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Exchanging contract during school admissions period

4 replies

Ratbag82 · 26/11/2015 15:54

We're currently selling our home and were due to exchange contracts with our buyer in late January with view to moving in February.

We've recently applied for our son to start primary school. Our current house is very close to the school but our new house, although still in catchment will be close to the boundary.

Our buyers have now said that they need to exchange contracts in December (not sure why yet) but are still happy to complete in February. So now we're going to exchange during application window and complete after it closes on Jan 15th.

Does anyone know if I should allow this or if I should insist on waiting until late January as originally planned? I'm worried that if there's a high intake this year the admissions dept will insist on using our new address even though we'll still be living at our current address until after the admission period closes. I don't want to risk my son ending up in no-mans land and allocated to a random primary school.

I have tried to contact admissions dept this afternoon but they're closed (!) for admin and we're supposed to give our solicitor confirmation today on whether we can do December exchange or not.

We don't want to lose our buyer but I also don't want to mess up my sons school placement either!

Any advice or reassurance would be greatly received!!!

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Hydradela · 26/11/2015 17:03

Someone with actual knowledge will come along in a minute no doubt but the first thought I had when reading your post is that the buyer may well have their eye on a school place, too!

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Potterwolfie · 26/11/2015 17:18

Technically the address used should be the one you are physically living in by the cut off date, in your case, Jan 15th. Logically there should be no reason why the LA will use your future address...but from experience, logic is unfortunately the last thing applied in the school admissions process, so it might be best to check with the LA or admissions department asap.