when to move schools? how to get a place if we move mid year?

[sue2lee]

Hi all,
We are considering moving to a commute town with a good school from our beloved Blackheath/Greenwich, for a bigger house and better primary school.
My DS is toward 3 years old. And I want to know how school application process will work.

If we move before we apply for schools in a new area, it is rather simple. As long as we make sure we buy a hose in a very close location to a good school, DS will be admitted.

Wheres, if buying/selling process drags, DS will have to start a primary school in Blackheath,

Then suppose we find a nice house within a catchment area of an outstanding school paying the premium of the school, what would it be the point if the school is already full and we don?t get a place from the school?

I shortlisted a few outstanding schools in Bromley, surrey, etc. and set a alert for a property search within catchment areas of them.

Just I started to wonder if we move to a new area when he is Y1 or Y2, what chance we will have of him getting admitted to one of those schools? How can I increase the chance of going to a good school?

Thanks!

The only way to increase your chances of getting in once you've moved is to live nearer the schools - assuming the ones you like are always oversubscribed. You could maybe talk to the schools you like in the new area and see if they will give you an idea how much turnover there is in year 1 and 2? If you're pretty close, you should be ok eventually, but you may well have to accept a place in an undersubscribed school first and then transfer.

The problem that trips up many people that are moving is the infant class size regulations. They state that you cannot have more than 30 pupils with one school teacher in reception, years 1 and 2. Many popular and oversubscribed schools have an intake which is 30,45 or 60, when these regulations would apply. The only way that you can win at an appeal for a place would be to prove that the admission authority made a mistake, which is very very unlikely when it is a "casual" appeal for place at a time outside of the normal entry time in reception. It is not that common when you apply for a reception place either.

As such you have to be realistic that the only way you will get into most over-subscribed schools outside of the normal entry time is to be at the top of the waiting list (that is live very close to the school) and pray that there is some movement of pupils out of the school. It is not uncommon that there is no movement in the whole of an academic year.

So to me the best advice would be make sure that you move before your child starts in reception and in time to submit an application before the cut off date for on-time applications (these do vary at present but are normally around January - so i would assume that for your child this would be January 2013.

The other thing that you do really need to understand is that schools do change and todays outstanding school could be only satisfactory the next time Ofsted come visiting. The biggest change is always a head teacher moving on to bigger and better things. So i would say that you need to check out by visiting these schools that you have chosen that they do seem to fit your child's needs.

You saying that living close to a good school will virtually guarantee your dc a place is wrong. If there is an unusually large amount of siblings at the school, as there was at my DS's primary this year (45 siblings in an intake of 60), then even living on the doorstep of the school won't guarantee your dc a place. I know someone whose house overlooks the school playground, and this year they couldn't get their dc into ANY local school, this one OR the other ones, because there were such an unusually high number of siblings, and the other 15 dc that got in lived closer than they did. In one case, one HOUSE closer.

move to australia! ds1 is in a class of 22 and ds2 in a class of 24. ! there just isn't such a big demand here!