In year applications

[Pyjamaramadrama]

I'm wondering if anyone has been through this.

We are looking at moving into a new town around 45 minutes away. My ds is settled in ks2. To cut a long story short after much discussion we feel that moving to the new town will offer a better quality of life. More work life balance for dh, more freedom for ds, an everything on our doorstep lifestyle.

Initially we were going to postpone the move until ds started secondary school, or do the travelling each day to his current primary, however some changing circumstances mean I'm considering a new school as a possible option.

Not as easy as it sounds though so it seems. After enquiring with school admissions it seems that there are only two schools with availability in the town, one isn't a very good school and one is quite far away.

Even if we wanted to apply to the further school, we'd really need an address within the catchment area to have any priority for the place, .

So if we decided to move now we'd be risking no school place let alone a school we liked.

What I'm wondering is if you have moved house, how did you go about finding a school place?

Catchment is irrelevant for in-year admissions. If there's a space and you apply for it you HAVE to be offered it. Even if you're living 200 miles away.

I've just done it and it was much harder than I thought it was going to be. We moved from abroad though so in a way it made it easier as nobody knew my dc were out of school but it also made it harder as we couldn't apply till we had an address.

You can apply to any school. If they have a space they have to give it to you. I got my oldest easily into a wonderful secondary. My youngest was in. Year 4 and there were no spaces anywhere at all. She wasn't offered a place anywhere and we had to appeal and thankfully she given a place at our (perfectly ordinary) catchment school. She was out of school for three months though,

I think it depends on where you are in the country. We are moving, out of county, the catchment school is full in the year we need but both the school and county admissions have said that they will always accommodate a catchment child.

Must be the policy in that county. Admissions said that they would make them take a catchment child last week, school said we are full but if you in our catchment area we will accommodate separately this week.

I think it is worth moving well ahead of the secondary admissions round, if you want DS to go to secondary in Newtown.

The LEA has to find you a place in Newtown, but it is likely to be the nearest school with a vacancy and that might not be one you would have chosen. But if it puts you in the right place for a secondary application, unless the school is a woeful fit for DS, that might still be OK. If there are no places whatsoever in a reasonable distance, then the LEA can force a school to go over numbers (the definition of reasonable depends on local geography and journey times; rule of thumb is about 45mins).

If you apply for a place, and the school has a vacancy, you must be offered it. But you must also take up the place promptly, or you risk the offer being withdrawn. So it might be worth hanging on until you are getting near to actually moving.

Thanks all. It all feels like a gamble.

Out of the two schools which have availability, one of those I would definitely not want ds to go to for various reasons. The other seems ok however it's the other side of town from the area we are looking at. It's likely the place will be gone by the time we move anyway. The first has lots of capacity probably because nobody wants to send their dc there.

It feels like a risk that if we move, we could just be offered dreadful school and from the point of view of the local authority, they'd have offered us an adequate school.

I'm so torn because on one hand we currently live near many good schools and catchment areas are bigger meaning more choice. Otoh new town/area is just a much nicer place overall .

Part of our motive to bring the move forward was that ds might make friendships to move into secondary school with, not looking likely now.