How the waiting list actually works

First, the number of places is real

Every class in the timetable has a capacity and it is not a guideline. The smallest class in the school holds eight; the largest holds eighteen. Those numbers are often lower than the room would take, because in a class of small children the limit is what one adult can see rather than how much floor there is.

When the last place goes, the class stops taking enrolments. It does not quietly take one more because somebody was persuasive at the desk, and it does not take a trial student either — which is the part that would be easiest to fudge and the part that matters most, because a trial that overfilled a class would be exactly the same thing as lying about the capacity.

A place is a real number. Every class has a number of places and the number shown is the real one. When a class is full it stops taking enrolments and starts a waiting list, in order, with your position visible to you.

The list is in order and the order is honoured

You join at the bottom and you are told your position at that moment: a number on the screen, in the confirmation e-mail, and available from the office whenever you ask for it.

There is no charge to be on a waiting list and there is no priority that can be bought. Existing students of the school get a fortnight's head start on enrolment for the following term, which is the only preference that exists here, and it applies before the list rather than inside it.

What happens when a place comes free

1. Somebody withdraws

   Or an offer expires, or a class's capacity is raised. The place returns to the class the moment the withdrawal is recorded rather than at the end of the week.

2. The place is offered to position one

   Not to whoever telephones first, not to whoever asks most often, and not to whoever the office happens to remember. To the person at the top of the list.

3. The offer holds the place for three days

   While it is open, the place is not available to anybody else. That is why a class can show as full when a place has technically just come free: it has come free FOR SOMEBODY.

4. If it is not taken, it moves down

   The offer expires, the place is offered to position two, and the person who let it lapse keeps their place in the queue for the next one rather than being removed. Life happens.

An offer runs out on purpose. A place offered from the waiting list is held for three days and then passes to the next person. The expiry is not impatience: without it, one person who has stopped reading their e-mail keeps a class closed to everybody behind them.

Why the offer expires at all

Because without an expiry, one person who has changed their e-mail address keeps a class closed to everybody behind them for the rest of the term. That is not a hypothetical: it is what happens in every school that offers a place and then waits to hear.

Three days is long enough to have a weekend in it and short enough that a class is not held empty for a fortnight. If you know in advance that you will be away, tell the office and the offer will be held for you.

What a waiting list does not mean

• It is not a judgement about the student. There are no auditions here. What limits a place is capacity and nothing else.
• It is not a queue you can jump. Not by paying, not by knowing somebody, not by being an existing family. The order is the order.
• It is not usually a long wait. Most lists move within a term, because most terms see two or three families change their plans. Some do not move at all, and the honest answer if you ask is a number and a shrug.
• It is worth joining more than one. Being on two lists costs nothing, and the same class on another day usually has room.

What we will tell you if you telephone

Your position, the number of places in the class, how many people are ahead of you, and whether the list has moved this term. If you would rather have a different class that has room now, we will say which ones do — including on a day you did not ask about, which is the answer that actually solves it most of the time.