Liklihood of school with places on allocation day not having spaces in September

[mahonga]

Hi, we're locating to a new county with a DS due to start reception in September. We've spoken to the admissions team and they won't let us apply for a place until we have exchanged on a property (i.e. have a local address). We're looking to move quite rurally and would want our DS to attend the local village school (for social reasons). We obviously don't want to exchange contracts banking on getting a place at the local school and then be allocated a school 15 miles away.

Our strategy therefore is to find out what schools still have a fair number of places available after the date when places are offered (mid-April), and then visit and select a school, and base our property search around that village. Once we have exchanged contracts, apply to the school and hopefully get one of the spare places.

My question (for anyone who has read this far!) is under what circumstances will a rural school (i.e. relatively stable population - not inner city) with e.g. 5 spare places on allocation day get filled up over the subsequent few months? I can see that a school with spare spaces might actually get even more spaces as September approaches (as you can assume that as it's a less popular school, some of the places were allocated to children who had put it as 2nd/3rd choice (or were allocated it) and who will subsequently appeal/go on waiting lists for their preferred schools) but I can't see any reason why the places would fill up, other than with people like us moving in to the area before the school year starts. Have I missed something here?

This must be the process/dilemma/risk anyone moving to a new area faces with in-year primary admissions, but I just wanted to check there wasn't anything about reception admissions that means this is an even riskier strategy (e.g. the LEA suddenly reduces class sizes in undersubscibed schools, or decides to ship in lots of children from a different area?)

Thank you for reading!

I hadn't thought of that Yes, I can see it's quite possible that people who have been allocated the sink school in their area might decide to start over and look further afield for a better school.

I guess in that respect it is a little bit more risky making the move at this stage, rather than doing a in-year transfer once DS has started school (which is the other option - DH could live away Mon-Fri and come home at weekends and then we make the move next year, once the school places are more stable).

At least we only have one child to worry about. I honestly don't know how anyone manages to relocate with more than one child to find a school place for, given the understandable, but infuriating 'you can not apply to be considered for a place in the village school until you have irretrievably committed to buy a house in the village' policy!

Thanks for the help!

I teach in a rural school but about 5 miles from a small (26000 population) market town. Our PAN is 15 per year and we usually have around 8-10 first round applications on allocation day. However for the past few years we have been full on 1st September with children who have been unable to find a place in any of our town schools and are desperate for a place! ( as the schools are full, the children receive taxi transport to any of the surrounding schools with vacancies, currently over 10% of our children are taxi children) Many rural schools do fill up fast

Thanks Snowball - that's very helpful. I can envisage that happening in the areas we're targeting.

Glad I asked the question!

Unless the school is so remote and the other villages very far away, there's a possibility that "left over" spaces might get filled up by people from a nearby area wanting a place. In my experience, unless the school is in a very difficult to access or very underpopulated location, any good or popular school will get filled up, even if the families are far away (they just drive in if they are not eligible for free transport). Some of the Local Authorities are on the web eg some London ones, Surrey, Croydon. If yours is, you might be able to find out (online) how far away their furthest admission/pupil was last year, to give you some idea. And also how many they admitted.

You can always find a school and rent short term to get your place while you search for a house ducks the arrows at having suggested it

Kipperandtiger is right about the driving part. Rural families are used to having to drive everywhere so 5 miles one way or the other is neither here nor there. As well as our taxi children we have any number who travel 3-5 miles to get here and several who have a 15 mile each way trip ( passing any number of schools on the way!)

that's not a bad suggestion 3duracell, if one doesn't mind the disruption, after all they will move to the area eventually. It might also help with settling in and getting to know the other facilities in the local area like shops, sports facilities and parks before the serious routine of school runs and early bedtimes come along........

