How to find out popularity of infant school

[slowlyburningcalories]

new to all this, we are (fingers crossed) moving house. DD1 is almost two and we will be staying in the new house for 5-8 years so much of her primary education. We want her to go to a small infant school but we are not in the catchment for it, we may get in as DD has an IEP at nursery but I don't know how to go about finding out wether the school is likely to give places to pupils outside the catchment? Advice welcome, thank you

Speak to head teacher?

You should be able to find what happened last year in the LA's admissions booklet or on their website. If you can't find it or don't understand it let me know the school and LA and I will try to find it for you. Feel free to PM me if you don't want to post that information publicly.

Of course, what happened last year isn't necessarily a good guide to what will happen this year let alone in two years time. A lot might have changed by then.

I don't know if it's still the same, but when we were applying, the Ofsted site (I think, or was it the local authority site?) had statistics for the average distance children in the last intake lived from the school. We lived about a mile from the school and the average distance of the last intake was 1.3miles, so we were near the cut off of the previous year.

Obviously, that doesn't tell you what the next intake will be like, but gives an idea.