Moving to new Borough

[mamirish]

Dear Ladies,
Due to circumstances, we are to move from south to north London. My DS will be starting secondary this Sep and has been allocated outstanding school in current south London borough.

If we take a place near to an outstanding schools, do you think - we will get a place?

Also, which borough in north London is more accommodative as I hear schools are over subscribed.

Thank you in advance.

When are you moving? If you could move very quickly, you would have a better chance of a place as sometimes pupils just don't turn up in September, so a space becomes available. Presumably that isn't possible though, so it's just a case of waiting for a place

I wouldn't know which boroughs to recommend. Presumably you have another reason to move so something else to be close to?

It's not unheard of for DC to be criss-crossing London for their secondary school education. Is it impossible for your DS to attend the outstanding south London school regardless of the move, or is it just undoable?

Which south London Borough and what are transport links like across the Thames? Would somewhere compatible with him at least starting the year at the S.London school also be compatible with where you have to get to yourself? That woukd take the pressure off trying to find a new school immediately, although if he is going to have to move, doing so by the end of year 8, or at least year 9, would ne better than leaving it any longer, wrt elements of the GCSE curriculum being introduced in year 9 in a lot of schools.

Are we talking Ofsted outstanding selective school or outstanding comprehensive, OP? That would make a difference to managing your expectations.

Thanks for the info. We are planning to move during Xmas break so that we know what schools have vacancies. My DC is going school in Richmond borough, Twickenham.

We are open to both comprehensive, grammar and academic schools.

Commute will be huge from north to Twickenham.

This applies to non selective state schools and probably isn't helpful if you want to find him a place in an independent or selective school,

School places will have been applied for last autumn and families will have heard in March. Some will have appealed etc. Many schools aren't oversubscribed but those schools that are will be the ones with a reputation for really good GCSE results, particularly if they also have an outstanding OFSTED rating. In such cases, it doesn't matter if you find a house on the doorstep of such a school, because if they're really oversubscribed, being close enough to have a good chance of a place if you'd applied last year isn't really relevant.

There may be plenty of places at schools which still offer a lot of their students excellent teaching, where some students will learn and do fantastically well, but that are in in less affluent areas and have a more varied intake.

Education is quite unequal in some boroughs, like mine, and very high proportions of amazing GCSE results may be partly due to the intake to start with, and to families who pay for additional support etc.

You probably need to narrow down the areas that you will consider moving to on your other criteria and then find out about all the schools. Try to find out about more than raw results. Do they do that by restricting entry for exams/signing up for options/offrolling/squeezing out pupils who are unlikely to get high grades. If your son is into sport/music or anything else beyond an academic curriculum, what's on offer there?

Particularly as you're moving across London, might it be better that he can go to a school which could teach him well even if it's not the most competitive and oversubscribed school in the area, and where most other kids will live fairly locally, or where he can pursue/develop extra curricular stuff if that's important.?

Good luck.

Thank you so much, it's very helpful, given me a lot to think about.

I've just seen that you're planning to move in the Christmas break, so you know which schools have vacancies. Not sure how this will work, as missing the first term of a secondary school will be more difficult for your son, making a transition to big school and then moving, surely. Also, if schools have places that come up in September, they will presumably want to offer to any waiting list students first, and then to students who can take up the places sooner rather than later. If you're looking for a place for January, the school as well as you and your ds have to deal with big changes and a transition.

Also, schools funding is dependent on them matching number of places to number of students. If a school has planned staffing etc on 10 classes of 27 pupils (270 students) and they find they have 268 at the beginning of the year, they will lose money. If they have even a small waiting list or they have students whose family has just moved into the area and want to start in September, it's obviously better for the school to accept those applicants.

Not necessarily, if she uses the Overground Orange line. But really it’s hard to advise without knowing where in north London you think you might like to live.

Thanks again - I got your point, very helpful.

You can apply for a school place in the new area at any time in the run-up to your move, but (unless the schools are very-undersubscribed) they are unlikely to offer a place based on your address in south London. You are likely to be placed on waiting lists. Once you have proof of address in the new area, you should move up the waiting lists. How long you have to wait is likely to be depend on exactly where you are on the waiting list and how much turnover there is among pupils - some schools have pupils constantly leaving and joining, others don’t.

Actually in my area the new year 11 in September was the last bulge year and school numbers have been falling for some years, and that's now going to be affecting secondaries as well. There are schools in desirable and affluent areas which will still be oversubscribed but there may well be spaces at schools which are rated good and where middle class kids and/or kids whose families don't have money but social capital (conversation, books, activities, community, cultural and/or political engagement, whether church, politics, music and theatre, sports etc) that will really help them at school can do very well too.