Applying out of county

[HamFisted]

We're looking at moving to a house in a village that, for some bizarre historical reason, is in a different local authority to all the other villages around it. I've looked at the website for the other local authority and it says that you have to live in its borders to use its school admissions service, but I know from Ofsted that a lot of kids who go to the primary in my village-to-be go on to secondary schools in the other local authority. Any idea how it works? Is it possible to apply for a school in a different county to the one you live in? If not, that effectively only gives us one choice for primary schools. It might actually be enough to get me to pull out of the house purchase!

Yes. You can apply wherever you like.
Slightly different situation but we had to apply to a totally different local authority when in the middle of moving, so apply for schools where new house was but using address of old house.

You need to use the application form for where you live - so read their info. You should be able to apply on that form for the schools you want in the neighbouring county.

Thank you, both of you, that's really helpful. Do you know if being out of county prejudices the system against giving you a place at a certain school or does it ignore that and just focus on admissions criteria?

Depends. Some county's have 'priority admissions areas'. In other words, living in a fixed area gives you priority for that school. Other areas do it purely on distance. So you need to exam the admissions criteria.

Admissions will go by criteria, regardless of where you live. Counties cannot discriminate purely on whether you live in their boundaries. Some schools may however have fixed priority catchments, which should be clear in their admissions arrangements.

Thank you! That's such a relief.