How can I check past allocations for a faith school?

[BendingSpoons]

We live very near a Catholic secondary school. It's a very popular school. The admissions is complicated, but essentially they prioritise on faith i.e. Catholic first, then other faiths, then on distance for any remaining places. We would fall in the last category (distance for any others). I am fairly sure our chances of a place are practically zero but I'd like to know past information on how they allocated. We live in a complicated area for admissions (grammar schools, banding tests, aptitude tests, single sex, mixed sex) so we are already considering and viewing quite a few other schools. I don't want to waste my time and a space on the form on a school with such a tiny chance, but I would like to confirm this. I do realise it can vary year to year.

Some families went to the open day last year and reported they said 'we don't just take Catholic students' but I think this is oversimplfying and doesn't mean they have spaces left in the final category. I would rather not waste an evening on an open day of such a long shot. I can't find any information online on how they allocated places. Would I need to email the school? Would it need to be a Freedom of Information request? Our LA publishes good information about other aspects e.g. last distance admitted for schools where that is relevant. I find it frustrating that this information is not available.

You just need to email the school and ask. Ask if you can see the document with actual breakdown of places allocated though. I asked a catholic school and was told ‘yes we have all children in your category a place last year’. We didn’t get a place in our year and I later found out that the office person had probably read the document wrong when she’d informed me as it hadn’t been the case that we would have got a place preciously. It raised hopes unnecessarily.

The LA publishes this information so check the primary school applications area of its website.

For schools that are their own admissions authority, this is not always the case; especially faith schools. If it's not on the LA site, you would need to request it direct from the school. Also, not all LAs publish the data in detail as routine.

Thanks all, looks like I will need to email the school and be very clear in what I am asking. My LA is generally very good with school admissions information e.g. having a list each school and what year group they have places that gets updated each week, but they don't have this information. They just list the last distance offered for each school, which is N/A in this case. I feel they really should share this to avoid false hope.

I expect the fact that last distance offered is N/A means that no one was allocated under the final group (distance only) but definitely worth asking the school

Yes that is how I'd read it too, that there is nothing to report under this category because all places were offered to higher categories

I found this exact type of information out from a Catholic school for a fellow parent
there were 8 categories in the over subscription criteria and category 8, the last, was non catholic children without a sibling so based on distance
the school were able to give me the number of children in category 8 allocated a place in the previous 4 years
hope this helps with wording your request

so identify the category you fit into then ask for that allocation information

I was told that the statistics are from offers day only and don't include children coming from the waiting list so "last offered distance" could be really different if they updated those stats for May/June

Whilst it sounds logical that no places were given under the distance category, as it says N/A, I don't think this is certain. There is a primary school near us that offers 50% of places on distance and 50% on church attendance, and they also have N/A under last distance offered. This is presumably not to confuse people, but it makes it hard to know your likelihood of a place.

Bear in mind that often religious schools that claim to offer x% places on non-religious criteria are being a bit disingenuous as they often will put siblings into that category (they seem to be allowed to) - and of course they will come from religious families. Once sibling places are allocated, the number of genuinely non-religious criteria, distance-based places can be basically none.
If you aren't Catholic, it might be a bit much to be one of just a tiny handful who aren't at a Catholic school too. Someone I know had a similar experience with a Catholic school encouraging non-Catholic applicants and did a tour. They asked their y8 tour guide what it might be like for a pupil who didn't believe in god to go there and the child genuinely didn't comprehend the question - he had never encountered any atheists ever. They didn't apply.

DH is not keen on the Catholic school, mainly because he thinks that if they spend more time on worship, they will have less time for everything else. I'm ambivalent about the school, mainly because I think it's very unlikely we'd get a place, so not much point thinking about it too much. However it is 5 mins walk from home and gets very good results.

I actually just want to know we have no chance of a place, so I can ignore the school, but there's a bit of me saying 'should we properly consider it just in case we did get a space?' A lot of parents in DC's class are visiting all sorts of schools, including 1 popular comprehensive where we are way out of the tiny catchment, making it pointless in my opinion. I suspect this school is the same, but looks like I'll have to email the school to ask.

Email the school. My daughter is going to a catholic school. We are catholic so pretty high up the criteria. At the open day they said the criteria they had got down to in the last couple of years and said speak to them about what criteria you would be placed in if you had any queries.

Their past intake is immaterial, really. For every school there are years where there are greater or fewer numbers of students applying or greater or fewer numbers of numbers of siblings already in attendance - it's juat not something you can judge based on precedent.

Depending on how popular this school is, I expect they don't usually get far enough the list to get to the local resident category.