I have now had sight of the Preferences for this year and dusted off the crystal ball to try to predict the likely allocation distances for 1st March.

I have slightly rearranged the schools to combine Chiltern & South Bucks, because the biggest issue last year was with boys' places across Amersham/Burnham/Wycombe.

Just a reminder that the crystal ball is mainly for fun, although if you look at the past preferences and distances, there are trends to be found.

Enjoy!

Hi Sally-Anne,

Thanks for this, what makes you think that the OA distance for Royal Latin will still be around 8 miles, if there are 37 more children that have this school as 1st Preference compared to 2018? Surely this will reduce significantly.

One other question that I was hoping you could help answer is, as all the 1st preference numbers are higher than the places available, what are the chances of a child receiving a place in their 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc choice schools?

Thanks

Hi Pidney, and welcome!

Two things. History: looking at the numbers from past years, and particularly 2015 (247 preferences and a distance of 8.276). Secondly, past experience: A fair number of the first preferences for RLS are from children living in Milton Keynes who put the school as their first preference, more in hope than expectation. It's never a particularly easy school to call because once you get beyond Buckingham, it's a lot of empty fields, but somehow it always seems to shake down to roughly the same distance.

If the child lives in catchment, they are almost certain to receive their first preference (DCGS excluded, as usual). Out of area, it's impossible to say, but if your preferences were grounded in reality in terms of the past allocation distances, the child should get one of them.

@Sally-Anne, do you think the change to GL will make any difference in the catchment distance?

In theory it shouldn’t make any difference whatsoever. The numbers qualifyingshoud be the same.

I suspect there maybe differences due to the change, with those way out of catchment not using it as a mock possibly (wrong format), but I don’t have a feel of how significant this might be, if at all.

Hi Sally-Anne,

Thank you and thank you for your advice.

We do live in MK, however we have consistently just been within the OA distances for RLS, Aylesbury and SHF (except for SHF last year).

Fingers crossed, not long left now.

Pidney

Unfortunately not. SW Herts are changing back to GL, as are Latymer and DAO. (The word "sheep" really does come to mind!) In any case, many of the mock testers actually don't know or care what the test format is.


I think it will be fingers crossed, but you should get one of the three schools at some stage. I plumped for 13 miles for all the Aylesbury schools because there really wasn't any evidence to suggest a dramatic change, but I don't think for one moment that they will all come in at exactly 13 miles!

Thank you Sally-Anne

Hi, so am I right in thinking that if our DS is successful at SR then (unfortunately for OoC and OoCatchment) he'll get preference because we are only 1 mile away from AGS? 14 boys who live furthest away won't get a place?
Thanks

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over the counter ed treatment

If you are successful at SR it is as if he was successful originally, so you are included as part of the first round of admissions following the school's criteria.