London primary schools - how do I go about this?

[EvieBear]

I am new to London and have a 10 month old- how do I go about getting her into a good state primary school? We are probably here for the long term

Is there anything I need to be doing now? I want to avoid major panics when the time comes.

Thanks!

I think you need to find God and/or convert to Catholicism about now don't you?

I think state primary schools are just about where you're living when they're the right age to start school. So, nothing to do now except maybe choose to live v v near whatever the best local state school is ...

1. Move right next door to a good school
2. Find religion

Nothing you can really do as schools change over time. You can't out her name down until she is 3.

or move to the house directly next door to a good school

Thanks - I am Catholic and she is baptised but do I need to go to church and have a good record of attendance etc?

Oh yeah. You really do and you need to do stuff to help towards teh parish.

Yes, you have to attend most weeks (I understand most churches have a book you sign in, so that the Priest can sign your application form when the time comes)

If you are Catholic wouldn't you already have good attendance.

Don't know why everyone is being so snarky with you but here is my experience--DD1 is starting reception in Sept so all very fresh in my mind!

It totally depends on where you live. The borough I'm in is very oversubscribed so you don't necessarily get into the school you're closest to and there are 'dead zones' where you're just too far away (despite being in walking distance!) to any school to be offered a place in the first round and have to wait for the waiting lists to clear.

School places are allocated in this order:

1. Children in care
2. Siblings of children already attending the school
3. If a church school, church members with a signed form from the priest (this is why many people suddenly find religion around their child's 3rd birthday)
4. Distance

Your child will start the september after he turns 4. You fill out the application and list your top 3 choices and then you hang around and wait for about 4 months to see if he gets a place anywhere. It's not something you need to worry about at all right now, unless you have an opportunity to move--then you can be very careful about where you move to.

There are 4 very good schools in walking distance from us and 2 of them have bulge classes this year so I knew we would get in to one of them. We're not religious so I listed the 3 closest non-church schools (one not in walking distance.) We got our first choice. But! This school had a bulge class last year, taking in 90 students instead of 60, and this year is taking 60 again. So 37 of those 60 places were allocated to siblings and someone at the end of our road didn't get a place.

Look up your council's website and see what they have to say on school placements.

Forgot to say, if you are religious and there is a school affiliated with the church you go to regularly, you're all set!

Thanks letsblow, yes, they were being quite snarky weren't they?! Hmm... Maybe because it's Sunday night?

Anyway thanks for your comprehensive reply, it really helped. I find that a lot of people I ask who live near me shy away from the topic when when I bring it up. Cheers again!

As others have said, if you are going down the religion route then fine, but even then beware the limits.

Phone the councils up and get them to send you the information you need or go online (but double check the accuracy with the CC) and check just what the applicable criteria were and the relevant distances for the school of your choice.

If, like me you are not settled in an area, then you can look around and then decide where you live, to get the school you want. If you are already stuck with a house and cannot move, then it is a whole different ball game.

In my area of London there's a book at the back of the church to sign when you attend Mass; this is used to check up on your attendance when it comes to school application time. I've heard of another local church where they hand out attendance slips at the start of Mass and collect them in at the end to ensure that you actually stay for the whole thing rather than just turn up to sign. So in my area yes, if you are thinking in terms of a Catholic primary school for your DD you should be attending Mass at least three Sundays out of four. And even then it's tricky because a lot of Reception places are taken by siblings of children already in the school. For September 2009 there was a grand total of seventeen places available to Reception entrants who didn't already have a sibling at the school.

It might not be so bad in your area, though.

And don't assume that a school is good because it's a church school. Many are crap - and a crap Church school is particularly crap.

Who is being sarky?

snarky, not sarky.

It's actually moderately difficult to establish good attendance at one particular church even if you are a practising Catholic -- generally they want to see three weekends out of four in your home parish church and if you go away at weekends (which I know we did a lot when DS was small) that's pretty difficult. It's not as if you have a logbook that you can carry around and get stamped by the priest wherever you happen to be.

(Disclaimer: am not a practising Catholic and am not sending my DCs to a Catholic school. But if I had been and had wanted to then it would have been very difficult to establish the requisite attendance even though (again, assuming I were a practising Catholic) I'd have been attending Mass somewhere three weeks out of four.)

A good starting point is the Good School Guide which is much more informative than the Ofsted reports. You can buy the book or the online version which is particularly good as you can print out reports you like. Only downside is that many good primary or smaller prep schools are not covered so don't reject schools that you have heard from word of mouth that are good. With secondary schools most very good schools are included and I wouldn't send my child to a school that wasn't included.

RE: the catholic school entrance. There are some excellent catholic (and C0 of E ) schools but they tend to be small often with one form entrance. This presents a problem where there are so many siblings (especially RC schools!). You do need to be practising and visually so, known to priest etc. Some schools entry require baptism very early.

The ideal situation is to fin d an area with 3 or more good schools in catchment so if you don't have luck with your first choice there are various good options.

Who is being snarky then?

I don't know, specifically. I certainly don't think everyone was being snarky. Your "If you are Catholic wouldn't you already have good attendance." could be taken that way, I suppose (given that the answer is no, not necessarily) but I took it as a genuine enquiry.

Most of the early responses are pretty much spot on (albeit brief) when you look at their actual content, but I suppose if you're expecting long involved answers and get a string of one-liners it's tempting to think that people are having a go at you (especially if you asked the question because you genuinely don't know the answer and so you aren't in a position to judge whether the responses have helpful content or not).

OP, it's true. If you are in London the two things you can do now are move as close as humanly possible to a good school and start attending church regularly (if you don't already but have an interest in sending your child to a church school). People who say that may be being mildly flippant, but they also speak the completely non-snarky truth. Other than those two things there's nothing in particular to be done at this stage.

if people want to take that as me being sarky, no n where I come from, then that is their problem.

sarky and snarky are different words, though -- sarky is short for sarcastic (or at least it is where I come from ) and snarky is moody or irritable. Although that's drifting waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off topic and into Pendants' Corner.

Who's being snarky? I certainly wasn't, I was being honest.

Goodness gracious. I meant, answers were flippant and unhelpful. Being told you need to move to an area with good schools is not advice at all as 1)everyone already knows that and 2)it might not be an option. Also things like "I think you need to find God and/or convert to Catholicism about now don't you?" very unhelpful without any kind of background. As iniquitous as church schools are, they are a fact of life in London and do skew the admissions process so parents need to figure out if they're going to have to go to church or not.

I don't see how you can be so flippant about an issue that causes a lot of people a lot of anxiety. Perhaps none of you live in oversubscribed areas and your children will be going to the lovely village school down the road? Not the dump school on the other side of the borough that takes all the kids who didn't get a place at their nearest school because there 40 out of 60 places were offered to siblings?

I wasn't being flippant at all. That is how you go about getting a child into a good state primary.