Hi All,

As we have to put 6 choices for the school on the secondary school application forms, I was wondering if my son does not get the school which is marked as his first two choices so for him to get the third choice school what process do the admission department follows as someone might have put the school which is a third choice for myson as their first choice so i am getting confused here as whether the person who has put the first choice on the form will get the preference or will my son get the preference as he already he would have lost his first two choices of school?

Any guidance would be appreciated.

thanks

Each school (or its admissions authority) gets the complete list of children who have requested a place. In your case all six schools. They have no idea where they feature on your preference list.

Each school then allocates places based on their admissions policy.

Assuming school 6, school 4 and school 2 all give your child a place since s/he qualifies under their admissions policy you would be offered school 2. Places at school 4 and 6 would go back in the 'pot' for a child further down the admissions policy. So yes you could get a place at a lower ranked school when someone else has ranked it higher.

This is known as the equal preference system.

The Equal Preference system ensures that any school you apply to is looked at equally. Each school will assess your application against it's admission criteria and decide if they can offer you a place. The Council then looks to see which is the school you ranked highest that can offer you a place. If school 1 can't offer you a place (because it is a grammar school and you didn't quite score highly enough, for example) but school 2 can offer you a place because it is a grammar school that you did score highly enough for, you would get a place at School 2 and so on.... YOU MUST put your CAF applications in your true order of preference - the school you love best in first place, next best in second place etc - do not try and guess what other people are doing - if you put the school you love best (let's call it yellow school) in 3rd place beacuse you think you have a better chance of getting another school - lets call it blue school (and put it in first place), then if blue school says you meet their application criteria then you will NOT get a place at yellow school at all. If you put yellow school first and blue school second, if Yellow school says you do not meet the admissions criteria for it, the council look at blue school as if it was your first choice.

thank you for your reply

Go to the Secondary School Admissions seat on your local authority's website - you will have to do this, anyway, in order to complete your CAF. Or ring up that department and ask for a paper copy of the composite prospectus, which will have the same information in it. The process for applying and for how the equal preference system etc works, will be explained there. Most authorities include worked examples and crucial advice and instructions (such as, use all your preferences if possible and naming only one school, or the same school in more than one plot, does not force the LEA to allocate your DC a place at that school, whatever some idiot at the primary school gate may tell you . Believe me, it happens...).

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Here is an explanation with a simple example.

https://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/schoo ... nce-system

Each school gets a list of all applicants but has no idea of their preference on their CAF form.

Schools will allocate the places based on the admissions critieria and not on CAF preference.

Some students will qualify for all six of their schools and some will qualify for none.

Their council will make sure they are only offered one school and it will be the one that was highest preference on their CAF form if they qualify for more than one.

It is really important that you read the criteria carefully and make sure you are not wasting your choices on schools that you cannot qualify for. DG

My understanding is that some local authorities have sessions for parents on how to complete the online application, what the equal preference system is and how the allocation is done from CAF choices.