Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

Flip

1 2 3

Original poster

Catchment areas - how do you know where they are?

57 replies

threefeethighandrising · 02/01/2012 23:50

How do you find out what the catchment area is for a school?

Is it published online or do you have to ask the school?

TIA

OP posts:

Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

Set a reminder

exexpat · 02/01/2012 23:54

If they have a catchment area, you should probably be able to find it somewhere on the council website. But where I live, none of the primary schools have a defined catchment area - the closer you are to the school, the more chance you have of getting in, but the furthest distance from the school for a successful application will vary year by year depending on how many applications there are and what other things take priority, eg siblings, special needs etc.

The council website here does give the distance for furthest successful applicant, but even if you live closer, there is no guarantee of a place in the year you apply.

OneLittleBabyGirl · 03/01/2012 03:52

I live in a county where you have catchment schools. You can find the catchments on the council website, and the schools own prospectus. Also when you buy a house unless it's a rubbish catchment it is on right move.

IndigoBell · 03/01/2012 06:40

But in England most schools don't have catchment areas. However often you can find out online how close you had to live to get into the school.

crazymum53 · 03/01/2012 08:57

Yes most schools should have catchment areas and these should be published. For my LEA they are on the website.
BUT the other posters are right too - living in the catchment area for an oversubscribed school may not be enough - you also need to know how near your home is to the school (distance from home to school).

mummytime · 03/01/2012 09:49

Surrey doesn't (usually, there are a few exceptions) have catchment areas. So there is no "should" about it.

MrsJAlfredPrufrock · 03/01/2012 09:55

Don't most LEAs have admission rules, one of which is distance? Distance is sometimes measured in a straight line and sometimes the walking route to school.

OP can you tell us which LEA you are in and we might be ale to help you better.

cece · 03/01/2012 09:55

Surrey does not have catchment areas for primary schools. You can find which are your closest schools on the Surrey website. You can also look up past admission data on the same website. This will give you info such as how far away last years intake lived from the school and such other useful info.

prh47bridge · 03/01/2012 10:59

Most schools don't have a formal catchment area, although many parents still refer to them. The distance you live from the school is often used as a tie breaker. The admissions information published by the LA should tell you the distance for the last child admitted last year. That will give you some idea of what is likely to happen but it is not a guarantee. The distance can go up or down depending on the pattern of applications.

If your LA does operate formal catchment areas there will be information about this on their website.

OneLittleBabyGirl · 03/01/2012 11:28

Hampshire has catchments, and the catchment areas are very different from simply using distance from school. For example, the primary school we are in has a very long and thin catchment. You can therefore live closer to the school than someone who's in its catchment! I've checked the admission and it's catchment first, then siblings, then distance. And none of the schools seem to be oversubcribed in that they all have people getting in via the distance criteria, including our local one which is ofstead outstanding. I guess we are lucky!

But yes check with the LEA, and they should also have information on admission from last year.

Pozzled · 03/01/2012 11:38

My LEA uses priority admission areas, so catchment by another name. They're not on the website but you can contact either the school or LEA to check them.

Original poster

threefeethighandrising · 03/01/2012 11:38

OK now I'm confused!
But thanks very much for your replies, much appreciated

Our new house is likely to be Eastbourne or Hastings, so that's East Sussex County Council.
(Actually would love to live in one of the villages in between, but can't afford it - yet!)

I looked at the websites last night. East Sussex CC publishes a PDF on school admissions which includes how many places were available at each school, and how many people put it as their preference first time round, which makes interesting reading.

Also, under admissions criteria, it includes "Children living within a pre-defined community area." and "Children living outside the pre-defined community area."

I wonder if they're referring to a catchment area or the council area?

I can't link to the document, the one they had up there last night was "2010/2011" and it's disappeared this morning! (I have it downloaded).

Hopefully the right one will be there soon!

OP posts:

Original poster

threefeethighandrising · 03/01/2012 11:39

I will check with the LEA once we're back home (visiting relatives atm).

OP posts:

Oblomov · 03/01/2012 12:47

Our school website has an admissions process section and a map of the catchment area. I would say contact schools first then council.

