Temporary accomodation and schools admissions.

[Pascale73]

Does anyone know how this would work?

We are moving back to the UK from abroad, possibly in the next few months.

We would be looking to buy straight away, however it is likely it might take us a little while to find somewhere - a couple of months, even more. I don't actually really know what the timescale would be for finding a house, making an offer, doing all the legal stuff, moving in. Hopefully we would be in a new house by the end of the summer holidays, but realistically, that might well not be the case.

While we are house-hunting, we will probably move in with my parents (they live in/very close the area we would be hoping to buy in) rather than rent somewhere short-term.

How would this work with schools? We have 2 primary aged DC, and I would like them to start school as soon as possible, plus the youngest is I think due to start in September.

Can we use my parents address to apply for school places, or do we have to wait until we have bought somewhere? We won't have a rental agreement or utilities bills or anything if we are just staying with family temporarily, so we won't be able to "prove" we have moved to the area.

We could end up buying somewhere several miles away from my parents house, and then we might have to move the DC's school again, so in that case it would be better to wait.

But if it takes months and months to find somewhere, the DC will need to be in school.

SIL says that there is a problem with people moving temporarily just in order to get a school place, and then moving again, and that if we do that they will take our school places away. I don't want that, of course! But it will be a temporary move (I'm hoping very temporary).

Can you get temporary school places, say for just half a term?

Actually, DH has a business trip to London the first week of May, so maybe he could do a quick detour and go and look round a couple of schools then.

sounds like a good plan. Schools will be closed on bank holiday monday (4th May) and some for the election on 7th May.

Thanks, I forgot about the election!

I think his meeting is on the 6th, so hopefully he could take an earlier flight on the 5th and go straight from the airport to look at schools.

This could be a helpful site:

new.surreycc.gov.uk/schools-and-learning/schools/school-admissions

Not all schools are polling stations so you may be OK on the 7th.

For Surrey:

Applying for children from abroad
If you and your child live abroad, you may only apply for a school place if your child:
holds a full British Citizen passport (but not a British Dependent Territories or British Overseas passport) or
is an EEA national (all member states of the European Union together with Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein) or
is a Swiss national (Swiss nationals have the same right to live and work in the United Kingdom as EEA nationals); or
has a passport which has been endorsed to show that they have the right of abode in the UK.
If you have a property in the UK you should apply to the local authority for that address. If you do not have a UK property you should apply to the local authority where your preferred school is situated. You must apply by the deadline and provide information about where you are living and when you intend to return. We will initially consider the application based on your child's address abroad and any subsequent change will be considered in line with our change of address policy.
For other children without automatic right of entry to the UK, an application can only be made once the child is in the country.
For more information please read our guidance on admission of children overseas.

There is a girl at our school,whose family moved back from overseas and she and her two siblings are in three different schools due to lack of places.

Thing is, they can tell you which schools have places now but they may not be the same school that have places when you actually move. you could visit five schools now but find they are all full when you move.

I think it is probably a waste of precious overseas visit time to look around schools if you do not know where you will be living. If you choose to put them into school while staying with your parents, then the council will place your dc best they can.

It is a difficult system to negotiate without a permanent address. So for returnees and immigrants there is often some unavoidable disruption at first, but you do stand a good chance of getting all 3 dc into the same school, nearish your new home, eventually. I know that's not a brilliant answer but the system wants the very thing you cannot give it, which is a UK residence address.

Yes, Base9, I think you're probably right.

I think we'll just have to cross our fingers and see what happens when the time comes, and assume that there will inevitably be some short-term disruption and uncertainty, but that is par for the course.

I do think the short-term home-schooling option is a good one to keep in mind though. I will talk to DH about it tonight. I prefer that to the idea of "school-hopping", I think, but we will have to see.

Hi Pascale, if you want any info about the practicalities of home education then feel free to come over to the Home Ed board. It is not unusual for families in your situation to go for this option. It's pretty straightforward, especially in the short term. There are no required subjects or methods, so essentially you just cover whatever you feel each child needs in whatever way works for them and you.

Good luck. I have been through it myself as have many friends and co-workers. It has always worked out fine longterm, but keep looking out for places where you can tip the balance in your favour, like contacting preferred schools to ask about spaces (some will have a conversation with you) or keeping in touch with the council and making sure all paperwork is where it needs to be.

Make sure you find and move to your permanent(ish) home by December 2015 - you will need to apply for a reception place for your currently-3yo, by-then-4yo with a deadline that is usually early January, for entry in September 2016. If you succeed in getting this youngest child into your preferred school, you have a better chance of being able to transfer the older children into the higher yeargroups of that school.

