Does anyone know what is the rationale behind fixing National Offer Day as 1st March over say 6th November?

I cannot think of anything significant that happens between almost 4 months of November - February to delay letting the children and parents know where they would be heading to next year.

The system already has the data on 31st October, and given it is all automated, it is ready with the same results the next day as it would be on 1st March. So why create this unnecessary suspense, when advance information could help families prepare better for the school change?

It's not that simple - just think through everything that needs to happen.

There are HT reviews in Bucks, further exams in some schools, .... All the preferences need to be collated and the schools contacted to see which applicants they can offer places to [including measuring distances], then those replies need to be fed into the system. LAs will need to communicate with each other, check addresses etc.

There are school holidays to factor in - Oct half-term, Christmas, Feb half-term, ...

The same results the next day?!! Are you having a laugh?! This is a massive algorithm that has to take in thousands of childrens choices - up to 6 in some areas and analyse them all, checking against the admissions codes for each of their selected schools. And then this information has to be passed to the various councils - remember some people apply out of their area too so all that has to be cross checked over and over.

It is not an overnight process and it is ridiculous to assert that it is! Apart from some children with special needs, 6 months should be notice enough for families to prepare for the move - of course, for those families who want to drop everything to move their entire family across several counties for a school place, may like more time, but, arguably, they could have moved areas before this year to avoid this kind of disruption.

crossed with Guest.

Most LAs want to go through CAFs first. Some are even nice enough to contact parents if they haven't been realistic about their choices.

LAs need to check through addresses and do various cross checks, especially if they have big issues with address fraud. This may include actually going to people’s houses etc.

There is still a fair amount of data transfer and checking to go on, before LAs actually even contact each other with info of applicants from other areas.

Once data has been transferred and each LA presses the button to work out who goes where, the data then has to be checked, transferred back to other LAs and checked by them too.

It probably could be done quicker than it is, but it certainly not a quick and simple job.

- Supplementary information forms to be checked.
- Entitlement to places at faith schools checked.
- "Suitability to board" interviews for state boarding places.
- Potentially fraudulent applications investigated.
- And on and on ...

(X-post due to broadband crashing)

Yeah...but....you know, all that unnecessary suspense for parents - really they ought to pull their fingers out and get it done...correctly...overnight....

My child ... ... many thousands of children

A typical cohort is 600 000 students .... up to 6 choices .... hmmm.

Of course, it's all the faultt of that pesky Admissions Code, isn't it? Why don't we just go back to making individual applications to individual schools? Then each school could tell us the next morning whether we were 'in' or not, which would would work brilliantly for those of us who had trundled our DC round every selective school in the northern hemisphere (or at least, south of the Wash), we could collect up all those lovely Yeses from the ones where DC 'aced' the test and bank them for when we had made up our minds where we want to move to and then turn down all the others .

Wouldn't it be a pain, though, if, along with the duty to give us its response by return, every school were to be given the right to demand a yes or no from us within twenty four hours, otherwise the offer is taken off the table? Just a thought.

Truly, there are many worse ways of organising things than through the coordinated admissions system.

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Sorry, hbsseal, we have all rather piled in on you. Rainy Saturdays have a way of producing mass responses and silly humour.

Mind you, at least you got a comprehensive reply!