Applying for primary if living abroad

[springiscoming16]

Hi,

This is for a friend.
My friend -mum and 2 children- is planning to move to the Uk in July but the husband is already in the uk.
Does anyone know if thw husband can start applying for a place for the two children even if they do not live in the Uk yet?

Thanks

They need to talk to the admissions authority. Often LEAS won't accept an application (this is for state school) without the child being resident here, but there are exceptions; Surrey, for example, allow parents to apply from abroad up to 4 weeks in advance of the child arriving for in-year admissions, and even earlier for admission into reception and year 7, assuming parents can show evidence of a local tenancy/house purchase agreement/confirmation of travel.

However, the address used for applications would be the overseas one until the child was actually resident here.

If they are service personnel, the rules are different; service addresses can be used before the child is resident. Are they? Which school years will the children be going into?

The children will be 4 and 7 hence reception and year 3.
They are not from the forces.

How many schools can they apply to? Is it 6 as usual? Will they have to apply to the school directly or the council?

Up

Is it 6 as usual?
That depends on the area. You apply through your council for state schools.
In London it's up to 6 preferences, in other areas it may be lower than this. in my area you only have 3 preferences.

In my local authority we had to provide evidence of our DD's address - bank statement, child benefit statement etc, it wasn't sufficient for us to prove our address.

Depending on the location the chances are that the state schools will be full and your friend's children may not get their first choice or even end up at the same school but can go on the waiting list for their preferred school - they need to be familiar with the over subscription criteria of that school as it is rarely about order you go on the list and if it is distance and you live a long way from the school then you can even go down the list as others move to the area and bump you down. The number of schools you can apply for is irrelevant really for an in-year application and generally only applies at the normal round of admissions.

For independent schools yes you can generally apply from any location but the most popular ones will probably be full and depending on the size of the school places may only come up rarely.