I am not asking for myself, I am just curious as I’ve heard it from a couple of different people now....Has the way you are supposed to fill in the CAF changed this year? When I did mine a couple of years ago, we were advised to fill in 6 schools in the order of preference.

I have heard this year the advice being given by county is if you don’t put a school first then you are unlikely to get it. So if you qualify and put your local grammar school 2nd, if you don’t get your first choice OOC grammar school then the local one might be full and may not take you. This is so different to what I knew and understood how it worked. Has it changed? Or are people misinterpreting the rules?

People are misunderstanding the rules and always have done! Not helped by the fact that heads often say "if you want your child to come here you need to put it as first preference". What they actually mean is "if this school is genuinely your first preference put it first, otherwise you might be allocated the one you actually put first". My hunch is that there is also some element of bragging rights amoungst head teachers about who had the most first preferences, but maybe that's just me being cynical.

You can refer the school gate gossipers to this document. It has been illegal for some years for the schools to know where you placed them on the form, but still the rumours persist.

Ahhhh! That’s so frustrating! Just watching people throw away all the child’s hard work for their dream school and opting for the safer school as their first choice. I guess it’s better for the child in the long run to not have a long commute every day.

All the education councils have very clear guidance on their website but every year we hear of someone who loses the school they want by putting it second to a local school. Some of them even show a little film.

For such a lifechanging decision it is odd that parents do not read it carefully. DG