Waiting list movement

[PheobeBouffant]

Hi - I just wondered if anyone has had any success on a waiting list for year 7 with a place like mine - no 21? I know that we can go down the list as well as up. I’m in the Northeast, I know thinhs are very changeable in London but I wonder what it’s like elsewhere?

If you are number 21 on the list then your chances are pretty slim but not impossible. How terrible is the school that you have been allocated and how much of a difference would your preferred school make?

What does sometimes happen is that the first day of term comes around and one of the people who got a place at your desired school doesn't turn up. The school will make contact to ask if they are going to turn up. If at that point they make contact and are told that actually that pupil is not going to be attending then the place will go to whoever is the first person in positions 1-5 on the waiting list who is happy to swap schools on day 2 of the new term (it's possible that a few will say no, having reconciled themself to accepting their offered school, but someone will say yes long before you get to be asked)

If the school DON'T successfully make contact - that's when you have a chance because they will wait for 2 weeks, continuing to try to make contact, and if they have still been unsuccessful after 2 weeks they will then release the place to the waiting list. By that time, almost everyone on the waiting list will have reconciled themself to their offered school and probably also found good things about it, and most families will agree that changing schools 2 weeks into the new term would be disruptive and not worth it. If all 20 people ahead of you make that choice, then you have a chance. Your offered school would have to be really, really awful for this to be a sensible thing to do.

Hi, thanks for that answer, it gives a clearer picture. The school he’s going to is not awful and we are getting ready to go there and being positive about it, it has a bit of a reputation for bullying the other school is smaller and has better pastoral care which is what we liked. my son got quite disappointed but he’s got some friends to travel with and he’ll be okay! X

Where we are, WL are moving by 1-1.5 positions per week. I think it depends on whether or not the area has a lot of private schools as that’s the source of the trickle.
I wonder if anyone from schools will be taking care of WL movement through the summer weeks when schools are closed…?