Planning move to Edinburgh (need advice with schools)

[ec88]

Hi everyone,

Me and my hubby are planning to move to Edinburgh in a couple of years. So we are still very much in the initial planning stage. Our oldest child will be 8 when we move over and out youngest 6 (birthday in Jan though).

So they will be going into P4 and P3. I have read on here that I have to be in Scotland and have Council Tax Bills to prove it before I can even register for a school. Is this really the case or is there any workarounds to try apply earlier?

If I were to move over when they finish their year at their current schools (i.e. June/July) then will it be too late to find a school? And will the process be very difficult?
If we get put on waiting list for out catchment school, will placement services continue to find us a school place even if we are on the waiting list of our catchment? Or could we end up not having a school to go to on our arrival?

How about if my husband were to go over earlier to sort out housing and get the required bills and so on. Will it be okay for him to register the kids even though we have not moved over yet or will they check that the kids are also residing at the application address. If how much earlier does my husband need to move over?

We will be moving from Hong Kong, and we have already researched areas/catchments and so far it seems we will probably try find a place in Currie, Craigmount, Firrhill school catchments.

Any thoughts/advice will be great, thanks!

We've just moved up from London and for our child who was a direct entry into P4, we had to phone round the schools until we found one which had a place. Placement Services at the Council offered an element on advice but are really concerned with P1/S1 placements. The onus was most definitely on us. The schools also manage their own waiting lists after P1 so you would need to speak to them individually.

You could easily end up without a school place, yes. The only way to ensure your choice of school from a distance would be, iMHO, to go the private route.

Once a school place was found, the forms etc to be completed were online, printed off & were handed in, with proof of address (sale docs/rental agreement and council tax bill). Nothing was confirmed until all of this was received. They did not check that we actually lived there (no knocks at the door) but we were living there anyway.

If you get places in your choice of school (in the summer term, for example) then personally I would get the kids on a plane, if that was what it took, rather than waiting until the end of the school year. I pulled mine out early from down south and we all survived the move.

It's challenging, to say the least! Good luck. HTH

Bear in mind that maximum class sizes increase at P3 so many schools have spaces appearing at that stage. A lot of Edinburgh schools are full at p1 but then have gaps at the later years - our catchment school is like this and has just let in a few extra folk at P3.

You can be on multiple waiting lists, you put yourself on them.

Thanks for the advice.

If we were to send the kids to a private school first, can we change to a state school later. So say for example, we get places at a private school for P3/P4 and then say when they move on to secondary, can we then apply to a state secondary school?

Also in regards to the council tax bill, since it is a yearly bill, do you ahve to have a residence for 1 year before receiving the first bill or will you get one as soon as you buy/rent a property

I any see any reason any you can't move from private to state, there just needs to be a place available for you to do this.

As for CT bill, you should get something intermediary to prove residence. I think providing your CT reference number should be sufficient for the schools to check up if required. They must come across this all the time.

'I can't see' that meant to say!

As Starfish said above, If you can find a place at an independent for primary; there would be no problem in sourcing a place in your local secondary as it is all about your address, nothing to do with the primary school attended.

That said, it would be odd for a child to leave the independent sector at the end of P7 or earlier, as it tends to go the other way. A quick search on this forum will show you that obtaining a place is far from easy.

However, a bit premature to decide you have to go private when you haven't been rejected from primary schools yet - you could start trying (when you know you want to move) and use an independent as a back up? Also, if your children finished their term at the times English schools do (I have no idea about Hong Kong system) bear in mind they start school here by mid August.

Keeping in mind the age of the OP's children. I do think that the OP may have a chance in local catchment schools, though the youngest may be a problem or not as a January birthday could go either way.

Sorry, should have explained better. Nov,Jan,Dec,Jan,Feb birthdays have the possibility to defer a year.

It can be just as hard to get a place at a private school in Edinburgh as it is in the state sector

Hi, thanks for the info on this thread, its much more useful that anything I've seen anywhere else on the minefield which is choosing a school in the UK! We are moving from Spain before the year end, am just wondering can we not take for granted that a state school place will be found for our 7 year old, regardless of where that might be? (not even sure what year he would go in). Seems amazing that taxpayers aren't automatically allocated something. Also assuming we have the same problem with finding nursery places for our 3 year twins, what kind of private childcare is there and what do I need to budget for that? And anywhere official I can go to for advice over the phone (we're still in Spain and trying to do all of this from a distance, argh!) Many many thanks for any help

Basilica - you would get allocated a school, it just might not be the one you want or one in your area. You don't say where you are moving to in the UK, but a good start (based on my experience in Edinburgh) would be to look at the council in questions website and their policy on school places, when to apply etc. they will have phone numbers too so you can talk through the options.

As regards nursery, again it varies depending on where you are. I can't offer advice on council nurseries as we went down the private nursery route which is approx £40 a full day.

That's great, thankyou. It's Edinburgh, and I'll be working right in the centre. I'm not fussy where we live, it will all be down to affordability of course. But so far it seems that its hard to get a house with 3 beds which costs less than about 1000/month which seems an awful lot... schools in general seem of good standard, but we have twins who are 3, so the nursery issue will be costly too unless we get a state place

A thing to bear in mind is that lots of people who work in central Edinburgh, including families with young children, live in flats rather than houses. Don't rule this out as an option without thinking about it - many of the flats in question are very spacious, with large shared gardens, and it can work very well. Still not cheap, but it'll give you more options than just looking at houses.

What can anyone tell me about the Danderhall area, is it dodgy? Seems cheaper than elsewhere ...

thanks, re flats, absolutely! We live in a flat in Spain in fact, and here its the norm. I'm quite happy to live in flat, but really would like access to a garden, that for me is one of the perks of moving to the UK

As far as the nursery issue goes, surely as long as you get places in one that is in partnership with the council you will get the allocated free nursery hours and so costs should be fairly similar whichever you end up in? I'm not aware of state nurseries as such at subsidised costs, but I'm fairly new to Edinburgh so you may get more accurate info from someone else. So unless a private nursery doesn't offer free hours because it isn't in partnership with the council then the costs are fairly similar throughout - is that nonsense? That's how it worked where I was before, but obviously there may be differences here. My 3 yo is in a private playgroup, in partnership with the council, it's only 3.5h per day so may not be what you need at all, but we're paying just under £500 per term once partnership funding is deducted