School catchment

[herewegonumbertwo]

Hello
I'm clueless to how this works as my baby is still a few years off school, but we are looking to move house and so need to know how this all works.

If we bought a house 0.1miles from a school with a requires improvement Ofsted rating but there was a school with a good rating 0.3miles away, what are the chances of getting into the good school or are catchments really small so more likely to end up with the req imp school? Should we only buy where the closest school has a good rating? Does Ofsted rating matter that much?

Thanks :-)

It hugely varies on where you live and how many people live there. Catchments can be miles or metres. Personally I prefer to look at percent of pupils meeting national expected standard in year 6, progress, and % of pupil premium, have a look at the curriculum and how the head addresses the parents in newsletters, what after school activities are on offer etc to compare schools, if they have a good use of technology for communication with parents etc You can find the % meeting expected standard by googling for league tables in your area on your council website. I find Ofsted to have no baring on the actual results and are often very out of date.

On the admissions section of your local council website, you should be able to find admissions info for each school, which will tell you the class sizes, and if oversubscribed last year or not, the distance of the last offered place last year. Unfortunately this can vary massively from year to year depending on things like sibling numbers so you probably can't tell from one published year but it could give you an idea.

Oh also, catchment school isn't always the nearest school or some areas may have two catchment schools. In my area VA schools don't show as catchment schools either because proof of religion is more important than distance, but that doesn't mean someone nearby of no religion wouldn't be able to get a place. Make sure to do an actual catchment checker from the council .

Thank you @user27378 that is a lot of helpful information. I didn't know there was a school catchment checker so will definitely look that out.

We were in the catchment for about 3 different schools - best to look on the school website and they should have an admission criteria with a map

Most schools don't have a formal catchment as such, i.e. an area within which you are given priority for places. However, most use distance as a tie-breaker, so the nearer you live to the school the more likely you are to get a place. It is therefore likely that you have a better chance of getting into the "requires improvement" school than the "good" school but that doesn't mean you won't get a place at the good school if you list it as your first preference.

As you say it is a few years until your child needs to go to school you should also remember that a lot can change. A change of head might mean the "requires improvement" school becomes outstanding. Equally, the "good" school might become "inadequate".

In my county, all the primary schools have catchment areas but some have other admissions criteria such as CofE etc. You put your post code into the LA’s “find your catchment school” facility and up it pops.

You might of course find you can get into another school if they apply distance rules and don’t fill up from catchment. Local authorities publish how admissions work for each school and whether they only took catchment or took from a greater distance. See what your LA says on the web site regarding where you live.

A recent ofsted is valuable. Ofsted inspectors go into schools with all the data about that school. If they said it’s RI, the attainment or progress of DC almost certainly were not good enough. Read the reports and then look for evidence of improvement on the schools web site. Look for newsletters, the curriculum and improvements at the school. Start asking around - especially if you can find mums with dc at local schools. Schools take time to improve but don’t think ofsted are routinely wrong - they are not. But schools improve so look for evidence of that.

You need to look at the local authority website to see what the arrangements are. Some areas have catchments but you get admitted on distance (after all the other criteria like looked after children and sibling priority).

www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/

This website is a very useful one for comparing stats.

If looking at Ofsted report, don’t just look at the 1-2 words on the grading but read the actual report. You might be ok with the type of shortcomings the inspectors found but you might as well find that the school failed as teaching was shit and pupils made no progress + there were safeguarding issues etc and you’d want to avoid the school in question.

I would find it difficult to find any RI grading reason that was ok with me. However what really matters is whether this was a one off series of problems or whether the school yo-yos in and out of RI as lots do. If the school has improved and maintains that, I wouldn’t worry. It’s really difficult for a new parent to judge improvement and they can never ever judge good teaching or poor teaching. So the reports and stats do have a place when looking at schools, but talking to other mums and carers is also very valuable if they have examples of good teaching. Although sometimes parents are cheerleaders for RI schools because they cannot compare their poor offering with a good school because they have never seen one in operation.

It’s a case of getting all the info you can and then choosing the one where you think DC will be happy and you will be too!

At my DDs primary the catchment is quite large (over a mile) and there's another smaller primary within that catchment both undersubscribed so where I lived you'd likely get the 0.3m away school if you put it down as top preference.

Yes. Everywhere is different. That is why the LA info on admissions to each school is vital info. Do the schools have a catchment area? Did they take all in catchment ? Did they take outside catchment? if so, how far outside catchment? Have they taken all who apply regardless of where they live? (This can bring other schools into your search). What other admissions criteria are there? Is there no catchment at all, merely distance? If so, what distance is usually admitted? Also look at the schools own admissions info on their web sites.

Don’t always be put off by the requiring improvement. You’ve said your a few years off and the school will be given a lot of money and support to pull it up.