How do you move house and apply to change schools?

[MaggieFS]

We're hoping to move to a new area in a couple of years. No idea where yet, we have a lot to work out! I can't leave my work before DS starts reception so we're most likely looking at moving when he'll be in Year Two or Three. I know from all the school application posts you have to have your address to apply, so how does it work if you move? I know you don't have as much choice, but I'm thinking more about timings, what if you only know exactly where you'll be living three months beforehand?

I'll warn you it's shit.

We moved when eldest was Year 9 -we applied to oustanding school over subscribed and they were full and then we had to appeal etc. The stress nearly killed me.

Ring around and see where had spaces and then move to that area and rent. Then apply.

If you can, make the move when he's Yr3 instead of Yr2. Yr3 has no legal class size limit.
Basically, you can't apply in the new area until you are resident. And it's pot luck, depending where there are spaces. You could get the most popular school, or an underperforming one. You can try your hand at appealing for a preferred school (I did that last year to get both mine into the same school, they were allocated schools at opposite ends of town)

We were going to move in July when DS would be going into year 8 and DD would be going into year 7. But the schools we liked were over subscribed with massive waiting lists. I thought if we rented or bought virtually on the door steps of one of the schools we would move to the top of the list. But still no guarantees and it all sounded very stressful and uncertain. Also I thought moving to a new area away from family and friends would be hard enough without buying whole uniform for one school, going through appeal and then possibly starting again at another school was just too stressful. So we didn’t move in the end.

One useful piece of knowledge though (it is shit by the way, I've done it)

If a primary isn't full - so if there isn't 30 in the class, AND there isn't a waiting list, then you can have a place from your existing address. Some LA are shitty about this but you can. It's up to you if you drive 4 hours to and from school if you gain the place legitimately.

And I promise these schools exist. Village primaries, 3 form entry primaries....

It really depends where you want to move to. You need to know where and research.

LA (local authorities) are supposed to be in super brilliant control of where all the places are but they are not. Mostly they are shit at this. (Well mine is!)

Schools manage their own waiting lists. If they flow below the radar of the LA, with mid year situations, places come and go and LA don't even know.

This is not supposed to be the way but it is. Academy schools often completely ignore the LA.

I got a job first in new town. 50 min drive - same as my train commute.

Kept old school and childcare.
Place came up for DC1 in Y5. I took it and then DC1 travelled to and from with me using new school wrap around.

Left DC2 at old school for 5 months!

Finally found place for DC2 - not the same school!
Did two weeks of a lot of driving and then moved into a rental in new town and our house on market.

I could only do the rental thing because I had a whack of redundancy money.

House took 18 months to sell in end. I rented it out for a year.

Once it sold, I then bought where I wanted. DC1 got right secondary from the rental and then I appealed for DC2 (now juniors) to the local school and won.

It was very stressful but I achieved it so it's do-able.

Not everywhere is oversubscribed.
Also, in my area, primary admissions are fab. You can call them and they will have a personal conversation, for example, saying if a school has spaces in the year you want, doesn't currently but has a lot of movement, or you don't have a chance. If you have an offer in on a house they can say what schools have places in the area. They can't say if a school is any good, but you will know which schools to research!

It was ok when we did it. My DC were y2 and y3 at the time. I phoned the admissions department in the new area to find out if any schools had spaces in both years - there was one local one that did so I drove to the new area to visit it. Absolutely hated it so spoke to admissions again, a space had come up in another local school so I applied for that school, thinking that it had to be better than the one I visited and if not we'd have to deal with it once we were in the area. Got offered the place even though we applied from old area ( school had free spaces and no waiting list so they had to offer it to us even though our address was 200 miles away). The DC started school a couple of days after we moved and it turned out really well, luckily the school suited them well.

As previous poster explained, if a school has spaces they can (and legally have to if there is an application) allocate out of area. I dealt with a local authority who either didn't know this or didn't want to do it. I had quite a task setting out the legislation to force it but they gave us a place in the end and I also established that it was reasonable within that law to take up the place at the beginning of the next term - so we had a bit of time to move. Even so we moved before selling and rented for a while deciding it was worth it to get a school we were happy with.

Like others we had kept in touch with local authority for a while beforehand and checked out a couple of schools with spaces.

Thank you all. There are some fabulous tips here which make me feel like there should be a little bit of hope even though it probably won't easy, which is what I expected.