Will my kids get a primary school place if we move?

[MrsLadywoman]

My kids (9 and 5) are happy at the local state primary but it looks like we will have to move further out of London for financial reasons. Will our kids get a place immediately or will they simply have to be at home if all the local state schools are full?

We are looking at Barnet/Bounds Green/Arnos Grove - baffled, if I'm honest where we'll go. Can probably afford about £350K and would like a 3 bed house with a reasonable garden. Not happy about having to move but since we have to, I'd at least like to be in the catchment of a reasonable state secondary. Not talking about the best in the borough - just somewhere without a pervading sense of violence.

Any suggestions?

Initially it will probably be up to you to try and find a school place at your new house. The Council may be able to advise you which schools are likely to have places. If you can't find anywhere because there is a shortage of places it is up to the Council to find places for your children. Unfortunately there is no guarantee that they will be at the same school as each other or at a school you would like.

I don't know how far you are moving but you are entitled to keep your children at their current school after you move if that is a practical solution for you.

We are moving house at the moment and I have been assessing different places based partly on the availability of school places for DS and DD. Schools will know whether they have space or not and if you are lucky you will find somewhere with spaces for both of them.

Lots of people do move house and most people end up with their children in a new school. A useful thing with rightmove is that they show the nearest schools on a map next to the houses and so you can immediately see where they are near. Local council websites should give an idea of catchment areas both for primary and secondary schools.

I had a large spreadsheet which helped to keep me (feeling at least) organised.

Barnet

Haringey

Enfield

I think they are the right councils for the areas you are considering.

The LA HAVE to find a school place for your DC (whether you like the offered school is of course another issue entirely...)

The LA will have something called a "Fair Access Protocol" & one of the things this covers is how they handle admissions out of the normal application times when there are no "local" (ie within a few miles) schools with a place available - it is often on the LA website, so worth a look. Basically if there are no local schools with space then the LA will "make" a space available. However if there are spaces locally then they will offer those, even if it mesns DC at different schools. (They will offer free transport if more than a certain distance away, I think it's usually 2miles for KS1 & 3miles for the rest)

The LAs you are potentislly moving to should be able to give you a reasonable idea of place availability currently.

Thanks so much everyone. I never thought this was going to be easy but I'm reassured about the council having to sort it out asap, alarmed at the thought that they may end up at separate schools... 5yo DS will be inconsolable...

Plenty of info for me to start mining through, though. Cheers for those links NoahWhale, I've had about 2 hours browsing out of them already and you're right... I need to start taking copious notes!