CAF order of preference

[mad?]

The head at Shoebury has said that (apart from the selective entry) only people who put Shoebury first will get in.

So perhaps a better example is that if under 303 is scored and your catchment schools are bad you may need to aim for the school you have the best chance of rather than your favourite if it keeps you out of the catchment schools.

The head is wrong. What they mean is put them first if it is your first choice, otherwise you will be offered the school that you gave out first if you meet their criteria.

Scary is right. OrangeSport take the time to read the link. You will get the highest ranked school for which you qualify and so should put them in your true order of preference.

[mitasol]

There are national statutory guidelines on how school places are allocated. I strongly suggest you follow KB's advice and not orangesport.

Place the schools in your genuine order of preference.
Essex County Council Admission Authority https://www.essex.gov.uk/Education-Scho ... ooklet.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

School preference order
You should put your school preferences in the
order you really want them, but remember to take
into account transport implications (see page 23).
The ranked order of your preferences is
confidential to the relevant LAs and will only be
shared with schools in the event of appeals. In
accordance with the statutory School Admissions
Code, schools must not use admissions criteria
that require you to put them as first preference to
gain a higher priority.
No Essex schools use such criteria. If your
preferred schools are not in Essex you should
check their admissions criteria carefully. Details
for LAs bordering Essex can be found on page 115.
It is important that, when selecting your
preferences, you take into account how you will
transport your child to school. Pages 23-25 explain
the Council’s Education Transport Policy. The
following websites may give you useful information
about alternatives if your child will not qualify for
home to school transport:

http://www.southend.gov.uk/download/dow ... 201819.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Southend Admission authority

All preferences are treated equally.
If a place is available at each of your preference schools the offer for a place will be
made at your highest preference school that has a place available.
Places are allocated according to the admission criteria on pages 22–45.
If there are places at your first preference school the place will be offered to you.
If there are no places at your first preference school and there are places at your second
preference the place will be offered to you. You may request to remain on the waiting list
for the first preference and will be offered your right to appeal for the first preference.
If there are no places at your second preference school and there are places at your
third preference the place will be offered to you. You may request to remain on the
waiting list for the first and second preference and will be offered your right to appeal
for the first and second preference.
This process continues for your fourth and fifth preferences.

[OrangeSport]

I actually understood that they get more 1st choice applications than they can take, but I guess we can leave the point at that.

Thanks

[ToadMum]

Unless the school in question is always over subscribed by first choices. Shoebury for example always is.

So if you chose:

A grammar school
Shoebury
Cecil or Southchurch as catchment schools

And if you missed the grammar school you would not get Shoebury.

If you put Shoebury 1st you would have more chance of not getting Cecil or Southchurch

But you would not get the school you really want. A bit of a damage limitation approach I suppose

Shoeburyness may or may not be oversubscribed by people who put it first, but that is absolutely nothing to do with Southend Borough Council or the school operating an illegal 'First preference first' scam. Yes, most pupils in any year may have put the school first, but they will have qualified under siblings / proximity to school with a few who are neither but who passed the CSSE test. Shoeburyness High is a good school surrounded by houses and most people who live in its catchment want their DC to go there (unless they in to one of the grammars), rather than traipsing off to a random other comprehensive in the Borough, so of course most of them will have put it as their first preference.

Eta is the HT still that nice Welsh chap? We haven't 'done' Shoeburyness for a few years, as our youngest is now year 10 and elsewhere, but I can't remember him actually saying that on any of the occasions I have heard his talk. If I had, I would have emailed Southend Admissions about it, as I did Essex CC when one of their HTs worded her advice similarly badly

[streathammum]

Hi OrangeSport

I'm afraid you're incorrect. Each school has its own published admissions criteria, which says how it prioritises children who apply. So it might have looked after children first, then siblings, then distance; or for a selective school it might have rank order of score, or it might have separate streams for in catchment and out of catchment children. What the admissions criteria won't have - are not allowed to have - is a reference to where a school is listed on a CAF.

When you send your CAF to your local authority, it looks at all the schools you've listed and tells each school you've listed that you want a place there. It doesn't tell the school where on the CAF you've listed it. The school then takes every child who's named it anywhere on the CAF and puts them in rank order according to its own criteria. (Remember, this won't refer to where you've listed it on a CAF.) It then sends this list back to the local authority.

The local authority will then start to allocate places. Say a school has 100 places. The authority will look at the top 100 children on its list. If there are children within that 100 who've listed it first, then they will be getting an offer of a place there. The authority will then look at the CAF for each of those children who listed it first and will see if they listed any other schools below it. If they did, then these school applications are released - the children don't need them because they will be offered a place at their first-choice school. If there are children within the top 100 who list the school somewhere in the middle of the CAF, they are held with a sort-of provisional offer. The schools below are released but the schools above remain in play.

Once the schools have been released from the forms of children who are eligible for a place at a school they rank higher, there are more allocations to see if higher offers can be made because of the released places.

This carries on until all children have been made an offer at their highest preference school. (It's obviously computerised.) This is the allocation you will receive on offer day.

The point is that where you rank is not affected by where you put the form on the CAF. You can name your local comp at the bottom of your CAF and if the school has a sibling policy and you already have a child there you will always rank higher than someone who doesn't have a child there, even if they put it at the top of their form. You will always be offered a place before they are.

What schools often say is "If we are your favourite school, put us first on your CAF". This is true, but it doesn't mean that you won't get a place if you don't put if first.

If you put your second choice school first, because you think you've got a better chance of getting a place there, and you do get a place there, all your other preferences will be released, even if you would have got a place at your first choice if you'd listed it higher.

(Cross-posted with others.)

[GingerNinja]

If offered a place at either WHSG/SHSG, do you have to confirm to the actual school that you will be accepting the place?

[OrangeSport]

Thanks for all the replies. To be honest it's not something which affects us now we have our results, so as I said before I'm happy to leave it here. Perhaps the head was wrong when he said if we didn't put Shoebury first we wouldn't get in.

Thanks

[streathammum]

Perhaps the head was wrong when he said if we didn't put Shoebury first we wouldn't get in.
Thanks

If the Head said that, the Head was lying.

[ToadMum]

If offered a place at either WHSG/SHSG, do you have to confirm to the actual school that you will be accepting the place?

If you live in Essex and submit your CAF via Essex CC, you are assumed to have accepted your allocated school unless you tell them otherwise.

If you are in Southend, at least up until 2014 entry, you had to accept / decline etc as a positive action.

If you live in a different LA, follow the instructions you are given when you get your allocation from them.

Remember that according to the law in the form of the Admissions Code, the offer must be made via your local authority - schools must not contact you until this has happened. Some schools don't seem to understand this bit, but our experience of SHSB is that it, at least, does comply. Our experience of actually getting a place at SHSG and WHSG is only through an in-year and sixth form application, respectively, and those procedures are different.

[GingerNinja]

If offered a place at either WHSG/SHSG, do you have to confirm to the actual school that you will be accepting the place?

If you live in Essex and submit your CAF via Essex CC, you are assumed to have accepted your allocated school unless you tell them otherwise.

If you are in Southend, at least up until 2014 entry, you had to accept / decline etc as a positive action.

If you live in a different LA, follow the instructions you are given when you get your allocation from them.

Remember that according to the law in the form of the Admissions Code, the offer must be made via your local authority - schools must not contact you until this has happened. Some schools don't seem to understand this bit, but our experience of SHSB is that it, at least, does comply. Our experience of actually getting a place at SHSG and WHSG is only through an in-year and sixth form application, respectively, and those procedures are different.

Thanks for your reply, I'm under Essex CC so pretty straightforward then.