Moved back to London from UAE and still no school place

[kittylicious]

Help! My son is in year two. We returned from the UAE in July and were instructed not to apply to schools until two weeks before term started. Now both councils I’ve applied at are saying DS could be at home for up to 4 weeks!! And that’s if we don’t get a school of our choice.
So my question is, how likely is it that a place will open up in y2 in a school in the next few weeks? We are in Ealing, and have applied to a few schools nearby in Chiswick as well.

If there are no vacancies in schools within a reasonable distance (and I mean NO vacancies, not just no places in the schools you fancy)then you can apply for a "fair access place" which means a school has to accept your child even if it means going over the infant class size limit. It might be worth telling the admissions department that this is what you intend to do, remember though that if they offer you a place and you turn it down they have no obligation to help you with another offer.

I imagine that they are saying you have to to wait because sometimes children turn up at school having been away for the summer and they are officially still on roll. My neighbours for example, only got back from a long haul holiday three days after school started. I think schools have to wait for two weeks before they can remove a child from the roll.