WWYD school move trauma

[midnightexpress]

We're just about to move house - same city, but different local authority (and we're in Scotland so not sure if rules are the same. Anyway). I have 2 DC in P3 and P4 (like Y2 and Y3 in England) and the catchment school for our new home is literally over the garden fence. The problem is that they have space in P4 but not in P3. So the alternatives it seems are as follows:

1. Keep both DC where they are and ferry them every day (about 30 min drive each way), hoping that a place will come up at some point for both of them.
2. Move one DC and leave the other where he is (obvious logistical issues, but he loves his teacher this year so wouldn't mind in that respect). I assume that the LA would not provide transport in this case for my younger DC.
3. Move one DC to the catchment school and accept a place in another primary in the cluster for the other child while waiting for a space - both primaries feed into the same high school. Not sure, but I imagine transport would be provided in this instance as it's 'their' solution.
4. Move both DC to the other primary in the cluster even though the catchment school is right there across the garden fence.

Background: their current school is OK but not fabulous, but the DC are both v happy there. One of the reasons we're moving is for the high school, which is great, but possibly not so great if you don't know any of the other children when you start...

WWYD. Anyone have any experience of this and how did you work it out?

Honestly nothing about this move has been straightforward.

If you have one child in the school, does your other child then shoot to the top of the waiting list?
How big is the school - ie 15 kids per year and a space is less likely than 90 kids per year!
Think I'd either accept the space they have, and keep the other child at the current school, and wait for a space, or put both in a fairly local school with 2 spaces - moving schools twice seems like the most disruptive? But then small kids adapt quickly, so maybe thats a grown up issue?

Thanks. I've been told that there will almost certainly be a place for my youngest son next academic year, as the max class size increases from 30 to 33 in p4 and there are 3 classes in each year, so it should only be for 2 terms. My inclination is to take the P4 place now (as that class size won't increase further) and keep my younger son where he is if I can work out the logistics - seems less upheaval than moving him twice - he's definitely less keen on the whole moving thing than his brother, and really loves his teacher and class this year. It's just trying to work out how to be in two places at one time to drop them off! Gah.

Current HT agrees with you that the moving twice option is probably the least best.

Thanks very much for your thoughts - it helps get my thoughts straight!

We did something similar when we moved to a new area in September. One child got a place at the school 200 metres away and was also offered a place at a school further away. Other child only got offered a place at the one further away. In the end we sent them to different schools and luckily for us a place came up at half term at the local school (96 in a year). She hadn't really had time to settle into the first school so the move wasn't too traumatic for her.
Have a really good think about the logistics. Our two schools were about 10 mins away but it was a logistical nightmare as one was always late being dropped off or picked up.