Catchment areas??

[sallycinamon]

Does anyone know how to find out what catchemnt area your house is in? Is there some knid of website? We are thinking of moving for several reasons, one of which is to be in the catchemnt area of a good primary school. It would be awful to spend all that money moving only to find we were the wrong side of a 'border'!

Thanks

I don't know if there's a website because school entry criteria differ from school to school and would depend on what the birth rate had been like so probably too complicated. Each school has to say what it's admission criteria is, but my Dad gets phone calls from parents & he says yes, or I'd move two streets nearer if I were you to be on the safe side.

Why not contact the school direct?

i would contact your LEA. It's a bit of a minefield and soem schools don't work off catchment either. Each school will have their own admission policy and being in catchment doesn't always guarantee yuo a place....

Oh I meant to add that the website upmystreet is good for showing where schools are located in a given area both by map and by league result although that won't show you the size or boundary of the catchment area.

I know that in the area we are moving the LEA has a catchment website, you just put in your postcode and it tells you the catchment school..

Tis great - we ruled out quite a few houses before we found one that we liked and was in the right catchment area.

Try looking at your LEA

Agree about contacting the school direct.

Here there is no catchment as such - the area covered will be as large or small as is necessary to fill the available places. My nearest school is less than 500m away. Alas this year, the area covered was only about 350m. The school we got is about 700m away, also 2 form entry, but houses more spread out in that area and also less over-subscribed.

The luck of the draw - we would have got the preferred school (just) last year and the year before. Not the year before that though. Just happens that this year they were able to fill their 60 places within a small area (proximity being the third criterion, after LA care/special needs and siblings).

Libraries usually have a reference copy of the booklet sent out to parents of children due to start school. Ours usually has a list of streets in the back with information next to each one about which schools they are in the catchment area for.

Ask your education authority how many first choice applications they had for the available reception places over the last few years-it will give you an idea how competitive it is.

It just varies everywhere. Where I live, the whole of the town is in the catchment area for two of the secondary schools which are right next door to each other. There has NEVER been a case where someone living in the town has put one of those schools as their first choice and failed to get in. So no faffing about or worrying over which streets are in catchment for which schools.

If in doubt, I would tend to contact the schools directly, or look on the LEA website, they're often very specific over this.

Even where they exist they can change year on year so no guarantees.

In Sheffield we can go onto the LEA website, type in the postcode and it tells you your catchment schools.