School Choice Dilemma

[bednobs]

hi, i am looking at schools for little 'nobs to start at next autumn, when she will be 4 (scary i know). You can put down up to 3 choices
anyway, we have looked at our 3 nearest (2x primary) and (1x infant) schools. Our catchment is the infant school.
Both of us like one of the non-catchment school best out of the 3. Although th catchment school is the best performing in the area, we liked the feel and fit of the other one better However, the situation in our area (as in many i suppose) is that schools are usually over subscibed , although there has never been a situation where any of them couldn't get all catchment children who chose it first. All of the schools have waiting list too.
My situation is, we would like to put our top three as non-catchment 1, catchment, and then non catchment 2, but if we don't get our first choice, would people out of area who had put catchment school as their first choice have preference over someone who lived round the corner, but hd put it as second choice??? is there a bigger risk of not getting either if i order them tht way round? There is a document on the council website that is 100 pages that i can't make hed nor tail of

[rockyracoon]

I don't think they would. The best thing to do is call admissions at your county council, they'll be able to tell you.

Good luck, I hated every freakin minute of school applications, secondary was the worst. Utter stressfest.

[bednobs]

hmm it really is!

[pixie374]

No. Put them in your genuinely preferred order. The schools don't know where you have placed them, it makes no difference to their offers. The offer you get will be the school that you have placed highest that has accepted. Good luck x

[youngmafbog]

I solved the problem, cost me 12K a year plus a bucket load of extra's though (bit less at that age)

Money well spent I think.

[jourdain2]

I ended up paying because the council (at a meeting at which I was present) said that anyone choosing other than the nearest school would go into a 'sink' school nearly 10 miles away if they were unsuccessful. It killed us financially, it really did and I scrimp like nobody's business still, but it was worth it.

Best advice I can give is to hang around the various schools at 'school out' time and watch the kids and parents.


The schools don't know the order you put them in (or at least, they didn't).

[bednobs]

as an update i had a good chat with the admissions team.
You were of course all right. We need to put the true order, as each school will treat the application as if we have only applied to them and rank the applications in order of their oversubscirption rules if they have more applications than places.
in theory you could get into all 3 you rank, and then you will get offered a place at the scholl you ranked highest

[diddlydo]

Those who put school as 1st choice take priority but it gets very complicated if all 3 schools are regularly over-subscribed - you could end up at none of your choices. I'm a school governor so I know about these things!

[Copacetic]

The worst case scenario is you will be offered a place at the closest school to your house.