Is it too late to apply for a primary school place in May???

[fraggle73]

My ds is 4 and is due to starts full time in September 2012. My dd will start full time in Sept 2015. Currently both in private nursery and the plan was to go to private school. We can afford my ds to go but it has recently dawned on us that we may struggle to send my daughter :(. We have a reasonable amount of mortgage but have a large debt on credit cards, around 20K in total.

I personally feel that we should send my ds to local state primary and start paying our debts off instead of having to find money each month for his fees. This decision is killing my dh as he has always wanted private for the kids, doesnt help that the area we live in as the most awful schools :(
Just dont know what to do! We didnt apply for a place in January as we thought he would go private!

We moved the year my DD was due to start school and didn't apply till late May.

As for the private v state, well you know all the positives for private ( which are many) but here are the ones for state

Often local enough to walk
Kids make friends closer to home
They meet with a wider variety of people
You are not using credit and paying shed loads of interest
You've more money left for clubs, day trips to exciting places
You can, if they really are not grasping one subject, pay for a tutor
Less stress about money

And in our locality, it means you don't have to battle quite so many massive 4X4's!

We swapped ours at 7 and 4 from private to state and all was great.

Thanks Hebiegebies. We know its the right decision to make for the future like you said so we can save money and pay for extras. If for some reason we come into money or sort ourselves out maybe we can send to secondary. My dh feels like he has failed us as he really wanted to send them private. The kids dont know any different. The next task is to get them into a decent state school. The nearest one to us has scored 4 (inadequate) in the most recent report, cant send him there!

Go and look at all the schools, even ones with a 4. It could be improving so quickly that it will soon be the most in demand school.
Private is not necessarily better than State.

Try ringing LEA and see which schools still have spaces, sometimes village schools further out might have spaces but be quite good schools.

Another option is to go private at first - as you will still get some free hours until he turns 5, and get him in either on a waiting list or as a sibling of your dd. Do be warned though that if your local schools all have a bad reputation, many of the further out 'decent' places have been taken. It is also worth going around schools, as many schools with poorer ofsted are still good places to be educated. Some schools fail on things like health + safety, but the children are happy and learning. Struggling schools also get support from LEA. You need to look before you reject a school.

I'd just add if you have already enrolled him in the private school for september do check the notice requirements - you don't want to end up with being liable for a terms fees.

Contact LA asap. Don't dismiss any options - go and have a look at anywhere nearby with a place.

Have rang the LEA and have to complete a form with our choices and then we will be notified at the end of June, but they cannot tell me which schools are already oversubscribed :(

You can phone schools directly now and ask what their PAN was (the number they are guidelined to take) and how many offers made have been accepted.

Schools have now passed their offer acceptance date for 2012 and will be able to tell you.

Schools who have accepted at or beyond their PAN will require you to go to appeal to try and get a place.

Schools who have acceptances below PAN can not refuse a place even if the application has been delayed.

I have to disagree with RosemaryandThyme. Some LAs won't have passed their offer acceptance date (and acceptances are, in any case, handled by the LA who can also tell you the PAN for each school, which will be on their website somewhere). Even if they have passed the acceptance date, they are required to write to any parent who has not responded to the offered place and give them at least a further 7 days to accept. They cannot allocate a place to anyone else until that has happened. The only places available right now in many LAs are those where the parents have actually rejected the offered place.

The LA should be able to tell you if any schools have places at the moment. When you do apply they are required to process your application without delay. I'm not convinced telling you that you won't get a reply until the end of June fits with that.