Moving seocndary school

[Saphie84]

We are moving house due to DH changing jobs. DD is in first year at secondary but luckily she doesn't seem overly concerned about moving schools and has always taken everything in her stride.

The nearest school is 0.3 miles away from our new house and we would be happy for her to go to this school.

The next nearest school is 1.1 miles away so obviously that wouldn't be unreasonable for her to go there but it isn't a school we would ideally want her to go to.

I'm not sure how places are allocated when you are moving part way through the school year. It is likely to be around January when the move is complete. Anybody have any experience or advice?

I think most applications go through the local council but you could check this on the schools website.
Phone the council and they will advise you as to whether there are spaces available and send forms etc

Waiting lists for Y7 places usually finish in December and after that applications for any place at any time are usually called ‘in-year’.

It is not unusual for the popular schools to not have places. The LA will allocate a place but it maybe many miles away and a school at the bottom of everyone’s preference. You can go on waiting lists and places will be given according to oversubscription criteria - so if proximity is one of the criteria being close to the school is great. You can go down a waiting list if someone comes along later who is closer or fits into a higher preference such as LAC.

Appealing for a place is an option but you will need to prove why that school in particular meets the needs of your DD. If they don’t offer you any place anywhere in a timely manner there is something called the Fair Access Protocol I’ve seen mentioned before on these types of threads but not familiar with exactly how that works.

What PettsWood says. The LA will allocate you a school. If there’s nothing available in your preferred schools, you might be offered an undesirable school miles away.

If you can only get on the waiting list for the nearest school, ask questions about that - where you'll be on the list, and how often they tend to get places becoming available. Your position on the waiting list will likely depend mainly on how close you live. If you'll be at the top of the waiting list, and it's an area that has some movement, you might stand a good chance of that turning into a place, at least by year 8. If you're tenth and turnover is low, it might be better to assume she needs to go somewhere else. The difficult one is if she's got settled in at another school and then a place comes up at the first choice, and you have to decide whether to move her.