Change of address after school application

[mumofgirls84]

In need of advice. My family and I lived in rented accommodation for two years after my husband's business failed and our home was sold. During our tenancy, we applied for our daughter's secondary school. This was in October 2015. Our daughter's school place was given to her in March but then in May our landlord decided to sell his property and asked us to leave. The only rented accommodation we could find was fairly local but not within the school catchment area. I was told by a friend that my daughter's school place is likely to be withdrawn. My daughter would be devastated as she has many friends who will be attending this school. I have informed the school of our change of address but my friend told me that they will be suspicious that we have cheated our way into the school and she could lose her place even though we have been completely honest. Has anybody else been in this situation?

You need to check what the school admission criteria says. Most Local Authorities work on allocating places based on the address that the pupil was living at on the last day for on-time applications. That would have been the 31st October. So on that basis, there is no need for concern, they cannot take the place of you.

However a few LAs and individual schools now put in a phrase which says that you still need to be at the address at the time you enter the school, that is in September. In that case you might have an issue. If you are not sure what the admission criteria are, PM me the LA and school name and I can check for you.

Is the school their own admission authority or is it an LA maintained school? You should be informing the admission authority of any change of address up until you start at the school, which may be the school or it maybe the LA if it is an LA maintained school. The fact that you have informed the school and they have not queried anything would suggest that there is no issue.

It is a mute point as to whether at this late stage with only a week to go to the end of term as to whether asking questions of the school or LA is the right thing to do or just say nothing more until your daughter has started.

Thank you. The school's admission policy states that you must provide the child's address at the time of application. It says nothing about moving home. I notified both the school and admissions that we have moved and not heard from school but admissions told me that we should be ok as we lived there at the time we submitted the application and moved home through no fault of our own but my friend said the school will be suspicious and raise it. We have nothing to hide but could do without the stress and thought we had our daughter firmly into secondary school.

I think that the school and the LA admissions people have more clout than your friend. If they say OK then it is OK.

Totally agree with the above post. Great advice to get some proof that it isn't your choice to move