Fish, the 3 year old is 4 in may so is due in reception sept 2015.

OP, reception children can defer entry until the term after they turn five so if you get a reception place but still want to home educate or stay on other waiting lists, you could defer until January or April term.

I thought that schools were obliged to consider a request to deferentry into reception but were not required to grant that request?

Oh yes sorry I got my maths wrong. Apologies op.

Rhonda, if it's delayed entry to the same year, the schools have to grant it; if it's going into reception a year later than your age group, it's up to the school and LA.

yonic, I wasn't aware of that rule.

So if a parent accepts a place for their child in September and says they don't want them start until, say, April, does the school have to accommodate that request? Does the school have to manage without the funding for that pupil until they actually arrive?

Yes, provided the child isn't 5 before January. I don't know about the funding.

www.myschoolgate.co.uk/blog/view/your-rights-deferring-your-childs-primary-school-place/

At least once one child is in a school you like, because the priority order is usually "children with SEN statement naming that school as a requirement", then children in care, then siblings, and only then distance, this means that your child's siblings are likely to be top of the waiting list for spaces at that school.

If you are church-going Christians, look out the children's baptism certificates and ask your church leader if they can confirm how often you have attended and for how long, as this is generally needed for applying for places at church schools - criteria seem to be different for each school.

Surrey and some other areas still have separate infant (years R, 1, 2) and junior schools (y3-6) and definitions of 'sibling' can get complicated depending on how schools are linked.

It'll get sorted eventually - it's not like they are teenagers facing exams - so try not to worry.

Most counties have a mix of through schools and separate schools - I think that's true for Surrey too.

Thanks for that, yonic.

I've worked in three different primary schools over the past 13 years (not as teaching staff) and haven't known of any child who deferred the start date in reception, but then all those schools have staggered starts and are very flexible where it turns out that that the child needs a different approach.

One of our current reception children, for example, is still attending mornings only and one another, whose mum was very keen for the child to start age 4, will be repeating reception year.

One point I would disagree with on the page you linked to is that reception staff know nothing about the children coming into reception. I'm sure that's true where there is no relationship between local pre-schools and reception staff in the school. But that's not true in our school, especially for the children coming from the nursery on-site, but also for those in local nurseries and pre-schools.

In Surrey, increasing numbers of infant and junior schools are converting to primaries. I know of three in our confederation alone, two infant and one junior.

Oh yeah, sorry, I wasn't endorsing the whole site

Thank you for all the advice. Especially nice to hear from people who have been through this and come out the other side . I thought leaving the country with a baby and pregnant bump was difficult, but there seems to be much more to think about coming back again with 3 DC!

I was aware about theoretically not having to start Reception until the term a child turns 5, but I thought not all schools actually allowed it. So something else to think about. I think DD2 particularly might benefit from a bit of extra time before starting school as she is quite sensitive.

We are Christians, not C of E - we are RC, but though DC are baptised, we don't actually go to church that regularly - only once every few months. So not sure how much help that would be, even though I would be very happy for them to go to any church school - and over the moon if they got into a RC one, which I think are usually oversubscribed anyway. RC schools will definitely be our first line of enquiry once we are back.

I think we will need to keep an open mind though, and consider all the schools that might work (which is a bit daunting, as we will be house-hunting over quite a wide area, much of it urban, so there are loads of schools). I think it's more important to be in catchment for a good secondary school than to get too worked up about primary schools - but perhaps I am being naive. I wouldn't want DC in a school that didn't have a nice feel about it, but I'm not too hung up on SAT results.

DH is a bit unsure about home ed, especially for DS and DD1, so I think I will need to do a bit more research on it to help decide if it is the right thing for us. So I may well be popping over to the home ed board.

Thanks to everyone for posting. I really was (am) clueless about the education system, and DH knows even less than me!

OP, I don't envy you!

Two things you might want to check.

One is what happens if you do decide for your 4-year-old not to start in reception until they are 5. I've not had experience of this in the schools I've worked in, so wouldn't know how the school would make up for the gap in learning if you only do one term. Phonics would be just one example of something they would miss most of by just doing one term. It might be worth asking what the school would recommend so your child is ready for starting year 1 the following September. This is where home schooling might help!

The other is that RC schools in some areas as are incredibly difficult to get into. Go onto the school' website and look at their admissions criteria. Our local "outstanding" RC secondary school has 17 admissions criteria, and even looked after children are split into baptised RC and non-baptised RC for priority .

Good luck!