House sale fallen through and now have to rent - how will this effect high school application/appeal?!

[PollyDolly88]

Hi looking for some advice from anyone that has any experience of moving during high school applications?

Basically, we’ve been trying to sell our house since Dec 2017 because of work and hoped for our eldest to have a good year in Y6...fast forward a year and we’ve have had two sales that have fallen through close to completion for totally different reasons which has been so stressful to say the least!! When we got our second buyer in Oct 2018 we hoped that we would be in our new house in order to make the deadline for the new address submission for applications to get her into our preferred high school in the area we are wanting to live.

Anyways, because of solicitors dragging it out we missed the deadline for submitting our new address that is well within catchment. But we thought that once we moved we would appeal and have a good chance etc so didn’t worry too much. This was until our second buyers only went and broke up last week and the sale fell through!! We didn’t put down any other high schools as it’s an oversubscribed school anyway so wanted to put it as our first choice! And now we are in full on panic mode of what to do!!

We have already appealed last year to get her into the local primary feeder school to the high school in the new area - which was successful and she has a place waiting for her in Y6.

I’m pretty confident we will sell our house again in the coming months as already had a few offers and the vendors of the house we want have told us they will wait. So with the panic of being in a good position for appeals (as it seems it’s going to all that again - great!! ) we are considering renting a small house we can just manage to afford near to the house we want to buy so that she can go to the new school and have a decent amount of time to make some mates as it’s such a big thing.

My main worry now is will I have a chance of appealing if we are renting but still own our current house? My daughter will have moved schools (it’s a good hour away) so I’m hoping that shows that we aren’t going anyway and reminding in the catchment for the high school for the foreseeable future but without a “permanent” address and still owning our current house will it be seen as us trying to pull a fast one?

Has anyone had to do similar? How did you get on? It’s keep me up at night with worry!! Nightmare situation

Hopefully an expert will come on later but I believe that owning a house so far away won’t impact your place. There are some areas where if you own and rent a house then they will take you main address as the house you own, but that is only if both houses are in the same area

In terms of moving, I would suggest doing this as soon as possible as you may then be able to get a place through waiting lists rather than having to appeal. The secondary school places are announced on 1st March and a lot of places will be turned down in the first couple of weeks, due to people going private etc. Therefore, if you can get on the waiting list by then you should get a decent chance if you are high up in the admissions categories (eg if you live close to the school)

Good luck!

Thank you so much for your reply! It honestly makes me feel so much better as I have no experience or any of this at all so it’s very overwhelming. I just never thought we’d be in this position but yes agree we will move into rented house mid Feb and get her settled into the new school and hope for the best with applications. Fingers crossed!!

Could you give a rough idea of where abouts you are? Only in London owning a property an hour away (by car?) could very well be a problem- some children travel more to get their parents preferred school.

We’re in Yorkshire. I’m probably overthinking the whole thing but it’s just a horrible situation to be in when it’s genuine. I can’t imagine many people where we are willing to travel over an hour one way to get to school That’s madness!!

Sorry I might have this wrong but this is where i think you are up to. You have had two house sales collapse (sorry!) but because you thought the latest one was going through you have asked for and got a place at a primary school for the rest of year 6. You have also applied for a place at the local secondary but have your current address on the application.

In terms of the place at the primary school you want, that place will only be available for a short period of time (usually no more than half a term). So if you are serious about renting a house near to the preferred school then i think you need to move quickly to do that.

With regard to the secondary school, you might or might not get offered a place on the basis of your current application using your existing address. There is little you can do about this, given the places will be offered on 1st March. If things go well and you get the offer of a place, accept the offer and then make sure you move before September. If you do not get the offer of a place then you will need to appeal. The appeals will probably be in May or early June so hopefully you will know where you stand in terms of houses by then. However if you have a rented accommodation and a permanent current address, you will need to carefully explain at appeal what is going on. The panel will have heard other examples of house moves going wrong, so there is no issue in that direction but you need to have the paper work to back up what you are saying otherwise they may well think you are trying to "cheat the system" which regrettably does happen.

The other thing you need to do is keep the LA admission office aware of what is happening. So if you decide to rent, then you need to inform them that you have moved to the new address. If that is before 1st March which I would assume it is, then you tell them that the new address is for communication purposes only. If you try to change the address without using those words then you will be treated as a late application and go to the back of the queue in terms of admission. Immediately after March 1st you can then ask the LA to use the rented address for admission purposes.
Sorry but this can get quite complicated but there will be 100s if not 1000s of other parents in similar situations to you, so it is not as though the LA will not have experience.

Thank you admission for all that info - it’s really helpful and explains a lot of what I’m trying to find out and get my head around! Yes we got the primary school place back in late November time for immediate start but explained it was for Jan so hopefully mid Feb will still be ok with the school. Good to know about the appeals - I’ve got emails from estate agents/solicitors that explain what’s happened so I’m hoping that will be enough evidence to show our situation is genuine. Sounds like it’ll be a stressful few months ahead but fingers crossed it all works out. Need some good luck after all this!

Hi op, are you happy to name the school you are trying to gain place at in Yorkshire? Some one may be able to be more specific re council / school pols re administration ssionsd and criteria...guessing as moved primary for feeder it's not a selective?

ok, it’s completely different to here then. Sorry. We don’t generally have feeder schools,

Does being at the feeder primary count higher up the admissions criteria than distance? And when would your child have to BE at the feeder primary? If it’s At application day that won’t help you but if it’s on 1 March that might. Or is that all red herring?

Anyway, so sorry, sounds very stressful.

OP. Are you saying you only put 1, oversubscribed, school on your applications form?! (And your current address is an hour away?)

I wonder whether @admission could advise you on whether at this stage you can add a couple of other, less popular schools in your new area onto the form without it counting as a late application.

I'm not sure what will happen if you don't get your choice, as, based on your address wouldn't your current LA just give you a school near your current house, rather than the new LA giving you an undersubscribed school in the new area? (Though maybe it doesn't make much odds, as if the school is undersubscribed you could apply at any time and get the place …?)

Whilst it would be best to have more than one preference for places, unfortunately the timing is such that if there was any attempt to add schools to the one preference the poster has, it would be taken as a late application and mean that they go to the bottom of the admission criteria order pile.
It would be good thinking after the 1st March when the initial places are allocated to consider putting down other schools if they are sensible, so that there a wider scope for getting a place of a waiting list.