How do you apply to schools if you move areas half way through the year?

[basementbear]

Am hoping to move out of London in about a year and have no idea how to apply to new schools (DCs will be in years 1 and 3). Are the local education authority obliged to provide a place within a certain distance or could you be offered a place miles away if the nearest school is full? Is there more chance of getting a place at the beginning of the school year (ie September)? And are you allowed to home educate until there is a place available? Aargh it's all so confusing! Is there anyone else who's been through this who can give advice?

It varies with the LEA. We moved to Devon mid-year and phoned the LEA, who were really helpful, and they had a lovely policy of prioritising children who moved mid-year in local schools. Then DP phoned round some of the local schools to see how keen they might be to have our dc, and whether they had places.

It wasn't as hard as we'd thought, actually.

we had a similar exprience to fennel but were lucky- a week earlier school had been full

they are not obliged to give you a place if nearest school s over subscribed but there's usuall somewhere close enough by. And you can home ed as long as you want- totally your choice (we did with ds3 and it sped lea up if anything- though issue there was sn not just places)

call the lea's of areas you like and ask

Phew, that is good to hear! I had looked at a couple of school websites which mentioned prioritising those coming from out of the area, but I guess that relies on them having the actual spaces to spare!

Our LEA promised to give new children a place in one of the two closest schools to where they live, even if the schools were both officially full. I don't think most places do that. We changed mid-year twice, due to renting and finding one school, and then buying a house and having to move school again, the second time we had to appeal but we were given the place in oversubscribed local school immediately.

I had been worried they'd be bussed to the far side of the new city to sink schools or similar but it wasn't like that at all. But Devon is very into children going to their local catchment school, so they do help people to manage this.