Has anyone applied for in-year transfer in Summer holidays and managed to start at beginning of term?

[cocogoloco]

We are praying we finally exchange contracts today, we are relocating 2 hours away; so kids needs to move schools.

As schools will only hold a place for 6 weeks and we could only get to exchange this week; we are in the position of having to apply during summer hols for hopefully start at beginning of September with their new cohorts.

We are applying for a Y8 and Y5 place, so two schools

I have spoken to the LA for new area today and they have said schools have 15 schools working days to advise if they have spaces; so worse case scenario they could miss first 3 weeks of term

Has anyone else got any positive stories of applying in the SH and still starting at beginning of term?

I know their current schools have a small skeleton staff working, is this the same for all schools and it's possible they still make these decisions over the holidays?

I feel a bit sick at the thought of another 3 weeks of them at home on top of the summer hols

I can only speak on behalf of my school. We had the office staff working the first week of the holidays and now everyone is off until 1st September. The head deals with safeguarding during the holidays but all other correspondences waits until we come back.

Thanks Mardybum, that's good to know, even if bad news for me lol

Unfortunately, whilst the LA may well say (rightly) that schools only have 15 days in term time, schools have to agree to employ and pay somebody to work the summer period to get an application processed and places offered - which many will not do, especially as they aren't allowed to offroll anybody who left at the end of term until their new school confirms that they've physically turned up for the first day in September; if the year group is full, they can't offer places that don't exist yet in case, as has been known to happen, kids have turned up in September after all due to house sales falling through and the like.

You might be lucky if a school is undersubscribed and they've got somebody on a year round contract dealing with applications, but reality is that you would be very, very fortunate if that were the case; Primary schools are even less likely to be fully staffed year round.

It doesn't hurt to apply, though - go through the LA applications for the ones where they process them, apply direct to academies and schools that act as their own admissions authorities.