Help/tips on how to get into Holland Park School in-year admission

[asserta]

Both of my children have been privately educated but unfortunately my husband has been made redundant recently and we need to take the kids out of school. My son will be going to Y10 and daughter Y8 in September. I like the sound of HP but we live in a different borough. We are currently renting and can move relatively easily into RBKC. Spoke to the in-year admission person in RBKC who told me that there is huge waiting list and that school is oversubscribed . She also told me that best chances are to live v.close to the school and even that is not a guarantee. Places very close to school are so expensive. Does anyone know a bit more on the catchment area, the actual distance or anything else which may help?. Many thanks in advance.

The waiting list is ordered by the admission criteria, which after special needs/siblings is by distance from school. It's impossible to say how near you need to live to get a place in yr8 and 10, it will entirely depend on who else is on the list and where they live! You basically need to live as close as you can as the school is very oversubscribed and has waiting lists in each year.

Tbh, even living in the actual grounds of the school mightn't help for in-year admissions; vastly oversubscribed schools tend not to have that much movement. It could be literally years before even one place becomes available.
You need a plan B.

One child from our school just missed a place 2 years ago (children further up the same street got in) and has stayed on the waiting list in hope ever since, but there have been only 2 leavers, and those places have gone to looked after children.

I suspect there would be cheaper places to live to be on the waiting list of a very good state school. Try outer surburbs, or for example a school like Drayton Manor in Ealing. I'm surprised at Holland Park's reputation to tbh as I don't know anyone in K & C who has chosen to send their children there as most residents are rich enough to go private. Maybe that is just an old view, but I suspect you would get a more balanced intake in a school which was in a less expensive residential area.

A way of checking how oversubscribed is to just look at the nos of places and nos of applicants for Year 7, usually published by councils, which usually give distance for last applicant who got in. That is a good indication of how difficult it is to really get in. For example a comprehensive near us, had applicants getting in from 4 km away, which showed that it wasn't oversubscribed, as places were only given on distance criteria.

Asserta,

As you will gather from the above comments, cathment is irrelevant for in-year admissions (ie those other than for the end of Y7).

To get a place at a school that is already full, you need someone to leave AS WELL AS being at the top of the waiting list when that place arises. And you need the places to arise in the right year group.

So you could move to a tent on the school dorrstep, and may not get a place for YEARS because no-one may leave - or because someone does leave but the place goes to someone higher up the admissions criteria (e.g. a looked after child or a child with a statement of SEN or a sibling of an existing pupil i the school operates sibling priority)

I am afraid that you can't just move into the catchment and expect to be given a place, let alone 2. If you had done this e.g. at the end of Year 5 or beginning of Year 6, moved into catchment and applied in the normal admissions round, then you might well obtain a place (afte investigation to check e.g. that the house that you had moved to was your true main residence), as at that point they are admitting hundreds of pupils. As an in-year applicant, you are a) at the mercy of someone leaving and b) distance is only one of the criteria by which the waiting list operates.

Like Swanhilda I would suggest looking further out. I know of students who have done very well at Drayton Manor, Chiswick Community School & The Green School. I am surprised your DS has not been offered a bursary by his existing school to finish his GCSEs, I thought most schools would offer this, especially if you are renting and presumably don't have substantial assets to draw down on.