Moving house and no reception place 😭

[HalfAwakeInAFakeEmpire]

My family is in the process of buying a new house across the county border, roughly 35 minutes drive from our current address. We have 3 children, aged 6, 3 and 1. Our plan was to move eldest at the end of Y2 so she could start Y3 at the new school. School says she’ll get a place no problem. However, middle child is due to start reception in September. We had to apply for her place at our current local school as applications closed before we found any houses we liked. The school has no history of being oversubscribed so we were hoping to put in for a transfer for her after exchange of contracts and that she’d be able to start reception at the new school as her sister. But I’ve just been told by the school that they have 30 applicants for reception already (first choices) so the class will be full. Turns out the PAN was previously 45 but dropped to 30 this year, so the school will no longer be undersubscribed!

What can we do? I can’t imagine an appeal would work as we would be after all applying (very) late. This is a small village school so alternatives are few and far between, and the closest schools also have small class sizes so no guarantee we’d get a place there either. Is there any way around this that I’m missing or do we need to pull out from the sale? 😭

Just put her on the waiting list, assuming you live quite close, she'll be high up. In the meantime, look for nurseries where she can start instead until there is a place.

The council will have to find ger a place (and provide transport if its over 2 miles away.

If there is genuinely no space anywhere they will direct a school to take an additional child.

I wouldn’t pull out of the sale.

we had this the other way round, there was a Reception place for Sept but no place for my DD going into Y4. Two days before term started in Sept a place became available in Y4.

I wouldn’t pull out from the sale either. Waiting lists can and do change and the new LA has a duty to find a place and provide transport if necessary, as has been said.

Its not ideal for you, but it could be very short term and you can put her on waiting lists for other schools.

What is your child’s birthdate? Theres the option of delaying the start of the school year until theyre actually 5.

There will be a place somewhere, possibly not the same school as eldest. You can't realistically delay as there will soon be a third school place to consider. Update the address when you move and go on wl after allocations day.

Okay guys thank you for talking me off the ledge, we’re not pulling out of the sale 🙈

Still massively anxious about this though 😩 all the other schools are over 2 miles away from the new house so council would indeed have to provide transport but how does that work in practice? I’m not going to put my 4 year old in a bus or taxi by herself! I’d be able to drive her to school 3 days a week but the other 2 days my husband does drop offs and doesn’t drive, public transport to most of the other schools is inexistent so it would be really hard and that’s not even accounting for having to drop off 2 other children at different settings. I guess all we can do is hope that one of those 30 kids that applied is also in the process of moving? 🥴

In the process of moving, decides they are going to defer a summer born child, goes to a private school, decided to home educate.

Honestly, there will be loads of movement between now and September.

Transport would be by bus or taxi, if the nearest primary school was over 2 miles away.

My guess is the councils would fit the child in rather than pay the taxis

Taxis - usually it would be the same driver who you could get to know - and they should be checked out so I wouldn't worry about that either

It would be local authority transport I'm guessing op, so a dedicated driver and a PA

Wouldn’t have a PA in my LA, there’s a reception child who arrives by taxi, just the driver & siblings in the car.