When to visit schools?

[dangalf]

As per the subject line - was wondering at what stage we should start looking at primaries in our area? We are likely to be moving soon so would be good to have an idea of places nearby (Battersea). Our daughter is 2 and 3 months - would it be silly to look at places now?

we're in the process of doing this now, DD is due to start next September. We have 6 state choices, plus indies - so far I have 6 school tours booked in for this month and next, and to be honest I wish I'd done some last year, my boss was a little when I told him I'd be in late for the next 3 Tuesdays!

There should be in the Wandsworth Council website a brochure called something like Starting Primary in 2014 - this will list all the local primaries and give you such info as furthest distance offered and open places for faith schools (we are Southwark but I would presume it's the same across London).

I would start looking as soon as you can, but I wouldn't take the older one as they will be a distraction! 'Catchment' distances can be minute so it's worth looking so you can bear this in mind when you start house hunting.

I went to look at schools when my eldest was 2, its a good time to start looking.

Schools can change, what may be outstanding now can be "in need of improvement" in 2 years. A lot is always down to the head and teaching staff. And they can vanish very fast.

We looked the year we needed to make the application. We knew before that we had a fast choice of schools. We moved the year before because of schools and looked more that we had enough non-CoE/RC to choose from.

Most schools will do open days at the moment and yes, the council should publish a booklet showing distances of the last several year. Take into account that London has more children than school places, distances will go down, not necessarily up.

that's not necessarily true - Southwark will have several primaries a year which will bulge (i.e. instead of a 2-form 60-child, entry they will have an extra class of 30) and that will increase the distance a lot. I would imagine the same is true for all London boroughs, but the booklet will tell you - what's confusing is if the previous year bulges - you then have no real idea of distance for the year you're applying.

Most schools don't have Ofsteds that close together, do they, unless they are failing - so a school that has an outstanding ofsted this year, say, won't be reinspected for a few years. I think?

I just think that the more information-gathering you can do in advance, the better. You can always revisit schools nearer the time. Oh, and go to any Autumn/Christmas/Summer fairs they might have.

It depends how old the Ofsted of "good" is. We had a "good" junior school when we applied 3 years ago to get DD into the Infant school and it was labelled "in need of improvement" last year, so two years after the application for the Infant next door.

We read the Ofsted report and the Junior head extended an invitation to discuss the points to the parents of the Infant school. Lots of things were points easily to change and in general the school is a very good enviroment for children. So it makes sense to check when the "good" or "outstanding" label was given as Ofsted changed their requirements last year and we had a number of schools moving down at least one level due to this new structure.

Bulge classes are in issue, we had one last year and it took the distance from 0.7m to 1.2m, this year we are down to 0.6m again. When distances move a lot it is worth asking the school for the reason. We had one year where it went from 0.5m to 0.3m, the reason - 45 siblings out of 60 places.