If you moved to a new area how long would it take for your child to get a primary school place mid year?

[frumperina]

SIL moved to the UK in February to join BIL who has been here for a while. They are in London.
I got them all the information about schools off the internet and they went to apply for in year admission for primary school and did a late application for secondary as DN (10) will start at secondary in September.
They have been given a secondary school place now but still have heard nothing about primary so he has basically been sitting at home doing nothing since they came here.
Is it normal to take that long?
SIL and BIL are not the most proactive people and their english is not that great, not sure if they need to be a bit more pushy at the admissions office? I don't think they do anything with him at all, just let him play on his DS.
He is a bright kid and I'm worried about him if he does not get any schooling until September. The schools in his home country are very different.
I'm thinking of getting him some workbooks to do, would he be in Key stage 2?

Primary school places have just been allocated? Or are next month? It can take a while as they need to check details and find out where there are places. My Lea needed gentle nudging to get on with it when we moved mid year.

He would be yr 6 in KS2.
There will only be a place if there is a space at the school...you have to wait for a child to leave which in yr 6 is not likely at this late stage.

The child is 10, so primary school admission round is not relevant.

OP I would suggest you phone the admin department at the LA after Easter. In a lot of areas all schools will be full, and most schools will not really want to take on a new pupil at present. Especially as the first thing he will be doing is sitting SAT exams on the week beginning May 13th.

The LA does have a duty to find him a place within a reasonable amount of time. But they may well try to delay.

Yes yr 6 just seen he has been at home since Feb?!!

Is there can shortage if school places in the area they are in? There is a shortage in London but they need to offer him a place somewhere and provide transport if its too far.

They should be offered a place within a few weeks - and though I have sympathy for admissions teams as it is a peak time of year for busyness, they really should have dealt with this by now. If all nearby schools are full, then they need to activate the Fair Access Protocol to secure a place.

But BIL and SIL need also to look at secondary school transfer. Do they have a year 7 place lined up? If not, then they need to talk to admissions team about this ASAP as well.

Thanks for the advice everyone.
Yes they have a secondary school place, got the letter before Easter and have accepted it as far as I know. They applied for both at the same time.
Right, looks like I need to stick my nose in and phone the office next week. Or maybe they are around this week, will try tomorrow.
What is this Fair Access Protocol you speak of?

1 day. But that was when schools handled their own in-year admissions. We toured the school, decided on it, were given the place the next day and DS started the next week. Not London, though.

The Fair Access Protocol (FAP) is the mechanism under which a school can be conpelled to admit a pupil over numbers.

It can only be activated in specified circumstances (eg mobile Forces families, travellers families), or if all schools within a reasonable distance are completely full. Now, an LEA must provide transport for a school over 2 miles away. But it gets unreasonable to expect a child to travel many miles across London even in free transport (exact distance considered unreasonable may vary depending on where you are). So if no get-at-able vacancy exists in any state school, the pupil can be placed in the school which (in school/LEA's view) can best accept an additional child.

Agree with Tiggytape. This is not acceptable. The LA has a duty to find a place for this child. They appear to be falling down on the job. Your SIL should ring them and demand to know what is happening (or you should ring them on their behalf). If you don't get a reasonable answer lodge an official complaint.

Thank you for all the info. I will get involved as SIL and BIL don't seem bothered, to be honest they make me quite mad. I just feel sorry for DN. I will have to get DH to get more information out of them, it has just occurred to me that they might have said they only want a place at the school nearest to them. I hope they haven't but I wouldn't put it past them.
Ironically they went to quite some effort to get DN into a good school back home, no idea why they aren't bothered now that they are here.

Good advice above, OP, about the schools places, but you also asked about workbooks for him - yes, they might be a good idea if he is literally doing nothing at home KS2 Maths and English (or yr6) would be a good start.

But could I also ask what your dn's English is like (you said BIL and SIL's may be not so good)? If it's not very competent, I would think the focus before starting secondary would be on getting some help with his English reading and writing so he can access more of the curriculum once he starts.

His english is quite good, the school he went to in his home country taught all subjects in english. I have found some KS2 study books on amazon and I will try to call and make some general inquiries today.

it could well be that something went wrong with their application and it was never received/passed to the right office/form incomplete and it being returned to them wasn't received or something like that.

It sounds like his English will be pretty good but it may be slightly different (ie probably much more correct) so I would definitely try to get some workbooks for him to try. Maths and English obviously but also worth looking at some science ones (perhaps things he could try at home) as the language used in science is very different and also something like verbal reasoning, I am sure there are some workbooks like that.

Questions may well be written in a very different style here to the books he is used to so even if he doesn't work through all the work books doing all the questions and answers, just reading through the different things and checking that he would know what it was asking and how to tackle answering it would be very helpful.

We moved to a new area when dd1 was in year six and arrived during the February half term. The local authority couldn't start the process of find school places for any of the three dc's until we arrived. There was a place available for DS but nothing for dd's so we had to appeal for the local school to increase the class to 31 for each dd. it took about three to four weeks. You don't just wait for a place to come up, it's not likely to at that point in year six. Also he'll miss out on SATs.

I think we have a result. After more confusing information from SIL and a couple of phone calls DN will be offered a place at a local primary school. Letter is in the post apparently.
Thank you for your help everyone!

Still waiting 7 months later.

Was offed the worst Ofsted school immediately, but it's the 4th furthest school away. So daughter is on waiting list for the school at the end of my road. She starts junior school next year, so the longer she's on this list, the more pointless it seems changing her schools now as it just means she'll be starting a new one again next September.

Well, Snowme, so technically you were offered a place immediately.

'How long did you have to wait for a space in your desired school' is a wholly different question. The first child admitted to DD's class from the waiting list was in Year 3 ... 3 years after the waiting list came into effect.