Moving home and applying for reception - advice please

[Bluewednesday]

My dd is starting reception next September. We live in Dagenham, and have few 'good' schools in our catchment area, but I don't think it's the right place to bring up a family, and always thought that we will move 'one day'. If I rented a house, let's say Muswell Hill by this December,would I be able to apply for local schools there? I wanted to add that I would not be moving until end of August next year due to both my dds attanding nursery full time (the younger one is 15months). So the idea is to keep the rented flat (maybe sublet for 8 months), change all the bills, and still live in my house until August next year. Then rent out my house (I don't want to sell it) and move for good to Muswell Hill rented house once my dd starts school. Is it doable? Any advice would be appreciated.

I am afraid not. When you apply you must use the address where you are actually living.

What you are proposing would be a fraudulent application. It happens sometimes and a few parents succeed this way. However, if the council checks and finds you aren't living in the rented house they will treat your application as fraudulent. If you managed to get a place the council would be within its rights to take the place away even after your daughter started at school.

Prh47, but by the time my daughter starts the school we would be living there. I genuinly want to move, but just don't know what time is best. If we move during school year would she be offered school near the place where we will live, or just any school?

I understand that you would be living there by the time your daughter started school. That doesn't matter. It is still a fraudulent application. When you apply you are required to give the address at which the child normally lives at the time of the application, not some other address where you plan to live in future. If your daughter starts school and the council then find out you weren't actually living at the address you gave at the time of the application they can take her place away even if you have subsequently moved to that address.

If you move during the school year you will be offered a place at the nearest school with places available. That will be an unpopular school and it may be some distance away. If all schools are full, you will be offered a place at the nearest school best able to take your daughter. That may still be some distance away.

Meant to say - if you really want your daughter to go to school in Muswell Hill you need to move NOW. And I mean actually move, not just rent a flat. It may mean your daughters have to stop attending their current nursery but that is tough, I'm afraid. You CANNOT stay in your current house until next August if you want your daughter to go to school in Muswell Hill.

You could do what we did when we were moving at the same time as doing school applications. We applied for a school here in Hampshire whilst still living in Essex. We used our Essex address on the application form, so not fraudulent and of course didn't get a place in the school. However, we were then on the waiting list for the school of our choice.

Then, when we moved in the April of the year we started school we moved to the top of the waiting list after informing them of our change of address and got a place in the school fairly quickly after, well before the start of term. We were told that there are always children who get taken off the waiting list either because other people moved house or chose another school or went private at the last minute - happens a lot, especially in Infant schools. It was a calculated gamble but it had to be done as we knew we were moving, just not exactly when.

Thanks prh, I would like to move now but there is no way I could find a full time nursery place for a 15 month old! I was thinking of moving during school year, but I would be probably offered the worst school in the area...And that's the last thing we want.

Bluewednesday - what makes you think you couldn't find a full time nursery place? Have you spoken to any nurseries near where you want to go? Or, possibly, could you put him with a childminder until a vacancy opened?

I had waited for a place at my current nursery for over a year. I don't know of any decent nursery that has vacacies. I might get lucky and get a place straight away but it's highly unlikely. Childminder is an option I didn't think about, but worth considering.
Niecie, I don't really understand why you didn't get a place at Essex school if you were living there?

We moved last year, several months before dd was due to start school - nothing to do with getting her into a particular school, we moved across the country for my job.

I was really worried about the timing, as I was still working out my notice in the old job when the deadline for the school applications arrived, and so we didn't live anywhere near any of the schools that we were considering for dd. We exchanged contracts on our new house two days before the application went in, and I submitted the application with a note explaining that we were moving to that address in a couple of months. It was a massive gamble, as we had essentially chosen our house on the basis of the catchment area, and we had no idea if they would even take our new address into account.

Fortunately, it worked and she got admission to our first choice of school. They must have considered the fact that we were moving to the catchment area, as it is a very over-subscribed school and I have met a number of out-of-catchment families whose children didn't get in.

When we were thinking about our application, a lot of people suggested renting out a property etc just to have a local address, but I'm so glad that we were honest about our situation - even if we could have got away with it, I wouldn't have wanted her to get a place through fraudulent means.

Bluewednesday - We didn't get a school place in Essex because we weren't going to be living there when DS1 started school so I didn't bother applying there. There was no point. If we had got to July, say and not sold our house I think we would have rented it out and rented near the school instead but thankfully it didn't come to that.