moving/both reception and in year app, advice?

[t1lly]

hi there, we are trying to move before Sept 16 (but not in time for the Jan/Feb cut off) and I wondered if anyone had any advice best way to do it.

We have a daughter currently y2 and the primary in the village we want to move to has 2 spaces currently in her year. Our son would be a Reception start.

We are not moving for jobs etc, just because we want to move back to the village we lived in for a long time, but so if the risk level of not getting both into the village primary is too high, we potentially would very sadly decide the move isnt possible. Obviously know there are no guarantees, and we aren't trying to play the system, but likewise are trying to weigh up the risk and probabilities involved.

We are thinking at the moment that we will put the school in the village we want to move to as 1st choice for our son - he obviously won't get in as we are way out of catchment (different county). We would put our existing primary as the 2nd choice. We would then plan to do an in year transfer for our daughter in sort of April/May time, and at that point move to the new village (but not yet sell our house up here). We would then hope that our son would jump to the top of the waiting list and get in at that point.

Does that seem likely/realistic? The Reception class is 45 intake. Last year according to the website 5 children in catchment didn't get in, but none of those had a sibling at the school.
Any advice/opinions gratefully received, thank you.

[tilder]

I would call the school to ask. Would also ask the head. I got a very different response from office staff and the head.

An intake of 45 sounds like they have some mixed year classes? They can't exceed 30 in a reception class or a total headcount across the school but in our school there is some juggling to take account of different class sizes between years.

The school my children are at held the place offers for us for 1 term while we moved house.