Changing catchment areas and siblings

[cadburyegg]

My DS1 will be going to our catchment village school. However, we live in an expanding village and the land opposite our house is going to be home to a new primary school within the next couple of years. Obviously, the catchment areas will then change.

DS2 wont start school til 2022. In the school DS1 will be going to, out of catchment siblings come below in catchment kids on the oversubscription criteria. So if our catchment area was different in 2022 then DS2 would be pretty low on the priority list for a place even though DS1 would still be there.

Presumably this isn’t that rare, has this happened to anyone else? Does the LA take this into account when allocating places? Did your younger child get a place?

I don't have direct experience of this, but if your school is reviewing its admission arrangements in the future, which it may well do in these circumstances, you should be given the chance to contribute to any consultation. This will happen a long way in advance of any changes, so watch out for any notification of proposed changes to admissions criteria.

When the primary school my children attended changed their catchment areas they made a rule that children who had siblings at the school during x years (until that sibling would be in year 6 the September the child would start reception) Those siblings would be taken in under the old sibling rule. This was added after concern from parents due to similar reasoning's to yours op. However was not a part of the initial set up so had to be pushed for. This meant in practice that after 4 years the school had their new priority area in place as that was the longest sibling age gap in place at the time.

Yes in my limited experience they do make allowance for siblings who'd lose out otherwise.

Yes, locally they put in a ‘grandfather’ clause locally so that siblings of those already at the school from the year before the catchment changed were treated as siblings in catchment, even if (with the new catchment) they weren’t any longger.

Have there been a consultation on the new school being opened? The time for you to make noises is before the school is being built and opened. If you do not say anything before the school opens then there will be an agreed admission policy and admission criteria and it might not cover the situation you are in . So shout now before it is too late.