I'm afraid that whatever you do there is a level of risk. Another consideration, against things going wrong is to look for schools that will not be subject to the infant class size regs, that is do not have an admission number of 15,30 or 45 etc. Then at least if things go pear shaped you can appeal and have some chance of success by pleading the need for a local school whereas if it is an infant class size case the only way you will a place is if the LA have made a mistake, which in the circumstances would be very unlikely.
The problem with your plan is that realistically even if you found your ideal house straight away after the initial allocation it will still be many weeks before you could tell the LA that you have exchanged contracts. As others have said places do get filled up in many rural schools between the initial allocation and Sept. My suggestion would be that you visit say 6 schools now and decide which are your preferences and then get looking for a house in say one of three villages, so that after the initial allocations you are a fair way towards knowing where you might be living.
There is actually another way forward. In theory you can apply for a place at any school from any address in the country. If the school has a place by law that place is yours. Why do you not find out which school has places after the initial allocation and then make a formal application for the place from your current address: it needs to be via your current LA. You might get a lot of spluttering and coughing from the LA you are moving to but if you insist I suspect that you will get the place because I doubt that any LA is going to commit in writing to saying you can't have a school place for September, that nobody else has asked for.

Thanks admission. With regard to the last suggestion, I guess that would mean that we would lose our existing school place as soon as we accept the one in the 'new' location - committing us to a school in an area before we have sold our house (and if our house sale fell through and we had to stay put, we'd be buggered (as our place at our - outstanding - local school will have been snapped up)).

AAARRRGGGHHHH!

Am increasingly thinking it will be best to leave it until next year. We wanted to avoid DS starting at one school and changing to another, but this is all looking too risky.

Speaking from experience moving kids from one school to another really isn't a biggie so, although obviously schools are a big consideration, I wouldn't make all decisions based around school places. Plans can change for all kinds of reasons.

I probably wouldn't have felt the same when DS1 was pre-school age, but now he's 18 and has finished with school having been through two primaries (UK) and four high schools (2 UK and 2 Oz), and DS2 isn't far behind him with 3 primaries and 1 high school spanning the continents I know that they always settle in ok, make friend etc., and it was usually only my Catholic/maternal guilt that was an issue!

You need to carry out some more research on the school place situation in the LEA you are actually moving to as there may be large regional differences. Most of the primary school place shortage is in cities and so schools within the "commuter belt" of these cities may be oversubscribed too. However there may be spare capacity at more rural schools. My mother lives close to a small primary school in rural Somerset that historically has spare places available so the situation may not be as bad as you think.

admission, please could I ask you another question.

The LEA admissions people told me that the school in the village we would like to move to currently has 4 spare places for September (today is allocation day). Which is quite promising, it might be we can get one of those places if they are still free over the summer when we move (subject to the caveats pointed out by the posters above!).

The school has an intake of 40, in two reception classes (20 oldest in one, the 20 youngest in the other). If we did find we needed to appeal for a space (if those 4 spaces were filled before we moved) does this mean that it would not be an infant class size appeal? Or does what happens further up the school have an impact - the school currently has the two reception classes, a year 1 class, a year 1/2 class and a year 2 class (then a year 3, year 4, year 5, year 6 class). The website says "If the budget will sustain it, we aim to maintain five KS1/R classes and five KS2 classes. This allows us to keep the KS1 classes small".

If indeed this is a non-infant class size appeal, is wanting to attend the primary school within the village where we live (so our DS can make friends easily) grounds for an appeal? Or would we need more than that? It's very much a village school, with the next nearest village (about 3 miles away) being served by its own school. As our DS will not have any existing friendships from preschool or through toddler groups etc, it would be important to us that he attends the village school. Would that cut in in a (non infant class size) appeal?

We're now targetting a school with an intake of 15 children per year. I'm guessing that will be subject to infant class size as reception and year 1 are mixed?

mahonga - Sorry for the belated reply. I'm afraid any appeal would be infant class size. The 3 classes covering Y1 and Y2 would have 30 children in each if both years are full. Under the rules the panel therefore have to consider it as an infant class size case even though there would be no problems in Reception.

neepsandtatties - If Reception and Y1 are all in the same class with a single teacher that will be an infant class size case.