Moving out of area school admissions

[Supermom5]

Looking for some advice from fellow parents who may have some experience in this area. We are moving out of Hertfordshire in about a years time to be nearer family in Bath with our two children starting secondary school next year. We will initially be living with family until while we sort out our own place. We want to apply to a faith school (baptised Catholics) in that area and we have a forwarding address which we will put on the application. I know it may get tricky as we have not officially moved there yet and have no utility bill. We are not sure whether to apply for a Hertfordshire school place as first choice then place an in year admission to this oversubscribed school once moved or shall we just go ahead and apply for this school anyway as our first choice using the forwarding address? I know faith schools have their own admissions criteria but what are our chances of getting into the bath school with just a forwarding address? Any advice is welcome we are in quite a dilemma.

The simple answer is that the admissions process is all about where the child lives on the date that you completed the form and the last date which counts as an on-time application. In other words you have to put down the address you are living at on the 31st October 2017 for admission in September 2018.
You cannot put down what is a forwarding address legally. If you do this and it is discovered then your place will be withdrawn.
What you could do depending on when you are moving apply and put down the bath school as first preference from your address in Herts. Given the Bath school is over-subscribed the probability is that you will not get a place as you are almost for sure going to be right on the end of the admission list.
If you leave it till you move then there is also a probability that you will find it difficult to get a place on appeal if the school is full

You should only use your actual address - using a different address is fraud.

You've actually got a hope of getting a place honestly if your address in Hertfordshire doesn't come into an official catchment area of a local catholic school. Both the Catholic school in Bath and the other nearby one in Bristol have a category in their admissions for places for Catholic children who don't live in the defined catchment area of a Catholic school, which is a quite high priority.

I was going to say the same as itly - are you currently in the designated area for a Catholic secondary school? If not, even from your current address you come under category 1c for St Gregs ("Baptised Catholic children who do not have a designated school to attend"), which is straight after Catholic LAC and Catholics in the local designated area. Places usually go to locals of other Christian denominations, and you'd be higher priority than them.

Otherwise, when you move you'll be high up the criteria so a waiting list place should appear. In the mean time, you might want to consider St Marks (CoE) - it's undersubscribed, but in a federation with St Gregs. So if that's where you're ultimately aiming for, St Marks might give you a bit of a flavour of it so it's not such a big move if and when the waiting list place comes up.

Thank you all. Spindelina your advice re: the two schools was useful, thanks. We decided to apply for the catholic school that we are in the catchment for here in Herts. There is another good policy on the council website which they don't place with the admissions policy which is really useful. This policy allows you to place a transfer application 20 school days before the end of the summer term to your desired school. So the council confirmed this and told us that would be our best option, apply in Herts as normal then place a transfer application then. Really useful to know this as by then we should have moved already. There is hope yet.

Re: forwarding address, when we enquired with the admissions team at the desired school, they said to place a cover note about our intention to move and place that address as a point of contact, even though they wouldn't use it until we officially moved there, so would never do anything fraudulently was just trying to follow advice. We were given lots of conflicting advice it nearly put us off moving, been such a headache! Thank you all for the useful advice, much appreciated