If your child doesn't get a place at your preferred grammar school on 1st March, how do you find out where you are on the waiting list? Do you contact Essex LEA or the school if hoping for a place at Colchester Girls High school? Also do you have to wait a few days before contacting LEA/ school to find out where you are on the waiting list?

I would like to know something similar. We have put Chelmsford as first choice and Colchester girls as 2nd choice. I am happy with either dd would prefer Chelmsford although will be fine with Colchester. Do we contact the council re where she is on waiting list if she doesn't get Chelmsford.
Also, this is my first time so bear with me , dd got plenty of points I/c for Chelmsford and green for Colchester. how does it work if she doesn't get Chelmsford even though enough points, from the last 3 years stats. How is she then reviewed for her 2nd choice ? given she has green zone points and yet has put Colchester 2nd choice. Hope this makes sense ! roll on next Thursday was feeling very calm and now starting to stress , can you tell !

Welsh 21, If you don't get your first choice then you go onto the waiting list. However, the waiting list is not available to view until about the 15th March. You can then log on to ECC admissions where you can view your waiting list position. I had to do this last year. It was a very long wait. DD1 finally got offered a place the day before term started! This was for Colchester.

Blueshutters, If you meet the admissions criteria for your first choice then this will be the school you are allocated. I think you would then be removed from all of the other choices you put on your CAF.

I can't wait for next Thursday either for DD2.

Good luck, I hope you both get what you wish for.

SD

If you have a look on your home LEA's website, you will find a description of how the Equal Preference System works.

Essentially:

- your ranking of schools matters only to you. The schools do not know (are prevented from knowing, by law) where you ranked them
- each admissions authority (may be the school itself, or the school's LEA on its behalf) ranks all the applications it receives, according to its published admissions criteria. At the same time.
- the information is fed back, LEA to LEA, to your home authority
- your home LEA looks at your ranked list and sees which of your preferences said 'yes'
- your home LEA then allocates a place to you at the 'yes' that you ranked highest on your list
- it is assumed that you have ranked schools in your use order of preference. If you say you want e.g. Stanway, then Thomas Lord Audley, then ColCHS, etc, etc, if your DD meets the requirements for a place at TLA , that is the place she will get, with a place on the waiting list at Stanway - but no waiting list place at ColCHS, because the system has been told that it was your third preference and your DD could be offered a place at higher preference school. The algorithm does not have a function which goes, 'if any of the preferences is a grammar school, that must be their real first preference, whatever order they ranked schools in'.

_________________
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@Scooby Doo

Hi, can I ask how many places did your child move up from the 15th of March to the start of term?...not that it'll be exactly the same, but it would be good to understand how many positions change over those months.
Also, to your knowledge, were children still being invited after the start of term?

Thanks for any response.

Liber8

Dear Liber8,

In 2017, my DD moved about 24 places. As far as I am aware there was only one more place offered after my DD.

In 2016, I believe the list move about 17 places. This went into the start of term. Somewhere around mid October.

Hope this helps.

All the best

SD