Thinking of moving to Kent- confused about schools!

[TheArtist]

We are seriously thinking of moving to Kent, high on the list is the villages around Canterbury- Chilham & Chartham, we have seen two very good houses that tick a lot of boxes.

I have emailed Kent education and to ask what schools within a 5 mile radius currently have places for year 2. This was the (edited) response:

"if you do not live in Kent, or have not exchanged contracts or have a signed tenancy agreement for a Kent property, then you will need to apply via your own local authority. Knowing where school places are is a contstantly changing situation and if a space is there on one morning it may be offered later that day to someone who has applied. Therefore we cannot consider your child for any school place until you actually apply"

Constantly changing- as day by day! That sounds very extreme and like a conveyor belt of children.

This is worrying because if we buy one house we may find we are too late and cannot get a school place? What is the best way to go about this?

Also Im under the impression catchment areas are not as strict as Surrey , as some people we spoke too when said their child goes to Selling school etc which is about 3 miles away?

Is it quite the norm to travel so far?

Also are there any primary schools to avoid? I looked at OFSTED for both Chartham and Chilam local schools and the reports were not exactly glowing... does anyone know more about these specific schools or ones around Canterbury.

We're in the process of doing this for Kent too!

Call the schools themselves - they will know how many spaces they have, and you could get a good steer from them on how likely it is that those places will still be available. Then plump for a school, keep checking availability of places, and go through the house buying process. My understanding is that the schools will only hold a place for you for a few weeks, but with a bit of canny planning, you should be able apply for a school place (via your local LEA) and hear the outcome BEFORE you financially commit to exchanging on a house. It's all a lot easier if you can rent instead of buy, which is what we are going to do...

Alternatively, if you call the primary admissions team you might find them more helpful - we were certainly told which schools had places (we were a 'late' reception application) although some of the advisors would tell us the actual number of places in a particular school, and some would only yay/nay whether the school had places full stop.

Re the catchments, yes, in rural Kent they can be quite large - up to 15 miles! Take a look at this document here and it will tell you the last child admitted distance for reception, which will give you a guide. It will also tell you how many children were offered places/no. of children who gave it as a preference, which is a very rough and ready indicator of how popular a school is.

shareweb.kent.gov.uk/Documents/education-and-learning/school-education/applying-for-school/Primary-Admissions-booklet-full.pdf

Most of Surrey does not have catchment areas!

This is a time of year when lots of people are moving. If a school has a place and it has any waiting list then that place should be offered immediately to the child at the top of the waiting list. However the LA has to offer your child a place somewhere once you live in its area.
The SE in general has more children than places (or certainly a big strain on places) in most year groups. However if your child is not in years R-2 you do have a chance of winning an appeal, if the school is not too overfull and you have good arguments.

Hi,

We're moving to Kent next month too. We're looking for a reception place starting Sept 2012. Initially I was also looking at Chilham & Chartham but we've now decided to go further in to Ashford instead as places in reception sounded soooo unlikely.

I have had mixed and incorrect information from central admissions for reception (but your excerpt looks better anyway). But they did tell me that they were handling all higher years admissions, as opposed to the individual schools who were doing reception themselves until this week.

You don't say where you are just now but do be aware that you can sit on waiting lists with your current UK address, then just change to your new local address later. If you are the highest ranked applicant at the time a space comes up it is yours (even if you are very far away!), but you do have to then take up that place within a time limit. If you do hear of an open place you can also apply for it through your current location admissions team, but again would be expected to take up the place. If you don't take either of those options you can just apply in Kent once you have an address in their county.

I'm finding the whole house & school combination of moving very stressful so good luck.

I was in your position last year, except I was renting rather than buying. I was planning to move to Tonbridge or Ashford.

This time last year the Kent admissions team consisted of 4 people who were literally snowed under with applications. The British government had moved school admissions from the care of school secretaries to LEAs but LEAs were not geared up for the extra workload, and Kent seemed to be especially unprepared.

I'm afraid that you are right about the process and that the risk is all on you: you will have to commit to a house and then cross your fingers that there are places in the school that you want.

Unfortunately it is a moving target and with all the things you have to do, you will be moving too slowly to hit the target. Even if you do manage to find a good school that happens to have children leaving so there will be places coming up that your DC could take, you will probably find those places gone by the time you've got the paperwork (purchase contract/ tenancy agreement) that will enable you to apply for the places.

This is what happened to me. In the end, I just found it impossible and I stayed in Surrey as it was marginally easier to move within the same LEA.

