Hi,
If the school year is full, you won't get a place unless someone leaves. Even if you live on the doorstep.
This applies to all state schools, for years reception to 2.
Perhaps there are some exceptions:
- I'm not sure what would happen if your child had Special Educational Needs and you were able to get a 'statement' naming that school as the one best suiting his needs.
- If there was literally no school with spaces within 45 minutes travelling time, you would be allocated a space at a school that was already full. This MIGHT be the one you want, but it just as well might not.
Apart from those two exceptional circumstances, you would just have to go onto the waiting list and hope for a space to come up.
The closer you move to the school, the higher up you'd be on the waiting list. But you would still rely on someone actually leaving the school before you could be offered a place.
Some schools systemically have lots of movement, for example where there are lots of forces families. In such a school you can pretty much expect a place to come up pretty soon.
But for all other schools, you can't tell. Some schools TEND to have movement, but sometimes don't. And yet other schools don't usually have movement, but do sometimes.
You can call the school and ask how much movement they usually have; but that is no guarantee that it will be the same when you apply.
In our school, one year group has had children coming and going all the time - fewer than half the original children were still there by Y3. The very following year group had barely any change at all.