Moving house/school in year 7.

[Darkchocolatedigestive]

Hoping someone wise will be able to offer advice. My husband took a new job 200 miles away last autumn. He is away a lot but we haven't moved yet because we wanted to see how it went and because his new job is based in London and property in the SE is so expensive. We've got 3 kids including a daughter currently in year 6. I've been trying to persuade DH that we need to move now in order to get our daughter a school place somewhere/anywhere so she can start year 7 at the same time as her peers. He is anxious about his job and thinks we should wait till he has done a year, feels more settled etc and we can work out finances. I'm panicking because I know as we've missed admission deadlines most of the good schools i hear about and contact have waiting lists of 80 or something ridiculous and in order to even put DD on a waiting list we have to contact our LEA and ask for her to be removed from her secondary school place here. Then if things go pear shaped with the move she will end up with nowhere to go to school. I was wondering if it might be easier for us to wait till she was in year 7 and then contact schools and see if there are spaces as presumably i wouldn't have to remove her from her secondary school in order to put her name on a waiting list where she might have a chance of getting in? Or is moving mid-year/end of year 7 at secondary school so awful, that we're best moving now, hoping for the best and getting her in somewhere . Or…maybe it is easier to get a mid-year admission somewhere half decent because some kids just decide a particular school isn't for them? Sorry this is so long winded but I'd be very grateful to hear from anyone who has moved their kids end of y6/ or mid-year 7 or 8. I'm feeling rather lost!

and in order to even put DD on a waiting list we have to contact our LEA and ask for her to be removed from her secondary school place here

I am not an expert, but I don't think that's right. I think you can apply for any school you want and if you best meet the criteria you'll get the place. You don't need to give up your place to apply for others.

However you do need to apply from the address your DD is resident at, which means one 200 miles away from the proposed new school, so the only way you'd be top of a waiting list is if no one else was waiting (unless perchance DD is ex-LA, or medical criteria etc.

To get a place at your preferred school you need to move close to it and then apply, I think, and hope there is waiting list movement. In the meantime you'd need to accept a place at a less preferred school that actually had spaces.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will be along in a minute.

Don't panic! I live in London, people move around a lot. In my dd's school in-year admissions in Y7 and Y8 are fairly common. The school is used to this and helps them settle. One of my dd's good friends started in January of Y7 and honestly she is fine.

Those schools you contacted have waiting lists now, but after September it will be a completely different picture.

As TeenAndTween says you need to apply from the address where your DD is resident. For most state schools, most places are allocated based on distance from the school. I can't see there is much point applying now when you are 200 miles away.

Waiting lists are held in order of how they meet the admissions criteria, so you need to be at your London address and apply from there.

Lots of places became available in DC's London comp in Yr 8 - as someone said, people move house a lot in London. Maybe your best bet would be to move to somewhere on the doorstep of a school you like and that has distance and siblings as criteria. Once one of your children is in, the other immediately becomes a priority as a sibling, and will shoot to the top or near the top of the waiting list.

Thanks so much everyone, that's really reassuring. Will report back to my daughter too as she is worried that if she joins mid-year everyone will have made friends straight away and she'll be permanently left out