Applying for schools back in UK

[MamaDuckling]

Has anyone been through the 'in year' application process? How did it work?

I went through it this year. Get the forms in after you get back. What else do you need to know?

You can't apply until you're back in the U.K.

I'm sure that the above messages relate to state schools.

Private schools will mostly welcome applications from any parents, regardless of their geographic location. There are organisations who can help find a suitable school, including https://www.gabbitas.com

Yes we did, returned the forms to the school from abroad then just had to give proof of address when we had it (signed rental agreement) to the council.

Yes, you can’t apply until you have proof of address. You can put your choice of school down but if they don’t have enough places, you will get allocated the nearest one that does. You then go on waiting list for your choice but would have to appeal if a place doesn’t come up.

State or private schooling?

Oh, and scotland/Engkand/Wakes, as the rules are slightly different.

Ok we have proof of address as we own the property we'll move back to and I still have correspondence that goes there....

Can’t remember if you have to prove you are actually living there though, like council tax. Pretty sure you can’t do it till you are there but could be wrong.

Our local council let us apply as residents as soon as we had a signed rental contract. This allowed us to apply for first round reception admissions and also to secure a place for y2 child which we then had six weeks to take up after initial offer.

But it does completely vary depending on area. My friend had to fly back to Richmond (for the weekend) to show a boarding pass that indicates leaving Singapore and arriving in London as well the fact that they owned an empty house in catchment

You need to ask your LEA when they wouid accept an application. As you see, practice varies and some will act on prof you will move (rather than waiting until you have proof that you have moved).

The exception is for the Armed Forces and other qualifying families in government service. For those you can move once you have a posting order, CO's letter or equivalent showing the date. But they cannot keep a place open for you indefinitely, so even they need to apply in the run up to the actual move rather than as soon as they hear.

Speak to your council. We had to be actually living in our house before we applied. It didn't mattter if we owned it or not. We had to show boarding passes to the council plus they claim they check you are resident. This is hugely popular borough though with loads of oversubscribed schools and teeny weeny catchment areas so they are extremely stringent. It may be different in other areas. My DC all got into their preferred schools though before start of term in September and we did not arrive back until mid July.

Our LEA wouldn’t tell us where the spaces where so we had to find out from the individual schools. For one dd we looked at two schools and applied for the one we liked and she was given a place. The other dd wasn’t given a place anywhere at all as there was no year four place in the whole county. She was out of school for over three months and we eventually got her a place on appeal at our catchment school.

We did think about applying earlier than we legally should have done as like you we owned out house still in the uk. We moved back to my parents house for a month and we could have applied from that address as it’s not the same as normal applications. If thee is a place you will be it, unless by some coincidence there was someone else applying for the exact same year in the same school as they would obviously be much closer.

We didn’t in the end as if you are given a place straight away then you are doomed if you are not there to take it up. Worse if you were not in the uk. Also, we wouldn’t have had a council tax bill if they had asked for one.

Another thing is we did want the dc to have a couple of weeks to settle in. Obviously one of mine ended up with slightly more than a couple ofbweeks!

We did it last year. We had a house that we knew we were moving to but the council didn't want to know until we were living in the U.K. We arrived after the school allocation time and just had to be slotted into a school that had spaces. It wasn't the closest school and it wasn't any of my 'choices' (not that I think you get to chose a school even if you are in the country for that time).

Hmmm sounds nightmarish. We are near Richmond, equally popular borough and school places in massive demand. Especially the lovely (very) local.

Thanks all, I'll contact the LEA and individual schools when I'm back at Christmas.

Just went through it... I'll be honest, it was a nightmare. I think, and based on what I'm reading above that it depends on where you are located, but we, like you, are in a popular area outside of London.
LEA wouldn't talk to us until we were actually in the country, then there were no places anyway, so they offered us a failing school, miles away. We ended up going private, but that's realistically a short term solution.
Sorry to be doom and gloom, but I wish I'd gone into it more realistic.