Moving to Suffolk - Local High school is full in catchment area

[SirDave]

Hi and HNY.
Has anyone moved to a new county / area and tried to get their child (12 yrs) into the local High school, to be told it's full and no places available ( so on waiting list ). What can be done if no place comes available ..for months ?!

Has anyone been in this situation before ?

Have they offered a place at a different school? The local authority has an obligation to offer a school.plsce within reasonable distance (this doesn't have to be the catchment school)

There won’t be many tbh I imagine
Most would have made enquiries before the move?

I've moved to a new county where one got a place at secondary and the other didn't get a primary place at our catchment school. I had only applied there and they didn't say 'you can have a place here instead' and I had to contact the schools myself to find out where there was a place available.

Thank you for your replies. We have made the high school enquires before we move there, which will be in late February, so we have been on the waiting list since beginning of December. I just wanted to ask what if a place didn't become available as there is only one school in the catchment area.
The local authority has said we can do no more but to contact them if the wait is long.

Where about in Suffolk?

You don't have to (or have the right to) go to a catchment school. You can apply to any school.

They aren’t obliged to offer a place until you are resident there.

If your catchment school is still full when you move, they will allocate the nearest school with places available and a taxi or bus pass, whatever is cheapest.

We moved when DD was 12 and applied first from old address and put on waiting list. We moved very close to school and DD went to number 2 on list but we did get in on last day of term. Had to keep in contact with school as well as LA. School let us know a place was available.

If it hadn't been LA would have needed to allocate us another school which could be anywhere within county. Over a certain distance they have to provide transport. I live in a neighboring county to Suffolk and we have a lot of children commute from Suffolk to here, about 45 minutes on bus.

If there are no places available within a reasonable distance (but Secondary so how long is a piece of string re reasonable distance!) then the LA can make the catchment school accept your child under Fair Access , but I am not sure if you have to initiate this.

Thank you all for your replies..it does sound more hopeful that the LA can help more than I thought, and fair access could help too, so hopefully, when we get into the new house in Woodbridge, we can get daughter into one school, even though it may be further away.

No advice but welcome to Suffolk in advance! 😊

The school in Woodbridge, Farlingaye,is ludicrously popular. You are not that far from Ipswich though. There may well be spaces there and you’ll join the waiting list for Farlingaye.

On that list Bubbles and anxiously waiting :-)