Advice on English schooling system (Scottish and living overseas but moving to London)

[kimd76]

We are currently in the process of moving to London after living overseas for the past 5 years, we havent started looking at schools as we have no clue how the english systems works, I've heard its different from the scottish system.

The kids have been following the british ciriculum whilst we have been away and are currently in year 2 and year 4 (ages 5 and 7).

What is the process with appply to schools and is there a catchment system also.
Any information would be hugely appreciated.
Husband will be working Sunbury/Feltham so any school advise around these areas would be good aswell
Thanks

There is no catchment system.

Any school that has places must accept your DCs - and any school that is full can not.

So you need to ring the local LEA and get a list of schools that have vacancies in those year groups, then you can decide where to live.......

But in London area it is very fluid. The LEA may not give you advice on where has places until you have an address. The LEA has to give you a school place, but if all the schools are full this may be at some distance (when they will have to provide transport), or they could make a school go over its admission numbers. For your child in year 2, they are covered by the infant school class size, which means the class size is limited to 30, and it is hard to get extras into a school. It is easier to win an appeal with your year 4 child.
Each LEA has their own admission criteria, and they can also differ between schools within an LEA, especially faith schools.
Also if you end up living in Kent, they have an 11+ system for secondary.
I would start by looking at the Good School guide site, followed by the OFSTED reports for the area you are thinking of living.

Good luck!

Just to add that if your children are 5 and 7, they will be going into Yr 1 and Yr 3. (The first year is Reception).

Thanks for the info I'll have a look at the good schools guide, that was the other thing I wasnt sure about, what years they would go into, they have already done yr 1 and yr 3 their birthdays are April/May

yr 3 for september 2011-july 2012 school year will be children born between 1st September 2003 and 31st August 2004

yr 1 for the same period would be children born between 1st sept 2005 and 31st august 2006

hope that helps

Don't stress about finding the perfect school. The majority of schools are fine. All have their flaws.

What you need is one school with two places. That's going to limit your selection a lot.......

Feltham's not such a nice area. I think Sunbury is nicer..... There are some lovely suburbs nearish there. So just contact the LEA and find out what your options are......

Almost all the schools near there look reasonable. So it really is a case of which ones have places.....