Am I right in thinking that my children won't necessarily get a place at our local school?

[Flamingoose]

We are British, but we moved abroad nearly 20 years ago. I know nothing about the British education system. We will soon be moving back to the north of England with our children and I'm trying to get my head around everything.

As far as I can work out, even though there is quite a good primary school at the end of our road, my youngest (aged 8) won't necessarily get a place there, and I have to choose 5 schools and hope that she gets a place at one of them? Please tell me I'm wrong.

OP: school places are usually (almost always) allocated on distance from school, even if the first criteria is to be a Catholic or whatever.

So how many places do you think they should keep vacant just in case someone moved back?? You know, say to someone fairly locally ‘sorry, we do have a spare place but we are keeping it open in case someone arrives…’

It may be that you are moving to an area where schools are not over-subscribed.

If your local school is over subscribed you can go on the waiting list and places will be allocated according to the order in which the applicant meets the published admissions guidelines.

And / or you can ask the LA which schools go have available places.

And / or go on waiting lists for other schools that suit your school run, or you like the sound of.

For A levels, schools and colleges have more leeway about what they do.

Would look at a few locally, school 6th forms as well as colleges, research their academic offer and requirements to see what fits, and get e mailing and phoning ASAP. I wouldn’t be deterred by high academic entry requirements as GCSEs if you can demonstrate the equivalent in another system.

I recently moved back from abroad and didn't have too much trouble with school places for my y1 and y3. I called a couple of schools just before the move to see if there were spaces at the time, they arranged viewings pretty much as soon as we landed. The school we chose was under subscribed for y1 so had a place for DS, and they put DD into y3 as the 31st child. We needed an address and proof and they were able to start almost straight away.
It is a more rural school though so not in a big city or large town where schools can be more oversubscribed.

Hi OP, if you look at the Good Schools Guide website then I think they have a school finding service. If you are looking for places for this September I think it may be worth paying for some advice asap rather than making loads of international calls.