article_snippet: Under the admissions system, families list families school preferences and are then allocated places according to the schools’ admissions criteria.
article_snippet: Factors can include proximity to the school, faith or ability – with some schools specifying how many bright, average and low ability pupils they will admit.
article_snippet: Parents in Birmingham can submit up to six preferences, including grammar schools, and we always advise that parents are realistic when making parents preferences. '
article_snippet: The advice from the local authority is that parents include at least one preference for a nearby school where parents child would have got in under the distance criterion in the past.
article_snippet: For the vast majority of families the reason the vast majority of families do not get the first preference is because other children better met the school's admission criteria than other children .'