in London, measuring distances to primary schools for admissions? help!

[cheapandchic]

The school I am interested in for my little girl has a strict admissions by closeness to the school. After phoning them they said I had to ring some education primary admissions people. Those people have told me they will not give me the distance over the phone, only email, and they are very busy and may not reply!!

Please can someone tell me of a website or app or some way to get an approximate distance that my home is to the school. A lady in my playgroup just said she got none of her 6 choices and had to keep her son at home! I want to avoid putting schools that are too far and therefore I have no chance of getting in, but I cannot seem to find out the measurements/distance door to door.

I did find out my admissions authority used microsoft mappoint.

For a rough guide you could use something like mapmyrun.com. Find out if the schools are road distance or as the crow flies - round here one school is one way but another the other.

Your local council should have something on its website under 'School Admissions' that will give you the informatin you need.

The reason they are really buy right now is because this is peak time the on secondary schools offers round. If you don't get the answer you want from here now, I suggest you relaunch the enquiry in a few weeks time.

Also if you put your postcode in the ofsted site and search for primary schools near me it will give you the distances.

It's the day after secondary admissions are announced - you couldn't have picked a busier day to call them!

You should be able to find all the details of the admission criteria for the school either on ther own website or on the local authority website under admissions. There will be an admissions criteria document, telling you what method they use for measuing distance. Some boroughs / schools use 'straight line', some use 'shortest safe walking route' and may define what they mean by safe walking route - typically lighting, or official footpath or bridlepath or whatever. If you want to know what the furthest address was last year, you probably do need to talk to a kind secretary at the school or the LA admissions people, although it can only be a rough guide with no guarantees.

thanks the ofsted one helped.

great. I found out what I already suspected. All of the schools in my area take kids no more than 0.2 miles away.

I am 0.2 miles away from only one school that is the worst in the whole borough! I am 0.5 away from all the other good ones...and therefore no chance of getting in!!?!

this is so stressful!

Someone my mum knows didn't get a place anywhere near her. This was London. The school her dd was offered was two bus rides away. She felt she couldn't get the girl there due to having a baby, working, no local childminders doing the school run so she kept her at nursery hoping a place would come up closer. It didn't and after a year of her dd not being at school they left London.

hmm out of interest (as DC now both in secondary), had a look at the site and it shows out-of-date head teachers for our nearest two schools. Also, there is no way we would now qualify for either of our two nearest primaries on distance - crazy. You need to peak to the school secretaries and find out the furthest they have goe in the last 2-3 years...

Yes I got the information of the furthest they have gone directly from the schools.

the furthest for all of them varies from 0.1 to 0.28/0.3

I am 0.5 from all of them!

Then you need to look at similar information for other primary schools near you and start to identify ones where you have a good chance of getting a place. By the sound of it, it would be foolish to bank on getting a place at this school - unless (for example) you know that they will be adding an extra class next year which will push the distance outwards.