moving to winchester - 'in year' primary school places

[stilldazedandconfused]

Hello.

We currently live in SE London and have been toying with the idea of moving out for the last few years. Having failed to bite the bullet until now we find ourselves with 3 children, DD1 in year 1, DS about the start reception in September and DD2 a 9 months old.

I grew up in a village near Winchester and only now am I wondering if it is time to return! But, I hear the primary schools are oversubscribed (aren't they everywhere?) and wonder what will happen. My DD1 is currently in a outstanding, small primary school and so it feels odd to move her to something that might be less satisfactory. We would also need 2 'in year' places as by the time we move (not even on the market here) the reception places will have been allocated (and probably rejigged a few times over).

Does anyone have any experience of moving and requesting 'in year' places recently? What happened, where did you end up? Any nightmares or a straight forward procedure?...
Thank you for your time.

Hi! We move next week from the Midlands and the children start school in Hampshire immediately after Easter. We're moving to near Winchester (SO21) and needed two "in year" places - which were a nightmare to find in the same school in our area. There were loads of schools that had no places, schools that had a place for one and not the other....and only 1 school that had two places, so I snapped the headmistresses hand off! I phoned round ALL the local schools and asked what places they had before I applied. Most schools were very helpful and if they could accommodate one of my children then they offered to put the other on a waiting list. The alternative for us would have been to accept one place and then appeal the other and keep fingers crossed. Obviously, appeals are harder win children in key stage 1 due to class sizes. Luckily, its all worked out and we're just packing up to ship down shortly!
Good luck!

We also currently live in SE London, and are moving back to Winchester. Maybe I just "got lucky" but I contacted Hampshire LEA admissions last week. They were very helpful and within a couple of days got back to me with details of the schools that had places in the years we required. I applied to the school tuesday lunchtime, and got offered places this morning - thursday. They only had places for our eldest 2, however have put our son on the waiting list, apparently he's number 1! In the meantime i've been back in touch with central admissions and they have been incredibly helpful and are looking at the numbers for school places to see if they can find him an alternative school place. For our youngest, we just have to make a late round application now! Its a bit of work, but it is do-able! You just have to keep following everything up!