East Ren schools

[Snappyteabread]

Hi - what is the current situation like re getting a place at an East Ren school for S1 start? Someone said that in order to get a place at St Ninian's you need to be in catchment by P4 - is that correct?
If you move to East Ren now, what is the likeliehood of getting a place at an East Ren school? Presumably they have to accomodate you somewhere, but just not sure how much of a nightmare it is currently.
Does anyone have experience of moving to the area?

Anyone...?

We moved to East Ren (and moved DS to a primary school in East Ren) when he was in P5, only a couple of years ago. He had no problem to get a place at a high school in East Ren like the rest of his classmates (not at St Ninians though, but I think he would have got there too if we had chosen St Ninians). He had classmates that moved to his school when he was in P6, they had no problem either to get to the high schools they wanted.

Some of it is just pure luck as if there is a place available and you live in East Ren then the school space is yours.

I think St Ninians has some extra stipulations because it's a faith school.

This is true. When DS moved to his new school we were told they had a couple of available places in his class, but they said they had no spaces in other classes, so if he had been in P3 for example, they couldn't have taken him and we would have had to look for another school.

As St Ninian's is a Catholic high school there are extra stipulations indeed.

We moved into East Ren last year.

Our nearest school is Wood Farm but there wasn't a place there so got sent to Mearns Castle. I was pretty happy with that.

I was told later that if I had pushed the council we would have gotten a place at Wood Farm.

I did look at St Ninians and think that they have a rule that your child has to be baptised a catholic to gain entry. It is heavily over subscribed.

Am I right though that you can only apply for a place once you have moved? So essentially you cannot hedge your bets. You need to move and its pot luck if you get a place or not. I'm so nervous to have the upheval and expense of moving to then find out not getting a place.

Yes, we had to show them a utility bill for the East Ren address, the council tax bill and the mortgage statement (or a lease in case we'd been renting), also they wanted to see proof that the child benefit was being paid to someone registered at address (or proof that we didn't get child benefit, don't remember exactly what in this case, it was a while back). If the child was Catholic, we'd have needed to show them a baptizing certificate (as we are in the catchment for St Ninians). Quite a lot of papers, considering that to register DS to his previous school in Glasgow all I needed was a utility bill OR a council tax bill as proof of address. We were also told that once we were offered the place, we had 30 days to accept the place and for DS to start attending the school, if not we'd have lost the place.

You would have to be specifically at a catholic catchment primary to get a place at St Ninians. I think they're trying to push the baptism certificate thing but I'd imagine under any sort of legal challenge that'd crumble.

At the east ren school my ds is at as know there are dc there by placing request. So you can apply before you move. I did that when my ds was at primary. I did a placing request for an East Ren primary which was accepted in the month of April and then we moved in the October. Ds is going to S1 this year and everyone we kbow who did placing requests were successful but their dc went to the feeder primary.

They have to place you and worst case scenario you'll get waitlisted for your catchment school. After 3 weeks a place became available for us but we decided to stay put. If I had to do it again in your situation I totally would.