Primary admissions D-Day approaches, have you completed your form?

This Friday sees the admissions deadline for applications for primary school places for September 2016. If your child will be starting in Reception in September, miss this deadline at your peril…. but if you are still undecided about what order to put your preferences in, or are confused by how the process works, some pointers which might help you feel able to hit “send” on your online form.

1. Always put your first preference school first. All admissions authorities operate an Equal Preference System. Each school you name as a preference will work through all applications, and if oversubscribed they will then rank parents according to their published oversubscription criteria. The Local Authority receives all this information back from schools. If you have qualified for a place at more than one of your preferred schools, they will offer you a place at the one you have given your highest preference to. So if you put your nearest school 1st preference but you really want a school a bit further away, but are unsure if you will get a place so you put that 2nd, if you qualify for both you will get your 1st stated preference NOT your favoured school…..
2. Always include a safe bet as one of your preferences. You might not want your nearest school, but if you don’t put it down and you don’t get any of your preferences you will be allocated a place at the nearest school that has vacancies after all preferences have been worked through. So you may end up with a school some distance away no better than the one on your doorstep.
3. Think about your journey to school, every day, five days a week for 38 weeks a year. How does it fit in with other children at different schools and your work or your other childcare needs? Consider the benefits of a local school – friendships close by, exercise from walking compared to the costs of petrol, how to get there in bad weather (or if the car breaks down), picking up from playdates some distance away….
4. Schools DO NOT KNOW what preference you have put them. They are not allowed to use preferences as a way of ranking and allocating places – this violates the schools admissions code. All they know is you have made them one of your preferences, not the order. So if a school tells you that you must put them first preference or you won’t get a place this is not the case.
5. Some schools operate a catchment system whereby children living within the catchment have priority over admissions. This might mean siblings living outside the catchment are not prioritised as highly as those within. If you are offered a place for your eldest child at a school that you are not “in catchment” for ,then be aware that your younger children might not get a place if the school is popular, and in an area targeted by first-time-parents. Similarly if you move out of a catchment before your younger children start at school they may drop down the priority list for entry. Oh, and if you live in Wandsworth they are scrapping sibling priority altogether in some of their schools.
6. Use up all your preferences otherwise you might end up with a school some distance away if there are no places locally once all preferences have been worked through. Just putting one school will not maximise your chances of getting a place there, only minimise your chances of getting anywhere else should you be unlucky.

Good luck! Now you just have 3 long months to wait to find out what place you have been offered…..so try and sit back and relax and enjoy these last months with your preschooler before the reality of school kicks in!

Don’t get caught out by putting faith in school catchments.

I was asked by clients yesterday to define what is meant by a school’s “catchment area”.  They, like many parents I talk to, were keen to know if they were living safely within the catchment area of their nearest primary school. I wish I could have told them they were, but unfortunately for that family and many others across England, the reality is that catchment areas are irrelevant or do not even exist.

It is true that some Local Authority areas, for example Hampshire, do have set catchment areas for each primary school and their admissions criteria clearly give priority to those living within the defined area which can disadvantage those families that then move out of catchment before younger siblings start at the school.

Similarly, many church schools will use their parish boundary as a catchment and living within this gives you priority over those outside. In some cases this can mean giving local non-churchgoers priority over church-goers from outside the parish.

But in most places, gaining a place at a community or non-faith primary school depends solely on how far you live from a school and this can vary from year to year. So living 500 metres from a school might well get you in one year but not the next. This makes it increasingly difficult to judge where you need to move to if you are moving to access a good school.

You can get a good idea about how close you ideally need to be by looking back at
cut-off distances (the furthest distance away that a place was awarded) in recent years but you need to be aware of the following variables which can impact on this:

1. Siblings. Brothers and sisters usually take up to half of places BUT if the school has only one form entry then in some years siblings could take up to 20/30 places leaving few for local first-born children.  Or more than 20 if you live in an area where having 3 children per family is common.
2. Changes in admissions policies. Schools can review/amend their admissions policies each year. In particular schools becoming academies can take advantage of their change in status to revise their admissions criteria. Do not assume the rules for one year will be the same for the next.
3. New housing developments to accommodate increases in population might not be matched by increases in school provision.
4. A recent good/outstanding Ofsted can suddenly make a school more popular.
5. Some schools still give priority to those children for whom it is their nearest school. So whilst you might be 10 metres closer to a school than another family, if you have another school nearer to you and they don’t they will get the place ahead of you.

Now is a good time of year to start gathering information – go to Local Authority and school websites and check out those all important criteria and cut-off distances. The more informed you are, the better you will be able to make best use of your preferences on your school admissions forms.

If you are confused by the whole process maybe I can help and as it is the summer, I am currently offering 10% off all consultations. Or if you post a quick question here or on my Facebook page, I’ll do my best to help! More info at http://www.trutheducation.co.uk