24 April 2005

The bad news...

We're very, very sad to say that, after the Board of Education draw held on Friday to allocate the pre-enroled applicants to their respective pre-, primary and secondary schools here in Catalunya, Liam didn't get into either of his first or second choices in the first round.
Although we know the system is designed to be fair, we still feel it's sooooo shitty that we had to be the unlucky ones that didn't get their first choice.
It would have been much easier to get into any one of the bigger schools in the city but we had purposely chosen the smaller, more familiar style establishment, meaning that the numbers are low and the places run out quickly!
This is how it works: The board of education randomly assigns a number to each student as they apply (out of the over 130,000 applicants this year). Liam was assigned number 10,774. Then a draw is held in which just one "magic" number is picked out. This year it was number 57,052. All numbers from that number on are correlatively assigned the places remaining in the schools of their choice until the places are all gone. Liam has ended up 6th on the waiting list of Sant Felip Neri, his first choice. It's highly unlikely that 5 enrolments will drop out and miraculously make way for him.
So, we're going to rally around this week looking into what the remaining options are now. Us and all the other "unlucky seconds" like us, that is ... quite a few of our friends included.
Will keep you posted. Wish us luck.

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