Primary School admissions

[trampoline123]

Is there anyone here who knows much about school admissions? I'm stressing.

Our son starts primary this Sept and we have applied for local schools which we will find out about 16th April.

Since we applied we have had an offer accepted on a house which is out of the area. We can then apply to the local schools in the new borough as part of the appeals process.

However, the sale is taking long and I'm worrying we won't complete in time as the sellers are still yet to find something. We have to be out of our place in August. Aside from the buying worries, I'm worried how this will effect school applications.

Has anyone here gone through the appeals process whilst moving house and can share what happens? I'm worried I wont actually be able to appeal whilst we are in this limbo stage.

My understanding is that you can move forward on school applications once you have exchanged, assuming you need to prove you are in catchement. One thing you could push for is an early exchange date with a later completion (we had 2 months between exchange and completion, though not for school application reasons - however, we had to do an in-year application and it did facilitate it as I had the signed contract).

A couple things to consider: (1) are there even places available in the new schools? (2) would you want to move to the new school even if the house purchase fell through? (3) do you need to prove you are in catchment for the appeal? Our primary school is not over-subscribed and if we hadn't been moving from out of county, we wouldn't have needed to prove where we lived to apply for a place. But obviously we wouldn't have wanted a place if the house sale had fallen through.

You don't need to go straight to appeals.
First thing you can do is make a late /in year application - I'm not sure when it would switch from one to the other.

Honestly, forget about schools for now. Concentrate on the housing situation. Once you have exchanged on the house, look into schools in the new area, and contact the LEA there.

Once you've moved you should be able to apply for schools in the new area without appealing. Either they'll have space or put you on the waiting list. Only slight issue might be if you move in August as they may not look at applications in the summer holidays so it wouldn't be processed until term started.

We had this last year, accepted a sale end of March but DD was also starting school in Sept. In advance at the end of April once places had been confirmed I contacted local schools in the new area directly to see who had space….. once our sale was exchanged and we had our moving details sorted I applied to the local LA in a new application form. This was no issue at all and DD started fine in Sept.
id start by looking at the school stats from last year and see if the area is over subscribed etc.
also DO NOT decline the place at the school offered on allocation day, do
not do anything until the new school is confirmed

Also our new LA said the cut off for Sept applications is beg of July

Thanks everyone.

So essentially I can't apply to a school until we exchange anyway so not much I can really do for now.

Luckily all the schools in the new area are good and I'd happily send him to either one of them.

My friend happens to be a teacher and said that this coming year they think there will be spare places in general as the birth rate was lower for that year...let's see.