primary school admission in Haringey (Crouch End/ Muswell Hill) - entry radius or "walk the street"?

[TwoGirlsNowNoSleep]

We try to move house and got a little bit overwhelmed by the admission criteria/ catchment area. I'm looking into different boroughs and somebody told me about "walk it" - eg google map, but now I've seen a map of Muswell Hill with lots of circles and I'm not sure anymore how I should roughly measure - one line from school to house or street by street? All the catchment areas seem to be so tiny, and I don't want to be left without school. Thanks for your help!

Different Local Authorities use different means of measuring distance. Some are straight line distance, hence the lots of circles but some use shortest walking distance by approved paths and roads. You need to look at the website of the LA of the schools you are interested in to establish exactly how the distances are measured. But it can easily be the case that distance is not the admission criteria that determined the last pupil to be offered a place at the school

If you go on to the LA site and look up under admissions there should be a book which details all the primary schools in the LA and it should give an indication as what admission criteria was the determining criteria for admissions. If it was distance then it will give you a distance for the previous year. This is no guarantee that you will get in but is an indication of how near the school you might need to be to have a reasonable chance of getting a place.

Thank you! It says "straight line ... using a computerised mapping system". Since our baby has arrived our flat is bursting, otherwise I would probably just stay where I am...

Why not ring the school and ask if children from that street tend to get in ?

Haringey definately measure in a straight line, as the crow flies, not on a street to street basis.
If you ring the admissions department they will tell you where the cut of point was for the past 3 years, obviously this distance changes every year depending on who applies, but usually it seems that every year the distance seems to get a tiny bit smaller.
There has been some expansion in the past years in Muswell Hill, so the distances for Tetherdown and Coldfall initially went up, as they both expanded by an extra form, Rhodes Avenue is also being expanded by an extra form, not sure if its next sept or the year after and of course Coleridge in Crouch End has also been expanded as well.
Don't believe what estate agents say, make sure you check to be 100 per cent sure. Catchment areas are small.
On the plus side most of the primary schools in MH are very good thats why so many people move here. Don't know as much about CE but most people say good things about there as well.

In both Muswell Hill and Crouch End it is possible to be very close to a Borough boundary, so you might find your self with access to schools in Barnet or Islington as well.

If you call Haringey Council and give them a specific address, they will tell you exactly how far away it is from the nearest schools. You can then compare with historic cut-off distances. Essential to do this - not accurate enough to draw circles on a map!

Thank you for all your suggestions, I've contacted Haringey Council and they gave me the distances which would be fine for now and Sep 2012 seems to be quite far away now anyway. I just do hope all the predictions of the numbers of reception children are not really true and distances stay roughly the same.