Moving, but hard to find school places

[SleepyDormouse]

We are trying to escape from Dunstable, mostly due to schools but well.. it is dunstable!

dh works in london so need train line, ds is yr3 and dd is reception. Can affort up to £400,000 for 3 bed.

Wanted to move to Tring, parents live there and as I have ME the extra help would be great. But although there are yr3 spaces reception is full full full.

St albans, in the marshalswick area looks to be even fuller for school places.

With my having ME I really don't want to be having to drive or walk long distances to get my kids to school.

But its beginning to feel like we might might be better staying put, but schools here are not great.

help! is it worth moving and going on waiting lists, would we be waiting ages to get places?

anywhere else we should consider?

Only thing to say is that if your older child gets a place in Year 3, then if the school gives siblings priority, your younger child will immediately jump to very high in the waiting list.

it's worth discussing with the individual school the amount of turnover expected - ie the number of children who leave within each school year. In some areas, as your younger child will be top of the waiting list a place would arise pretty rapidly. In other areas, movement is much rarer. As I have said elsewhere, my dd's Year 3 year (60 places) has just had the first place come up in the 3 years 2 terms she has been there...

Your issue is that with full schools when you are looking for a reception place, you are going to keep hitting the infant class size regs. No matter how good a personal case you have the reality is that the only reason to admit is based on a mistake by the admission authority. Given the circumstances of moving into the district that is highly unlikely.

So I think you need to look for schools that might be full but have an admission number that is not 15, 30, 45 or 60, as they will be ordinary appeals based on your personal circumstances. Many schools have as part of their admission criteria a medical / social category and the assumption is that this applies to the pupil only. That is not the case, it could apply to you. So if you can get appropriate medical evidence and a strongly worded letter stating that in the opinion of the consultant you cannot walk further than say half a mile then it could be a potential case to take to appeal especially if one of the siblings does have the offer of a place.

There is of course no guarantee about that being accepted by a panel and it would still depend on how overcrowded the school already was, but it is probably your best bet short of finding a school that places in both reception and year 3.