Original poster

threefeethighandrising · 03/01/2012 13:20

The websites of our local schools are mostly an exercise in appalling web design! Not one of them has a catchment map as far as I can see.

The school that I like best on paper (from looking at their prospectus) is in an area that I really don't want to live in.

OP posts:

prh47bridge · 03/01/2012 13:24

I disagree with Oblomov. The LA is required to publish this information. Individual schools are not.

jbl2312 · 03/01/2012 13:31

be careful with the parental choice system of choosing schools parents are fooled into belived there is no catchment school, this is not the case as we found out this year, we picked several schools all around 2 miles from home (we live in rural area) we didnt get any of the chosen schools, we were allocated a school 7 miles away, we asked about school transport and were informed we could not get it as we did not put our catchment school as one of our choices!!! we explained we had not been informed there was a catchment school and were basically told that we as parents are responsible for finding out this information, it has taken almost 5 months now to get her into a school closer to home (she starts on the 5.1.12) meaning she lost our on a whole term of reception, if you do not have siblings, sen or statemented children then you will always be pushed down any reserved lists, our problem was we were the last house in town, and all tie breaks for schools are those that live closer get priority we were always pushed down, as anyone else that applied lived closer to the school...its been a long frustrating journey for us and are ecstatic that it has finally come to an end, very good luck x

bubblebubblebubblepop · 03/01/2012 13:32

I had to email our LEA and they emailed me a map of the catchment areas.

ThompsonTwins · 03/01/2012 13:41

I Googled 'school catchment areas Edinburgh' and a local council page came up - a map was included. The local council Education dept will answer any questions you may have.

teacherwith2kids · 03/01/2012 13:47

Thompson, Scotland is different - education is one area that is devolved, and the whole setup (in terms of age of starting, age of finishing, years in each type of school, qualifications taken, admissions arrangements, to name a few) is entirely different from other parts of the UK...

ThompsonTwins · 03/01/2012 13:50

Should have read thread first - did not realise it was so easy to find out here and that the system in England and Wales is so different.

Original poster

threefeethighandrising · 03/01/2012 14:18

Tried googling but it got me nowhere!

The Scottish system is quite different (much better according to DP - but he's Scottish so he would say that )

Certainly it seems to me that there's much less of this madness with everyone to get all the kids into the same few schools (Edinburgh being an exception perhaps?), and this is probably in large part because Scotland doesn't publish league tables in the same way as England and Wales do.

DP really was surprised when he first heard about the competitiveness for primary places here.

OP posts:

OneLittleBabyGirl · 03/01/2012 16:04

threefeethighandrising I think it really depends on where you live. Where I am, all the surrounding primaries are all either outstanding or good. Also, they seem to not be oversubcribed from a nosy on the LEA website. So I'm not worried about getting into a decent primary. However, secondary is a completely different story. (It spans to a rougher part of town should we say). I have a friend who taught in our catchment secondary and the stories she had is more than awful. Lots of fights, it's a good day when teens will just shut up and listen to ipod or play DS in class, walk out anytime they likes. The decent secondary are very oversubscribed. Maybe I'm naive, but I think if all the choices are good, then you don't have this oversubcribe problem! Because then you won't have everyone moving/renting into catchment, or applying to the few decent ones.

EquestrianStatue · 03/01/2012 16:13

Found this on a PDF: Map of 'community areas' on pg35 of this doc

Any use? :)

admission · 03/01/2012 16:36

East Sussex are doing something slightly different. Yes their community areas are in effect catchment zones but especially in eastbourne they are covering a number of schools, whereas in some areas it is just one school.
The maps above are not very good in terms of detail so I would be very careful to check with the LA which community area a postcode is in, because they are certainly not all equal in area.
If the community area covers a number of schools then distance to the individual school will become important, as you will have no influence on things like siblings that has higher priority than community area on the admission criteria.

prh47bridge · 03/01/2012 16:38

jbl2312 - Catchment areas are completely irrelevant when it comes to school transport. The only thing that matters is whether you applied to your nearest school. If you did and they allocated a place miles away you were legally entitled to free transport. However, if you did not include your nearest school as one of your preferences they do not have to provide free transport to the allocated school.

Flip

1 2 3