Advice on catchement areas

[blizzlj]

Our local primary school is pretty crap and we are looking to move house. Can anyone give me advice on a website etc that will be able to help with school catchement areas?

I don't know of a national one - usually you have to look on the council website for each area.

And in my city at least there aren't any defined 'catchment areas' if you mean lines on a map - the closer you are to a school, the more likely you are to get in, but the maximum distance varies year by year depending on the number of applications and other factors like number of siblings or children with special needs who get preference.

There doesn't seem to be any specific advice from our Council and with so many primary schools in a small area - its hard to work out - may just have to move next door to our preferred school!!

You may need to do a lot of reading in the small print of the applications website - I think in my area, if you do enough searching around on the council education department website, you can find statistics on how many applications there were for each school, how many places were allocated and on what basis (ie distance, sibling, special needs etc), and what the furthest distance from school was for anyone to get a place. If you can't find it, it's worth calling the council to ask - sometimes you'll find a nice helpful person . But yes, moving next door to a good school might be the best option.

Thanks for the advice will give that a go!!