To move house for this reason?

[glastoforever]

We have a two year old DS.
We have a house that we have lived in for 8years that we renovated and we absolutely love it.
We want to try for another baby and will need a bit more room.

Options are - move house or do a loft conversion.

Issues are - the main issue is the schools. DH and I both from this town and we both went to same secondary school in the north of the town where schools are much better (but more expensive area).
We live in the south of the town and the schools here really aren't great. Much bigger and it has some real rough estates around.

We love our home and our preference would be to stay put and go in to the loft.

How easy is it to get in to a primary school outside of your catchment?

Re - secondary schools out of catchment, would we have a case to say my DH and I went to our favoured school and were both prefects there - does it work like this? I'd love our DS to go there too. It's only a 15 minute drive but is the other side of town.

We are really torn. Our house is perfect for us in every way except school catchment.

Nice pile on MN! Whilst OP was busy being a school prefect were you all busy being the school bitches?!

OP - Whilst I agree it may not he a common experience, my friend got her 2 kids into a popular state school, which was in the next county, solely because she had attended it many years earlier. She wasn't a star student or a brilliant scientist and her children had no special requirements or talents.

I have also seen school entry requirements which make exceptions for the children of staff (both teaching and admin staff). I know you are already involved with school on a voluntary basis, so perhaps this is something you could think about developing in the future?

All the best with figuring this out xx

Nice pile on MN! Whilst OP was busy being a school prefect were you all busy being the school bitches?!

No, I was wistfully wishing I was a prefect so in a couple of decades time, I could use my teenage status to get my child into my high school 🙄.

Come on, anyone could just google this on their local council education pages, regardless of whether they know anyone with children or not.

99% of everything on MN could be googled but I guess OP was just looking for some human interaction. I don't suppose she'll make that mistake again, eh?

OP, Please consider that just because the secondary school is amazing now, that doesn't mean it will still be amazing when your children are old enough to attend.

There could be several changes of Headteacher before your children attend that school, each Head will structure the school how they want it to be, but that doesn't guarantee that each change will only bring improvement.

You need to keep tabs on what's available for your childrens' education and be prepared to be flexible about it.

I would visit your local schools before discounting them. Especially primary.

Parental ties to a school doesn't play a role for admissions in England for state schools. It may do for private schools however.

OP, it really does depend on your LA - our best/most oversubscribed schools change catchment area every year depending on how many children are within it. One middle school used to pretty much guarantee a place at the best high school - so hundreds of parents bought houses for that middle school catchment area, only to miss out on the high school catchment because it had become so oversubscribed that the catchment became smaller.

Usual criteria is 1) Catchment, 2) Older sibling already at the school, and 3) Other extenuating circumstances, such as difficult background, SEN provision, religion, etc. Both of my DC are at my old high school - the fact that I was a star pupil there 25yrs ago wasn't a factor.

@VodselForDinner

Unfortunately, being a prefect won’t help with schools outside of your catchment.

But definitely put it on your CV. It really helps when job hunting, especially if you mention that you’re a double-prefect household.

OUCH! That made me howl

@glastoforever to the best of my knowledge (living in England but not from U.K. and correct me if I’m wrong other people!) the school have no ‘say’ in who gets in. Places are managed by your local authority and offered by them, not the school.

The school can help you with understanding the catchment area though. It’ll be on their websites. And it’ll be on your local authority website.

But the brunt of it is, you need to know the school you want to get in to, then move into the catchment. Good to start asking around about schools early and have your long goal for schools in sight.

If that worked surely everyone would say they were a prefect back in the day, i doubt they have a database to check whether you were or not

I have some sympathy for the OP. Back when I was at school - non UK but not dissimilar education system - there were a small number of selective school "remnants" of a largely dismantled system. They mostly had strict catchments, so entry was based on exam + catchment. The exception was that if you had a parent who had attended a particular school you could also apply to go there even if living outside catchment. Where I lived wasn't actually in area for any selective school, and since our only native-born parent grew up in a different city we were stymied.