Change of primary school in London

[Pattymirror]

Hello,
I hope you can help me.
I am living with my daughter in Croydon, and we are planning to move to Staines.

My partner lives there, and his daughter goes to school there. He is renting his flat with his brother which was helping him after my partner's wife passed away. We are planning to rent a new flat in summer when their tenancy will be over. I have my own flat, and I need at least 2 months time to rent it.
I am struggling to find a way out of this situation as new school is asking for prove that I live in Staines.
How can I move there if I even don't know if the new school has a space for my daughter? They can't tell me if they have a waiting list as it is confidential.
My daughter goes to outstanding school and I don't want to risk moving to another borrow, renting bigger flat for 4 of us, and than risking that my daughter won't get space in a school of my choice...
This is so nerve-racking
Did anybody was in a similar situation?
Thank you for all your advices.

There will be a risk as if another child moves into the area that they may have a higher priority under the admissions policy. What school year is your daughter in and what schools are you considering?

In England, You can apply for any school anywhere at any point, and if they have a space that have to offer it to you, regardless of your address. However that would require you being able to take the place up very quickly, probably in the next 2 weeks, which you cannot.

For a place in September, it's more difficult as a school would not be able to keep the place for you from now. Not sure why the mere existence of a waiting list is confidential though, that seems nonsense and I would ask for clarification on that. They couldn't tell you now where you would be on it when you moved but there is no reason why they couldn't tell you whether a list exists for the year you want and whether there are any spaces right now. That would be no guarantee of a space in sept though.

If they don't have a place, Staines have no obligation to find you something else until you live there, hence the request for the address proof.

In reality, all you can really do in this case is move and then Staines will have an obligation to you to find a place somewhere.

There is no way to get rid of the risk your DD might end up in a school you don’t like.

Combining lives when you have kids is difficult. Personally I wouldn’t risk it unless there were a number of good schools to choose from and a few had confirmed in year vacancies.

It's nerve wracking alright but you can only move and then apply. We moved house when DC were in years 1 and 4.

As soon as we'd exchanged on the house we applied for schools. I'd phoned around and the two nearest, great schools both said it was unlikely they'd have space for them especially in year 1.

I then rang around other schools in the area to find out which ones had space. I visited a few so that when I put in the form to the council I had ranked the schools with space - if they were going to have a longer journey I wanted it.to be a school I liked. I put the two local schools 1st and 2nd and the the schools with space in order of preference.

About 2.weeks later I got an email to say I'd got our 2nd choice school for both of them and they started a week later.

Thank you so much for all your helpful answers. It meant a lot to me as I am so stressed. I thought that it will be better for my child to change school from new academic year but now I am open to do this at any time. i will have to find out if I have a chance to get to school of my choice. I will talk to principal of my school to contact them. Maybe it will help to find out if they can accommodate my daughter.
Thank you again

In the meantime, have a look at the actual admissions policy (you need the 2023/2024 one) on the website(s) f the school(s) you are interested in. There should be some mention of a waiting list / continuing interest list - or that the school doesn't maintain one, which they are only legally obliged to do (and admit in oversubscription criteria order from) up to December 31st in Reception (or year 7 for secondary)for each intake. You need the section headed 'In-year / mid-year admissions' or 'admissions outside the normal admissions round' or similar wording.