What happens?

[Sorrel]

If you are not sure of the process for your area, (which will be clearly listed on the same website where you accessed the school application information), then look at the website again and/or contact your own admissions area to find out the process in your area.

Far better for you to do your own searching than ask a group of strangers to do the searching for you!

I have looked, and I'm not expecting anyone to search for me. The website doesn't give every detail, but no doubt the process will be explained in March. All I was saying is that having different boroughs with different rules involved in applications for the same schools must make for a (necessarily) complex system and I'm curious how it works.

[ToadMum]

If you are not sure of the process for your area, (which will be clearly listed on the same website where you accessed the school application information), then look at the website again and/or contact your own admissions area to find out the process in your area.

Far better for you to do your own searching than ask a group of strangers to do the searching for you!

I have looked, and I'm not expecting anyone to search for me. The website doesn't give every detail, but no doubt the process will be explained in March. All I was saying is that having different boroughs with different rules involved in applications for the same schools must make for a (necessarily) complex system and I'm curious how it works.

Our only experience of waiting lists was when DD didn't get any of the schools we had listed on her CAF. She was eligible to go on the waiting ist for three of the five - our catchment non-selective and for 'distance' places at two partially selective schools. One of the latter two is in our LEA and the other slightly nearer but in a different LEA, but we registered our request to go on the waiting lists for both (she didn't really want the catchment school, anyway) through our own LEA's online system.

At the same time (this was 2012), other LEAs were putting names on waiting lists of higher ranked schools automatically. And now, in some areas you only have to respond to your allocation if you want to decline, whereas in others, you have to make a concrete response either way - the latter being a much better system, imho.

In terms of the school's LEA telling your LEA and your LEA telling you, if a place comes up from the waiting list - yes, this is the way it's meant to work, being the Coordinated Admissions Scheme.

[MCLC]

Thanks all.