Hi,
We are in East Sussex and would like to apply for a Kent school. From the other posts it looks like you get 4 options to choose. But when I tried it from our county site, maximum 3 preferences are available. We are doing this first time and no idea this is the right place to apply also! Anyone tried it before and experienced similar issues?

You submit all your preferences via your own LA's CAF. If East Sussex only has the legal minimum of three slots, then you can only name three preferences. One of these should be the local (presumably non-selective, as your LA is fully comprehensive) school for which you can be sure of your DD meeting the criteria. List your schools in your true order of preference.

If you look at the Secondary School transfer information on your local authority's website, the procedure should be explained fully there. Some if not all LA's require you to confirm that you haveread the advice provided, before you can submit your CAF.

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Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.Groucho Marx

Totally confused! I just registered my name in our county admission site. They have just the name and date of birth of my child. How will they find out his 11+ score? Do I need to give more information in the reason for application?

It might be an idea to check with Kent CC, but the process should go:

- you submit your CAF to East Sussex
- East Sussex informs Kent CC that you want a place at one of their schools
- Kent CC checks with the school (or for itself, if Kent CC is the admissions authority) as to whether it can offer a place
- Kent CC informs East Sussex of the response
- East Sussex looks at the responses from all your preferences and allocates a place at the 'yes' which you ranked highest of them on your CAF.

It's how the score gets into the system, that is the question - I would think that Kent CC would check the results database and do this.

Have you actually tested the system by starting an application? You may find that when you select your Kent schools a statement about needing to have passed the Kent Test will appear.

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Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.Groucho Marx

Also do any of the grammars you are interested in require a SIF? Many of the Kent ones near us required one, each were unique to the school and had to be in by 31 Oct in addition to the CAF.

Spoke to both KCC and schools and they advised to just apply to local county. There is no information to add in the local county application site. I can’t even see his current school listed as it is a private school! Hopefully they will find him by just name and DOB!

Hi there,
We applied from East Sussex last year. Just put your 3 choices in true order of preference. We chose 3 Kent schools as decided we would most probably get allocated the local comp if we didn’t get any of our 3 choices and didn’t want to waste a choice. Kent will have the info needed about scores and will tie it together.
KCC are incredibly helpful and responsive if you have any queries. We were going to appeal but in the end got a place from waiting list for 2nd choice grammar.
Hope that helps.

A somewhat risky strategy. Did you get your 3rd preference school on March 1st, or your local comprehensive? If the latter, and it is a 'nice' school, then you were very lucky. The enormous risk with not actually naming any school which will definitely offer a place and with which you are happy, is that when you cannot be allocated any of your ranked preferences, your LA is only obliged to allocate the nearest school which has a vacancy (after all the places required for those who did name the school somewhere on their CAF have been allocated). And that school may be the one in special measures and two changes of bus away, to add insult to injury .

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Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.Groucho Marx

+1. You won't be allocated your 'local comp' if it is already full with people who named it on the CAF. You will not be able to take a place away from people who name it on the form if you haven't named it, even if you live closer than them and would be higher up the priority criteria.

If you don't get into one of the schools you name on your CAF you will be allocated your nearest school with spaces. Often schools only have spaces because other people don't want to go there. You can draw your own conclusions as to why.

You won't just be allocated your nearest school.

Yes, this is what happens. Just to add that around January, the LA sends requests to all the schools named on the CAF. These schools receive the papers and respond to the LA saying whether they would or not offer a place. As you say, the local LA then collects all the positive responses and allocates a place to the highest ranked school which received a positive response.

Some schools do extra checking and would contact the parents directly with, for example, proof of address. In this case, the Kent schools who rank children according to score, such as DGS, would need to know the child's score to be able to offer a place or not. As the person's LA (in this case East Sussex) would contact KCC, it is KCC who would forward the application to the school together with the scores. This is why it takes months to allocate a school.

Salsa