How to pick a school in a new area?

[jellyjelly]

My son is almost three and we will be moving into a new area for the time is starts primary school. How do i go about this? we think we know the area of the town but just need a bit more guidance of how to find reports, get admitted that sort of thing.

Any thought appreciated.

Where are you England, Scotland Etc?

Sorry in Reading and will be moving to bournemouth area, i dont know if it is too soon to be putting his name down.

Think its Offsted you contact for reports

Bourmenouth is quite a big town.

There are quite a few MN who live in and around Bmth, keep bumping and I'm sure one of them will see this1

Or you could post a new thread with Bmth in the titke.

It is ofsted for full school listings as well or the local council?

I would add. once you have OFSTED reposrts and decided a bit on them, make sure you go to the schools and ask to have a look round. YOu can only get a real feel for a place if you go and see the children and teachers at work. Don't assume too much from a website either - a lot of schools don't have anyone to keep a site up to date.
Good luck - I have a friend who's a deputy at a primary school in B'mouth - I'm sure her school's lovely

on the OFSTED websire you can get a reoport for any school. Also, the education authority will write to you regarding your DS's school application about a year before he is due to go HTH

If you put your new address in on the OFSTED site, it will list all schools within a specified area.
You can also get a copy of the listing from your new LEA.
Also, if you google primary schools in B'mouth, there might be sites of interest to you.

Where have you decided on jellyjelly ? How it works is that in the October before he is due to start school you get a form to fill in and it has to be by a certain date, when I was looking Bournemouth and Poole were the end of January. That is the closing date for what they call the "first round of allocations" Once they've got all the forms in they go through the applications for each school by a certain criteria, something like the distance from the school and whether the child has a sibling in the school is the first things I think (apart from church schools) Then after they've allocated spaces for a particular school according to that criteria, they will allocate any spare spaces to children out of catchment. If there were a huge number of children in a catchment for a particular school ie more than the spaces available, those nearest the school would be the ones to get in.

To look at Ofsted reports look here
Some of the primary schools have an onsite nursery which can be great to make the transition to reception easy. It's also really really important not to take the Ofsted report on face value but to visit the school to get the feeling of it. We're in the catchement of a Catholic school which was top of the league tables when I was looking for DD and about 5 mins walk from here and another first school. The Catholic one with it's glowing Ofsted and it's great results just didn't feel right to me and I sent DD to the other one (which has also just had an absolutely outstanding ofsted last week) which from the moment I set foot in it I knew would be right for her. There are other schools I know of where the parents feel that the reality of daily school life is far from what is described in the Ofsteds.

Thanks i was worried that if we didnt choose the house/road at the moment that we couldnt put down his name. I thought the name had to be put down about 2 years before? it does around here and didnt know if it was an ofsted thing or a reginal thing.

will be moving to canford heath in poole.

I think it's changed recently (certainly round here - Southampton) - everyone applies at the same time, the year before.

You definitely don't need to have their name down 2 years in advance, don't worry ! We went through a nightmare with the whole school admissions thing to the extent that we bought another house before having sold ours, so I know for as definite as I can be that you get the forms the autumn of the year before they are due to start. The other thing to be aware of is that I think there is going to be a shake up of the Poole schools, possibly doing away with the lower, middle and upper system that there is at the moment and moving to primary and secondary. You will be completely moved and settled by the time you need to put the form in but I advise you to ring round the pre-schools etc as they can get pretty booked up.

Again being a bit dense and new to this do you mean the state nursery hours that they go for morning or afternoons session, if it is that i already have his name down for that in this area.

I did mean that, sounds like you've got everything well in hand

We've just moved to Southampton and we were meant to have got a form in the post to send back by November (dd will start next September) But she wasn't on the system because we had moved to a new area so I had to ring up and make sure we got one. Here you don't apply that far in advance, everyone does it at the same time and we will find out in March if we get a place in our chosen school.