However, as a footnote to the experience, two of the good/ outstanding Kent schools I had been interested in, called me in September to say that some children had left unexpectedly and would I like the places now?

If you are really set on doing this move, then all I can suggest is that you go to the Ofsted website, put in a postcode of a house in an area you may be interested in, search for all the schools within 3 miles of that area and work methodically down the list calling the school office in each case. the call goes something like this (every single time!)...

"Hello, xyz school"
"Hello, May I speak to the person who deals with admissions please"
"Oh, they are dealt with Kent admissions now. Would you like the number?"
"Thank you but I've already got it. The problem is that I am moving to your area and I need to fill out the LEA application form. I was just hoping to speak to someone who could tell me if you actually have places in my DCs year?".
"In that case, you need to speak to Mrs X. She works on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the mornings".

99/100 schools won't have places but maybe one or two will.

After a while I was close to tears with all this. It took up all my time. required me to be extremely organised. Extremely polite. Sounding tearful helps I found, but by then I genuinely was close to tears.

Sorry. I hope it works out for you.

Notso, yes some of those distances are quite generous!

Yellow I didnt realise we could apply right now. Thats certainly worth a shot, I suppose we could rent our house then rent in the area if we still havent sold and place does come up suddenly?

All very stressful knowing what to do!

Anice that sounds horribly stressful.

I wonder if we should rent asap to secure school places?

Oh dear and there is only a few days left until most schools will close for the Summer to ring around...

The problem is there are massive issues getting junior places where we are now. I believe about 7 children from the year above still have no junior place.

Don't move to Kent unless you are ready for the horror that is the 11+

Are the comps really that bad around Canterbury if dd's dont pass 11+?

ANICE I have had exactly that conversation about 25 times before I found a 'yes we have a space' 4+ miles from my new address.......I too was genuinely close to tears with the stress of explaining the situation.

I applied for the space I found via my current location admissions over 200 miles away. (I am confident that we will be there by Sept but did have to use my current address).

If you make it there ARTIST perhaps we could meet up?!

There are 4 high schools in Canterbury- no comprehensives, obviously. They range from (in my opinion) horrible to OK.

TheArtist i heard archbishops and chaucer technlogy are quite bad but then a lot of it is to do with the child to i guess, i try not to dismiss the non grammar schools round here or i'd be home tutoring archie lmao! one of the grammar schools recently changed to a non grammar school think it was barton court, was a recent thing but still seems to be performing ok though guess we'll have to wait and see what happens to it now. Correct me if im wrong but im sure you can apply for out of area to, my other half was from canters and applied for barton court, herne bay high and dane court which is thanet way (towards margate if im correct) so i dont think your just limited to applying within canters x

if you do rent, you need to sign up to a 12 month lease (although you may be allowed a 6 month break clause). I spoke to Kent LEA about this particular issue last year and they said that they do this to avoid people renting a house near their chosen school for a short period and then "moving" back to their old home as soon as they have secured the offer.

(That was the conversation where I couldn't take any more and I burst into tears on the phone - although I have to say they were really nice after that although I couldn't make the most of them trying to be helpful because I was sobbing. Very embarrassing.)

Barton court is still a grammar school! And yes, you can apply from out of area but you'd be unlikely to get a place- proximity is all!

DH just phoned and it turns out a school in the area may have 2 spaces opening up... So basically we could strongly considering renting our house and renting in Kent (for 12 months) over the summer to secure a place ready for September.

Of course we could rent and still find there is no place once we have got there!

Besides of which I have never actually visited this school so we may not like it and impossible to visit now with schools about to close.

There is still huge school issues where we live now, so staying or moving still makes issues either way.

Hmm, you can drive yourself mad thinking of all the "what ifs!"

Im prepared to home school for a bit, but its not ideal long term.

Getting a headache now...

You should visit the school asap. If you can't get a tour then at least have a chat with the head because he/ she is a major determinant into what kind of school it is.

Read the ofsted report too. A lot of people say they aren't worth having but IME they are able to see the school for what it really is, its just that when they write their reports they don't call a spade a spade. (So you need to be able to read between the lines!)

Last year the letting market was red hot with anything good going within a day of coming to the market (or at least by the following Saturday if not before). I don't know what its like now, but if its anything like last year, then you need to give estate agents defiite intentions, not " I am considering doing this, maybe" sort of statements. Yes, I am saying lie about the firmness of your intentions to the agents because otherwise they won't make helping you a priority.