Help with school choices in CAF-Bucks GS & Henrietta Barnet

[Guest55]

Exactly!

If you look at the % of children with three level 5s at Bucks GS it is strongly correlated with GCSE ranking ... outcomes are directly linked to how 'good' the intake is.

League tables are a very flawed way of looking at schools which is why Ofsted don't use them as part of their judgements.

[southbucks3]

What would happen if every child that placed an oversubscribed school in Bucks first on their list and they were all in catchment, would the person in catchment who placed them second have equal chances as someone who lived in the same road and placed them first, when the school had to resort to distance, or in the event of two children living equal distance would the person who put them first get the place?

Not being wicked, I honestly wondered this when great Marlow was oversubscribed last year in catchment.

[Sally-Anne]

would the person in catchment who placed them second have equal chances as someone who lived in the same road and placed them first

If the child who placed the school second could be allocated their first preference school, the child placing the school as first preference would receive the place.

If the child who placed the school second could not be allocated their first preference school, that preference is discarded, and their second preference becomes their first preference. Both children are then on an equal footing and distance is the arbiter of who gets the place.

in the event of two children living equal distance would the person who put them first get the place?

Again, if the child who placed the school second could not be allocated their first preference, their second preference becomes their first preference, and both children are on an equal footing. If they are genuinely equidistant from the school, this part of the Determined Admission Arrangements kicks in (unless the school is an Academy and has a different policy):

8 If it still not possible to decide between two applicants who are equidistant then an
independently scrutinised random allocation will be made to allocate the final place. An
explanation of the method of making random allocations is on the council website at:
http://www.buckscc.gov.uk/assets/conten ... mplate.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

[kenyancowgirl]

Ah!! The old blindfold and pin selection....

[Sally-Anne]

Ah!! The old blindfold and pin selection....

That's the one.

Pretty rare in Bucks because most of the property is low-rise housing. Quite an issue in areas where there are lots of multiple-occupancy properties though.

[southbucks3]

Why did they stop giving first dibs to those that put the school first on the caf then?

[loopylou]

They stopped doing first preference first long ago because essentially it was very unfair and caused many problems.
It was very hard on people who had particularly uncertain chances and had to hedge their bets. Some people did not live close enough to a school to be certain of a place, lived in outer not inner catchments or did not score highly enough to know they would meet a cut off. It meant that people who guessed wrongly would be assigned schools potentially very far away from where they lived or which they had not placed on their preference form at all since all other schools would fill up with lucky people who guessed correctly how things would pan out.

Preference order is never used as a tie breaker under any circumstances.
If 2 candidates stand in line for the last place at a school they have both listed (and neither of them can be offered a school they placed higher on their list) then either distance or random allocation is used and the admissions criteria for each school must specify which.

[kenyancowgirl]

A slight digression, but I am sure I have told you of a flight I was on that was overbooked in Africa - they took the overbooked people and told them to run round the plane and grab their suitcase and take it to the hold entrance - the first ones there got the seats....

Well...it's an idea.....!!

[southbucks3]

Oh of course, I forgot that we didn't used to know if our dc had passed before submitting the caf, in those days I knew one very sensible person who only put grammars on their caf, even though they did not gave enough cash for an indie alternative, they got very cross when they were allocated an unpopular upper by the LA and blamed the system.
I guess in areas where it is done by rank that is still applicable, but maybe the rule shouldn't be applied to the preferred order of same category schools, e.g.. upper v upper, or grammar v grammar in Buckinghamshire. I suppose it would get too tricky to differentiate though along with other admission criteria.

Kcg....I would have been the one still on the runway with half my family on the plane!
Sounds like an average rush hour tube journey tbh!

[Manni]

Many Thanks to all of you for your inputs / suggestions. it has made our decision making easier.