Hello - my first post on the forum ...

We live on the borders of SE22 and SE23. In answer to the OP and, as a (wo)man on the ground I can tell you that we didn't get into any of our prefered schools. We were offered one on the other side of Peckham.

We live around 600 metres from Fairlawn, 1000 metres from Horniman and 450 metres from Goodrich.

We were put on the waiting list for all three schools. Within three weeks we had an offer at the Horniman which we accepted. Two weeks later we had an offer from Goodrich which we turned down as we'd then decided that we prefered the Horniman. We never got an offer from Fairlawn although we are still apparantly about 8th on the waiting list.

I hope that gives you a clearer picture of the reality of the schools application situation. It was a very stressful time, particularly because we stupidly assumed that only being 450 metres away from Goodrich we would get in straight away. However I am now absolutely delighted with the Horniman so it's all turned out well in the end.