Website down as anxious parents await news of secondary school places
As if the wait for news on a secondary school place wasn’t fraught enough, parents of Year 6 children had the additional angst of not being able to access the e-admissions website for several hours today (Tuesday 2nd March).
The website used in the Pan London admissions system was unavailable for more than seven hours this morning affecting around 34,000 applicants for Year 7 places who had registered online.
Families who opted for the traditional paper of applying were also left frustrated as thousands of letters were not delivered.
A statement on the website read, "We apologise for the disruption to the eadmissions site caused by an overarching network issue un-related to the eadmissions site itself. The system is now working correctly and applicants should also be receiving emails with their outcomes."
The competition for places in state secondary schools has been greater than ever this year with many families not considering a private education because of the recession. Add to this the press reports about the rising percentage of children not getting their first choice of place and it is understandable why so many families had a restless night.
Local resident Kim Bobsin said, “I had set the alarm to be promptly online at 7am, the advertised time that results would be available from eAdmissions. The site was unavailable until after 11am, but which point some parents had already received their offers by post.
“Ealing Council High School Admissions office was personally answering telephone enquiries (no voice mail or irritating automated system) and so I was able to give the results that way but the whole experience has been rather frustrating.”
Kim’s experience was reiterated by a number of other families both in Ealing and Hounslow boroughs many of whom did not receive a letter but were able to through to their Council by telephone to find out where their child had been offered a place.
A spokesperson for Ealing Council said, “School admission letters were sent by first class post yesterday (Monday 1 March) to all parents who applied by the deadline. If parents have not received their letter in the post already they can call the admissions team on 020 8825 5522 or 5511. If the application was made online you can go to the eAdmissions website www.eadmissions.org.uk, which has been up and running since lunchtime today.”
March 2, 2010
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