When to move to secure primary school?

[8DaysAWeek]

DS is 19 months old. He'll be starting primary school in August 2021.

I want to move house to a better catchment area to best secure a place at a primary school which feeds into a good secondary school.

I need to know when the latest is that we can comfortably look to sell up and move. When do you apply for primary school??

In an ideal world I'd be selling up now but of course house prices are so much more expensive in the catchment areas we want and we need to save up as much as possible!

Anyone any experience with this?

December 2020

Sorry posted too soon, applications will close in Dec 2020 so you would need to be in your new home then

Depends a lot on the council area where you will be applying. Many areas you are pretty much guaranteed to get into your catchment school so it wouldn’t really matter. For Edinburgh or Glasgow it may need some planning ahead of time - but others that live there will hopefully be along to advise. Do you have an area in mind?

Also councils have different deadlines, Stirling it is normally a date in January. Others have an enrolment week in November.

Thanks!! So it's for East Renfrewshire. I looked and the deadline this year was end of January. So technically speaking I could move in at the start of January and it wouldn't mean any different from someone who'd lived there for years?

I think start of January would be pushing it, but I'm an anxious sort. You need 2 bills to your address IIRC.

I would be aiming for November at the latest.

Remember you can defer a Jan/Feb baby and you'll automatically have another year of nursery funding.

Thanks PaleBlue I'm an anxious sort too I'm now thinking of starting the moving process at the beginning of 2020 (so 2 years from now) which will give me a year to sell and find something. Was wondering if time in property had any bearing on whether or not you got into a school.

He's a July baby so will def be entering in 2021

In theory you would be fine but as the pp said it’s cutting it v fine. I know some people in other councils that have been fine based on a solicitors letter confirming that missives have been exchanged but this may not hold true for East Ren. I’d call the council and ask their advice. As East Renfrewshire Schools are v popular I’d also look at their policy in the event that a school is over subscribed as that may influence your decision of where to buy.

I've never heard of time in property counting but East Ren does seem to be very full.

A friend's wee girl was in the catchment for St J's but they had to wait to find out if she was actually getting in or not. It was all very strange. Thankfully she did start in August.

Double check the dates (maybe even talk in someone in the council): it may be that enrolment is in November but that you can still apply up to the end of January - in which case you are not guaranteed a place at the catchment school.

I think that was the case in Glasgow - either that or they just hadn't updated their website

Speak to ERC’s education department - they are very helpful and they and only they know the rules, so don’t rely on “advice” from others

In our area it's January, you pitch up at school with your child, their birth certificate or child benefit details, and your council tax bill. We weren't asked for other proof of address. Agree with phoning the council and not cutting ot fine - would be incredibly stressful.

I don’t know if it works in Scotland same as England but in England effective catchment areas vary each year. So, places are allocated to general population after SN, siblings etc. So in one year it could be 2 mile radius, then next year it could be 1 mile radius. Don’t do what we did which is move to a house because current occupants and all their neighbours were in a specific school then find out catchment that year had been halved geographically 😳.

I don’t know if it works in Scotland same as England

It doesn't. Totally different.

All Most Scots understand that we have fixed catchments that don't vary from year to year. In fact, changing catchments involves a formal consultation process and lots of controversy and angst

God wheresmyphone that must have been so stressful!!

Thankfully as pp said it's pretty rigid in Scotland. Good thing too as house prices for these catchment areas are so hugely inflated that I can only imagine a large proportion of people living here do it exclusively for the schools and the uproar if they were to change so regularly and without years and years of notice would be massive.

I didn’t have bills as had just moved but was allowed to use completion on the new house as proof.

8daysaweek

It was. We were so niave.

We left the country in the end (seriously!)

Should have moved to Scotland wheresmyphone

We moved to East Ren last autumn. Registered DD to school in Jan, actually the registration week was in the middle of the month. Had to bring council tax bill, utility bill and (if applicable) child benefit letter (plus the birth certificate).

Ah, they also wanted to see the mortgage statement. We showed the letter from the bank confirming the acceptance of the mortgage, had on us the correspondence with our lawyer about missives etc but that was not necessary,

Darkbendis how did you find the market when looking? And did it take you a while to find somewhere?

Well, it was really crazy, house came on market and was sold within 10 days. We had started looking about a month before, so things went pretty fast. I think we saw about 5 houses during that month. Fortunately we were not in a chain and therefore we could put an offer right away as soon as we found the one that we liked, and we were even luckier that our offer was (only a bit, but enough) bigger than the others. Since we moved here I have seen a couple of properties in our neighbourhood coming on the market and being sold within 2-3 weeks, so it looks like this is pretty common here, houses selling very fast. I suppose the fact that this is such a good catchment area has a lot to do with it.

I'm not surprised. Before we bought the house we're in now we'd put offers on 3 other properties - 2 in giffnock, one in strathbungo, and all 3 went to closing in 1-2 weeks and went for way over the home report so I imagine the same will happen when we're looking to buy again!