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Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

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Original poster

scottish primary schools-finding out if child has a place?

19 replies

colie · 04/03/2010 11:20

Done a few previous posts on this topic!!

Dd1 starting p3 end of March in a school just outside Glasgow. Dd2 starting p1 in August.

When will I find out Dd2 definately has a place. In January Dh had to go in with her birth certificate etc. and register her. Don't know if that means she has a place. It was the school local to the catchment area she is registered in.

Do the school tell you there and then (so in other words Dh was probably told) or do you get a letter?

Sorry Dh is useless. When I ask him questions on it he just tells me yes she is in .

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Chrysanthemum5 · 04/03/2010 12:17

Hi
If you are registering a P1 child in your catchment school then the school is legally obliged to give you a space (providing you were living in the catchment on a certain date which it sounds like you were). They have no legal obligation to take older children, but they do try to keep families together
HTH

SpicedGerkin · 04/03/2010 12:19

If it's the catchment school, you'll just get the info for visits etc.

If outwith it depends on the LA, so phone them and ask, i think we found out at the end of March though.

Original poster

colie · 04/03/2010 14:06

Thanks ladies. Dh came back with info letter about visit days. Though think there was a reply slip on it so will to need to make sure he sent it back.

yes he took proof to the school that we lived in catchment area so presume she is in then.

Dd1 starts on tuesday 29th april so at least we got her in too.

Thanks again,

OP posts:

mum2all · 04/03/2010 21:24

Hi, Just a query with Chrysanthemum - are you sure? we have children registered for our village school (their catchment) who have been allocated a P1 place on the other side of town? In our LA you don't usually find out for definite until mid April

Linnet · 04/03/2010 21:30

When I registered dd2 last January for P1 I kept waiting for a letter arriving in April. A letter was never arriving so I popped into the school office,she was at the nursery at the school, to check when I would be getting a letter and was told that if dd2 had a place we wouldn't get a letter you just had to assume that you had the place. If however you didn't get a place they sent you a letter.

I thought it was a bit odd to be honest as I'm sure that when I registered dd1 I got a letter saying that she had a place.

But I'm not sure if every school does it that way or just ours.

Original poster

colie · 04/03/2010 22:24

Oh think I am going to have to phone the school again . I am getting quite anxious about it all now.

I was told by Glasgow schools that if they have a place in a year group your child is in then they cannot refuse your child that place. As in, school I want my kids to go to has a p3 space so they have to let her have it.

Also this school, not within Glasgow, has told me if I registered Dd2 for starting at this school with proof DH is living in catchment area then they will provisionally keep her a place and as long as DD2 is living at the address by May she will get that place.

Think I will check with DH tomorrow if he has actually sent the reply slip back to say that Dd2 will be attending the open/welcome days.

OP posts:

bigstripeytiger · 04/03/2010 22:30

I think in Scotland if you are living in the catchment then you get a place.
With my DDs we didnt get any formal letter from the school until a few weeks before the end of the summer term, but there was no doubt about the place.

AgentProvocateur · 04/03/2010 22:35

If you live in the catchment area, you get a place in P1 automatically, and further up the school if there is a place.

If you put in a placing request, they let you know by April.

StewieGriffinsMom · 04/03/2010 22:36

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

Chrysanthemum5 · 05/03/2010 16:04

Yes, should have been clearer the rule applies in Scotland.

StewieGriffinsMom - Sciennes is stupidly over-crowded, mainly because the council forced the school to take 36 out of catchment children in addition to the 75 catchment children. Apparently the new P1 is heading the same way!

weegiemum · 05/03/2010 16:10

We got a letter in April for the places our kids got but we were going for a placing request at the Gaelic school.

With our eldest daughter she just went to the local school and we heard nothing till we heard about visits.

If it is a placing request you do need to wait and hear as I think the Gaelic school has had to turn people down.

Even though I'm in Glasgow have heard about Sciennes - its nuts!

StewieGriffinsMom · 05/03/2010 18:42

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Message withdrawn

mum2all · 05/03/2010 21:20

I agree StewiesMom but with way things are going all schools could be heading the same way - don't even get me started on the class size 'commitment' hoo ha!

Original poster

colie · 05/03/2010 21:40

Last night I thought "it can't be right, that a school has to take every child in it's catchment area". Though, I couldn't think of anyone not getting their child in to their catchment school in Glasgow.

What does a school do if one year it has 80 kids starting p1 and the next 50? How could any school plan for this. Are schools given the birth rates for their catchment area each year. . Though even that fact wouldn't be an exact science because people move.

Right, so Dh is right to be getting a bit peed off with me. I should just trust him that Dd2 will start in August.

OP posts:

TheCrackFox · 05/03/2010 21:49

I didn't understand all the hoo-haa about Sciennes primary because all the surrounding primary schools are good too.

TBh if they are teaching children in corridors etc then I wouldn't want my child to go there. It sounds horrific.

StewieGriffinsMom · 05/03/2010 22:33

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

Chrysanthemum5 · 08/03/2010 18:15

StewieGriffinsMom - not really. They had their catchment children, but then took on 36 out of catchment children. The parents who threatened legal action were all out of catchment. It is a good school, but not any better than the other local schools (which for some reason were all allowed to limit their intakes when Sciennes wasn't!). And the overcrowding is crazy there.

celtiethree · 09/03/2010 21:55

Hi, my understanding:

If a school doesn't have enough space for catchment children then the council isn't obliged to offer a place in that school. What they have to do is offer a place at another school - but they will have to pay for transportation costs to that school (as was the case this year in Dunblane).

For placement requests a council can reject but if a class size is less than 30 they will be forced to take the placement request - this has been proved in the courts in many cases recently - hence the SNP commitment to passing legislation to limit P1 to 25 (though they haven't the money to do this).

For the Sciennes primary - was it the case that school had tried to implement smaller classes but the council were forced to admit the placement requests because they knew they would lose at the Sheriff Court?

Chrysanthemum5 · 10/03/2010 09:24

Celtiethree - that was the problem at Sciennes. They had already decided on two classes of 25, plus a double class of 40 with two teachers, plus a P1/P2 class so had no argument against upping the classes of 25 to 30 each.

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