Moving house, can someone explain application

[bethan37]

Hi,
My daughter is only 2.5 but we are thinking of moving house in a few years. I know if we were staying where we are that we would apply for a school next sept/dec for 2012.

The trouble is we dont want to put the house up and start the process until 2012 so ow does this leave applying for schools in totally different parts of the country?

I feel panic as people are putting their kids names down now and dont want to miss out however financially we cant do it until 2012.

So how do i get her into a nice primary school without moving a year in advance?

Many Thanks ;)

The deadline for applying for primary places where I live would be January 2012 so you would need an address in the area you are moving to by then. Otherwise you would be a late applicant and would have less choice of schools.

If you don't want to put your house on the market you could try letting your current house and renting one in the new area.

You cannot put your child down for primary school yet so there's no need to panic. I would use the next few months to work out good areas to move to and see what you find out.

Check with your local authority on their process. We moved from Essex to Wales in March this year but started planning it in November. We applied for school places in the old area and the new area (just in case the move didn't come off!).

We were lucky that the area we planned to move to were not oversubscribed so not being in catchment wasn't an issue. As soon as we moved, we let the other local authority know that we didn't need the place.

I have to say that I was really stressing about it as I really like to plan things in advance but I did find out that a lot of schools have to keep a couple of places unallocated for people who move to the area or for successful appeals.

We put DS name down for the school we wanted when he was 2. The only difference it made was that when the forms came ot, we had ours sent to us by the local school rather than the council. Forms all had to be returned to the council and place were allocated centrally!

You need to have an address near the school you wish your daughter to go to when you apply, if the school is popular. Admissions, normally, for a non-religious school, are done in order - children in care first, then exceptional circumstances (usually medical), then probably siblings, then children by distance from the school. Though sometimes siblings don't have priority.

If you don't have a local address at the time of application, you can apply, but you will be right at the bottom of the list and will be given a place at whichever school has places at the end - which may not be a school you want, or anywhere near where you live.

You can apply as a late applicant if you move after admissions have been done - we did - and you can put your DD on a waiting list for your preferred school while she attends whatever school she is given. We did this and got a place at an over-subscribed school within 6 weeks, as people do move.

It depends how far you are moving - around us, a lot of people live in smaller houses and apply for their first child to get into the very good nearby school, then move once s/he has started but get sibling priority for the rest of their brood even though they live some way away. So, if you are just moving locally but think you have a good chance of getting her into a good school from where you currently are, I would say, stay put until she has an acceptance at the very least, preferably until she has started.

If you are relocating, then it's a question of settling on which school you like best (it will mean some trips to visit the local schools' open days) and then moving as close as you can if you are a late applicant so that you are at the top of the list should any of the first round of children drop out.

When you say an address, could this be a friends address? Would they know if I said we were living with them until we had a house? I only say this as my friend lives in the area so could I put their address down before the deadline so that we get in the school whilst houses are on the market etc....

no, can't be a friends address, has to be your address. it's against the law to apply for a school place using a false address.

tbh, i don't think you really need to worry about this now. we moved house, to a different area just before dd was due to start school. our application was late, as it wouldn't be considered until we'd exchanged contracts on the new house. prior to that, our application was lodged using our old address, putting us at the bottom of the waiting list as we lived in a completely different area. once we moved, we went straight to the top as we were then the only people in catchment.

putting a child's name down for a school now, doesn't mean anything at this stage other than they are on the list for being sent an application form when they are due to apply.

the other thing to consider when moving, is we also had to apply for dd in our old area too in case the sale/purchase fell through and we ended up staying there for longer than planned.

As others have said, you need to be actually living in the area where you want your child to go to school by the time you have to apply. Check with the LA for the area you want to move to - some require you to have lived in the area for a few months prior to applying. Even if they don't have such a requirement, they may want you to produce utility bills and the like as proof of address so you should aim to be living there at least 3 or 4 months before applications are due in.

Most LAs will treat you as a late application if you move into the area after the deadline for applying, which means you are unlikely to get into any of the popular schools. A few LAs will allow you to move into the area after the deadline and still treat your application as on time but that is the exception.

You must be actually living at the address you put on the application form. Anything else such as using a friend's address would be a fraudulent application and means the LA can take your child's place away even after she has started at school.

As others have said, if you move into the area after the deadline you may still be able to get a place through the waiting list, especially if you get a house close to your preferred school.

Putting your child's name down for a state school has no effect on the admissions process at all. It does not get you a place at the school nor does it give you priority.