Grandparents address and school admission

[ulavera]

Just looking for some advice/opinions please - this is ob behalf of my friend who is not on mumsnet, and I can't offer her much advice on the topic as my DD is not a school age yet.

So, my friend is a single mum with a DD currently in Y5. She lives in the same area as her parents. Her DD attends a good primary school but there are no good secondaries around. She recently told me that she plans to sell her flat over the summer and move to a completely different area into a small catchment of a very good secondary, where she would rent a flat for now. She fully intends for this to be a genuine move and they will stay in that new area until her DD finishes the secondary school. However, she has looked at that area's council's mid-year primary school places and there are none in Y5 at the moment (in the reasonable distance to the catchment of that secondary school). So she said that, unless a Y6 place appears in that area over the summer, her plan is that she would sell her existing house, rent the flat in the other area near the secondary school and move there herself, but that her DD will stay with grandparents and continue going to her existing primary school until the Y6 school place in the new area appears (because the new area is 1.5 hours drive from the existing primary schools so no way of living in the new flat and commuting there).

Now, this seems logical to me but can the council then reject the application from the new address on the basis that the DD will not be living there Mon-Fri? But then, everywhere I looked it says one has to use the parent's address and not the grandparents' one....

Y6 applications close end of October so if she waited until summer holidays could she sell house and move before the deadline? Seems a bit tight if it doesn't sell quickly.

Y7 not 6

Not an expert, but have read a lot here.

If she has moved 1.5 hours away then the LA in the new location should surely give her a place at a local primary school even if they have to go over 30 in a class.

The fact that she has moved areas in order to be better located for secondary applications will be irrelevant.

Then there is the issue of renting at the time of secondary applications. If the previously owned house is 90mins away it will be clear she has moved 'permanently' rather than trying to game the system.

The difficulty she might have is finding somewhere to rent, as they might all be taken up with people trying to cheat the system...

(So I think the DD should properly move with the Mum, and not stay at GPs for primary.)

So if no place appears until secondary s hook she's intending to live apart from her 9/10 daughter for a year?

The key dates are where child is living on 31st October 2019 and 1st March 2020. From what you have said that will not be the flat but the grandparents address.
From your post I think you are not being given the best advice over moving. If you move to a new flat this term, then the LA that you move to has to find you a school place. You need to tell them you have moved to known address and that you want to apply for a place at your preferred school. The LA then has to either offer you a place at the school or offer you a place at another school which has places. Hopefully that will be within the area of the secondary school that you want. You do need though to have moved your child and not be attending current school or the LA involved where you want to move to will just keep saying that the child is living with grandparents and has a school place. They need to have moved and not have a school place. I would suggest that happens this term so that you are definitely in a school in the locality for 1st September.

The child will have to move to be eligible to apply to the new school. The LA will know that the child is living miles away because they know what primary school she is coming from,

Move in the summer to a place on the doorstep of the desired school. Get the LA to find the child a school place. Hopefully it will be at a reasonable school not too far away but they do have to find her a school place.
Apply for the secondary school from the address.

Moving away from family and 1.5 hours away is quite a move just for a school. Are they no reasonable schools where she lives?

Thank you everyone! I have sent my friend a link to this discussion and she should be reading all your very helpful advice now. I think she is set on moving (the house is on the market already) and the question is only about where her DD will live during Y6.

We lived an hour away and still got a grammar school place.

We lived an hour away and still got a grammar school place.

If the school admitted entirely on score (or even just had some places allocated purely in score order, with others allocated in order but within a defined area, as is the case with our local grammar schools), then you could have lived in Timbuktu and still got a place if you qualified to be educated at public expense in the UK and did well enough in the exam, though. The OP is talking about a school with 'a small catchment', so presumably a non-selective school.

Having a current primary school named on a child's CAF an hour and a half away from the home address would raise concern with the LA, one might assume.

Why