YR Parent Information days/evenings

[Buffy81]

Have just been looking at some dates to looking at some schools for when my lb starts in Sept.

I have some that when I have looked on their calendar on some of them and they have already had their one and only session?? I will be giving the other schools a ring to see if they will be doing anymore

Surely a lot a of parents would only be looking now to see if there are dates in oct/nov and that schools would do more than session?

I have two schools that we are thinking of and their sessions are on the same day and same time so i would go to one and then DH would go to another and I will have to arrange for my mum and dad to come over and do the bedtime routine

I only have one school in our catchment area, the others are outside as I assume that you have to put more than one school down when applying

Please use all the preferences that are available to you.

Please use all the preferences that are available to you.

If you are though 100% certain of getting into your preferred school why bother including any other schools?

Lol even people 100% certain are surprised. There have been cases of that on here where people put only one school.

If you put one school the nice computer system/person at the local authority chooses the second school for you. If you don't get into the first. If you can be 100% certain and I find this incredible only put one school.

I will be putting down more than one, I just find it strange that we only have one school in our catchment area

You mis understand catchments. A catchment school means that every child (+postcode) has priority for one local school.You often almost automatically get a place in that school.
In non catchment LA areas its normally all done on distance.
So you might be only 0.4 miles away from 6 schools, but if more people are eligible ahead of you, you end up last in the pecking order.

• near us some do have combined catchment areas where everyone in a larger area gets priority for a place for school A or B but this is where schools are very close to each other e.g 0.1 miles

That's the way catchments work around us - you are in catchment for one school and only one school where you have higher priority. It means if you don't get into catchment school you can be a bit screwed, as you are a lower priority as well as a higher distance from pretty much any other schools. But most people do get into catchment school if they want it.

Where we used to live it was basically the same but catchments were defined by nearest school and weren't officially called catchments. So you were higher priority for the school which was your nearest school and lower for any other (even if you were nearer than other people whose nearest school it was).

Are you sure the event you looked at is for parents looking for a school?

I got confused with DD's Infant, they called it "parent information" but it was for the new parents of the reception children who started in September, kind of "we tell you how we teach and some more in-depth information about topics/curriculum.

The tours for prospective parents were called "Open Mornings"". They normally run during school time, some schools do more than one, others not.

I would always put as many schools down as possible. Our school had one year an intake of 45 siblings out of 60 places, the distance shrunk to some more or less living next door. The year after it extended again to its normal distance.