Throughout Britain today, parents of children in year 6 received notification of which senior school they have been allocated. Disappointingly, David hasn’t been offered his first choice of Heckmondwike Grammar but there is still a possibility that he may get offered a place on the waiting list as there are always some who don’t accept the offer.
The good news, however, is that he has been offered his second choice school- Woodkirk High, home of Morley Community Radio. So we will accept that and plan for him to go there but in the meantime he might get lucky and get offered a place at Grammar school.
This is how we thought the system worked. Indeed, this is how the BBC thinks it works.
What can we do if we do not get our favourite school?
You can accept the place offered but ask to be put on a waiting list for the school you most want. Not everyone will take up their places and you may be offered one. Be prepared to wait though. Some shuffling of places goes on right up to and even after the start of the autumn term.
Then we looked at the offer letter.
If you feel you do not want to accept the offer, your child’s place at the above school will be withdrawn and offered to the next child on the waiting list. Please remember that there is no guarantee that your appeals for higher preference schools will be successful. You must also be aware that once you have rejected your offer at the above school it may not be possible to offer it to you again if you change your mind.
Please tick one of the following:
I accept the offer of at a place at this school
I do not accept the offer because we are moving away to:
(Please give details) _______________________________________________________
I do not accept the offer because my child is entering private education at:
(Please give details) _______________________________________________________
I do not accept the offer because I am appealing/going on the waiting list for a higher preference school. Now complete the Appeal/Waiting List summary form overleaf.
So this form only gives you the choice of accepting or rejecting it. You can’t appear to tick box 1 and 4, it says tick one box only.
Needless to say, I queried it both on the phone and in writing. The answer was reassuring, but we had been fretting about it since we were infomed by email on Sunday morning, as we were concerned that we might lose the Woodkirk offer if we wanted to go on the Heckmondwike waiting list.
Dear Parent,
You can indeed accept the offer and then appeal and go on the waiting list for another school.
We only want parents to give up schools that they have no intention of sending their child to so that we can give those places to people who do want them.
I am sorry that it was not clear and thank you for your feedback to enable us to try and make things clearer for parents next year.
Kind Regards
The actual offer letter had also moved the goalposts along the way, moving from a position back in October in the admissions brochure of assuming you were happy with the offer so you didn’t need to reply to the opposite where if you didn’t reply you were assumed to be unhappy and might lose your allocation. There is nothing wrong with improving the system but it is normal to clarify that it has changed and why.
In a marvellous bit of delicious irony there was a small logo on the foot of the offer letter. I refuse to believe that the plain english campaign could sanction this, unless logical fallacy is excluded from the scheme.
