Dear all,
I searched the entire forum to see if there is any thread on the allocation algorithm. Every place I go am told to put my real order of choice, however my question is if there is any chance that the order of preference does it my any chance weaken my DS’s to get admission into the school where he has a good chance to get in.
As an example - student 1 has marked Wallington as 4th choice; student 2 has marked Wallington as 2nd choice. Student 1 is on a better rank in Wallington boys than Student 2. Now in order of allocation while the algorithm is trying for a place for student 1 it isn’t successful in giving first 3 choices but at the same time student 2 is successful in getting the last place available in Wallington(Student 2’s second choice)
By the time the allocation algorithm tries to find a place for student 1 on his 4th choice(as first 3 choices aren’t successful) the last place in Wallington boys is allocated to Student 2 already. In this case will the algorithm take that place away from Student 2 and give it to student 1 as he has a higher score n better rank than student 2 or will it move on to option 5 of student 1????
If it does the latter, then just because the student 1 had marked Wallington as 4th choice loses the opportunity even after scoring better then student 2. This wouldn’t be fair right?

Pls help, am I going crazy in understanding this process?

Have a look at this as it explains the system and gives an example.
https://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/schoo ... nce-system

The applicant whom the school (or it's maintaining LEA on its behalf) ranks higher gets the place, unless that applicant has named as a higher preference, another school which is able to offer them a place. It is against the Admissions Code for a state school to take account of where an applicant has ranked it and for it to be given that information in the first place.

X-posted with Tinkers

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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

OP, you are looking at it the wrong way around. The algorithm doesn't start with the child's preferences, it starts with the schools' ranks. The schools rank each child who has named the school anywhere on the CAF in order according to the admissions criteria. If the school has 100 places it will look at the top 100 children on this list and if any of them have put it first on the CAF then they will be offered a place. Critically, the lower preferences of those people who get offers are discarded, so they come off the lists of the other schools they named.

Meanwhile, all the other schools are doing the same thing. Looking at the children who are highest up their admissions criteria and seeing if they can offer them a place or whether they have been offered a place already by a school they ranked higher up the CAF.

You can see that you can never leapfrog someone by putting a school higher up the CAF. You will always be offered a place before someone else with a lower ranking than you, regardless of where you put the school on the CAF.

Thanks Tinkers and Toadmum.

Ahhhh, sorry I thought I understood from the link Tinkers had. But now confused again.
Quote: The schools rank each child who has named the school anywhere on the CAF in order according to the admissions criteria. If the school has 100 places it will look at the top 100 children on this list and if any of them have put it first on the CAF then they will be offered a place. UnQuote
Here in the above quote you are saying that top 100 who has put it first will be offered right? Imagine 100th rank has put school A as second choice but 101st rank had put the school as first choice. So now the 101st rank would be given the last place. Student A didn't get a good rank in his 1st choice school. Now the last place of the school A would have gone to the 101st rank student cos he/she marked the school A as first choice right?

Excuse me if am sounding too dumb

the 100th place would go to the student who put it second on their CAF (but didn't get their first choice school) as they have priority over the 101st student despite them putting it as first choice. Remember the school doesn't know where the pupil has put them on the CAF

This is the key bit. The school is given a list of every child who names them anywhere on their CAF. The school don't know whre they named them, just that they were named. The school ranks these children according to their school admissions criteria. Often for selective schools this is by rank/score. The council will then offer places to children at the school that they a) listed highest on their CAF where b) they meet the entry criteria for. a and b in this case are not mutually exclusive - they have to tick both boxes, so to speak.

The school's LEA (the maintaining LEA) collated all the requests made via each applicant's home LEA for a place at the school.

(The maintaining and home LEAs may be the same LEA, of course - especially for schools with priority admissions areas, but imagine the LEA working as the agent of the school in one role and the agent of the applicant in the other).

All the applicants are ranked according to the school's published admissions criteria.

The maintaining LEA feeds back to the home LEA of each applicant whether or not a place can be offered.

Each home LEA collates all the responses for each applicant for whom it is responsible. Only at this point is the order in which the applicant has ranked their preferences important, because their home LEA, acting as their agent, will now allocate their DC a place at the highest ranked (by the applicant) of their preferences that has said 'Yes'.

The system is completely blind. It is programmed to assume that when the applicant ranks their preferences, that is actually the order in which they would like to be offered places, because that is the instruction that each applicant's home LEA gives them regarding the completion of their application.

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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

[quote="GS Exams]

Here in the above quote you are saying that top 100 who has put it first will be offered right?

[/quote]

That's not what I was saying - or at least not what I was trying to say!

It's not the top 100 who put it first. It's the top 100 in order of priority under the school's admissions criteria, regardless of where parents have put it on the CAF.