is probably why your neighbour's child got in and yours didn't - they are in different bands..

At Mossbourne Victoria Park the distance for Band D is roughly 3 times that of Band A so if Band A is highest scores your DS's ability and extra tutoring has worked against you here!

However, it is likely that many parents of high ability children may be waiting for places at grammars and super selectives in N London, or have private places.

OP - look at all those schools and work out which have total admissions fewer than the PAN number.

Haggerston is one of these - my friend's boys did REALLY well at Haggerston. (but I am not really familiar with Hackney schools)

All schools with a total admission number fewer than the PAN will have places - you may prefer one of them to a catholic school.

Out of interest @MmeWorthington, does that mean if a larger proportion of Band A applicants choose not to take up their place (because they instead going to independent / grammar), does that mean those vacant places would be offered to Band A pupils on the waiting list ahead of any other bands (and similarly if it were different bands with spaces)?

OP, did you explicitly tick the box when applying to say he attended the feeder primary? You need to proactively do that.

as Panelchair says, I think the next step is to get explicit information from admissions about which category your son was placed in, and the distance they used for you. Mistakes are generally rare, but sometimes they do happen.