Anyone with experience of moving schools please?

[3littlebears]

Hi. We are thinking of moving about 15 miles away, so not possible to keep the boys at their current school. I have DS1 starting Y3 in September when DS2 other will be joining Reception. Not likely to move before he starts. How on earth do I get them into a new school? All the schools we like around here and new house are hugely oversubscribed. Even if we got one of them in, what do we do whilst we wait for a place to come up for the other? How traumatic will this be for the boys? Does anyone have experience of doing this or any advice please?

We're HM forces so my dd has experienced 3 primary schools since reception and is now in yr 3. Although the rules for forces are slightly different, you will need to have a fixed address and be living there (or at least the house gone through officially) before they will offer a place. The date for reception children for September 2010 has gone but there may be spare places. My DS moved into reception Sep 09 after us moving here in April 09 and DD went into yr 2 until July 09. They are used to moving and most schools have a really good settling in policy and usually have a buddy system for a few weeks until they've settled. Once you're children have started at their new school, the new school will send for your DS1's previous records and you will take the Learning Journey from preschool if your DS2 went to one.

Most LAs will not accept a request for a school until you have a permanent address - some will allow you to make the request before you move in. So the first thing to do is to ask the Local Authority Admission office exactly what they require and when.

Having found this out you have to accept that you have a difficult problem, given you have two children and one of them is potentially an infant class size case. So to me the key issue is where is there a potential place for your reception class child. Ask the LA for this information. You have a much better chance of getting your year 3 child in on appeal than the reception year child, especially if the school has a reception place. You might have to accept that this is going to be a school that you do not want.

You can ask for your reception child to go on the waiting list for any school you want and you should do this as well as appealing for a place at all the schools you want. I would actually make the assumption that your year 3 child could if absolutely neccessary still go to the school 15 miles away, it is your reception child that is going to be the difficult one.

Thanks for all your advice. I admire you and your kids luciemule. Must be tough moving so often. Sounds like co-ordinating school places willbe as tricky as I thought. Lots of perseverence and luck required! Thanks again.

Also, the school secretary told me that they had places, even though the LEA were being really arsy about it. She said the LEA make you jump through red tape/hoops/whatever phrase is, and that they were fine with our application and thought there would be no probs. Once DS was in at reception, she said there would be no probs getting DD in.

It's because reception have strict rules on the class limit whereas older yr groups have more spare places allocated over the 30 requirement.