Does anyone know how I can find out the catchment area of a school online?

[tethersegg]

I'd like to know if we live close enough to a school I like for DD... I know they change every year, so would like to know the latest.

Thanks

Thanks Giddy. I will ring the LEA tomorrow.

The LA should have the admissions information on their website which should include the distance from the school of the last child admitted last year. However, it isn't always easy to find.

Really? I have looked (as a teacher, you'd think I could find it. But no. )

It's Tower Hamlets if anyone fancies having a bash...

The admissions booklet shows the priority admission areas and can be found here. However, it doesn't contain the distance of the last child admitted so I think you'll have to call the council.

Thanks so much for looking for me, prh47bridge

I will call the LEA tomorrow.

Our school has an admissions section, on its website, and the map never changes. Have the school commented ?

Remember that any information is only 'retrospective' and will only give a rough indication of what will happen in a given future year.

Also that even priority admission areas do not give a guarantee of being close enough. Look carefully at sibling rules as well - a school local to us has just changed from 'any siblings get priority' to 'only siblings living in the priority catchment area get priority' (there is a history of parents renting close to the school to get a first child in, then moving out of the -expensive- catchment and relying on the sibling rule to get all future siblings in). A stricter sibling rule is likely to allow more places for new families - in our case, the council model suggests that it will grow the actual admissions area by 0.4 miles in all directions for new families.

There are some schools that do have 'fixed' catchment boundaries and normally admit all children within the catchment, but they are increasingly rare due to the rules on maximum infant class sizes.

The official catchment area shouldn't change year to year, but the area of actual admission (which is generally much smaller, partic in London) will and, as prh47 says, you'll need to phone the council to find out how far the furtherest admission was last year. All the estate agents in our area say certain houses are in the catchment area of two good schools, which they are, but many of the houses are too far away to be anywhere near the actual area from which children have been admitted in recent years.

Never take at face value anything that estate agents say about catchment zones etc, they are simply trying to sell a house and actually do not know what the real situation is about what pupils are admitted.

My local council (Cambs) produce this each year - allowing you to see all the application data and up to which point on the admissions criteria they got to before the over-subscribed schools were full, posting it to give you an idea of what some counties do, and what data is open to the public:

www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/56890413-855A-4D4D-84E7-1F30DEC4DFB2/0/Year7AllocationInformationSeptember2011.pdf