Moving to Berkshire - help needed re schools and place to live!

[Beekay75]

Hi all,

My ex wife has just obtained a court order permitting her to relocate our two children (daughter (12) and son (6)) from Sydney, Australia to the UK - timing uncertain, but likely to be in the next month or so.

My ex wife intends to live with her new partner in St Albans.

My partner, whom I will with live with when we move, lives and works in Ascot and her son goes to Charters.

So we are looking to find a good high school for our daughter somewhere between St Albans and Ascot - when we previously agreed a midpoint it was Gerards Cross, but I have no idea whether there are good schools there.

My daughter is clever, outgoing and well adjusted with an increasing focus on her academic work. Given that she hasnt done the 11+, I guess that limits our options to private schools or good state comprehensive.

I would greatly appreciate your collective wisdom about best schools for daughter and son roughly between Ascot and St Albans.

By my reckoning, it will mean a 30 minute commute to drop the kids to school from both locations. Once I have that sorted out, my partner and I will then look to move closer to the schools to cut this down (without making the commute too long for her son in Charters). Any recommendations about best villages to live around Taplow, Bray, Windsor? I have heard that Maidenhead and Slough are boring.

Thanks so much!

I ask which court because the Australian court may not realise that a child in England will always have one primary address here for the purpose of school applications and each LA will determine this by their own (sensible) criteria if the parents do not agree.

For Herts county council, which covers St Albans:
https://www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/services/schools-and-education/school-admissions/secondary-and-upper-schools/secondary-and-upper-school-places.aspx#makinganapp

Use the address where the child lives most of the time, if they live at more than one address (for example, due to parents separating).

We'll only accept 1 application for each child.
If a child lives at 2 addresses equally, parents / carers should make a joint application naming one address.
If the child's living arrangements change after you apply and they now spend the majority of the week living with a different parent at a different address, send us evidence of the child's new permanent address. We can't use it for allocation purposes otherwise.
This evidence must show that the child lives at the address and that the new arrangement is permanent.
If we receive more than 1 application with different details and parents don't agree, send us court documentation to evidence the address that should be used for admission allocation purposes. If 2 applications are received with different addresses and/or different preferences, neither will be processed until the address issue is resolved.
If we get a paper application and an online application for the same child, we'll process the online application.
Contact us if your child’s address has been disputed and you have court documentation to support their current address and / or living arrangements.

For Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead council, which covers Ascot:
https://rbwm.afcinfo.org.uk/pages/community-information/information-and-advice/schools-and-education/school-admissions/understanding-school-admissions/school-admissions-questions-and-answers

I share joint custody with my ex-partner, and we live at different addresses. Can we pick schools that are mid-distance between our addresses?
While you are not prevented from doing this, it is highly unlikely you will gain entry to these schools, unless you both live in a relatively close area.
School admissions is a single-point-of-entry system. This means that only one residence can be used to determine a child’s distance from their proposed school. Either through a custody agreement, or other registered means, parents are required to show the division of a child’s time between their parental addresses. Whichever parent has the child for the most hours during the school week is determined as the child’s habitual residence for admissions, meaning that this address is the one that will be used to determine distance from a school.
We expect a child’s home address to be a residential property that is the child’s main residence, not an address at which your child may sometimes stay or sleep due to your domestic arrangements. Where the child is subject to a child arrangement order and that order stipulates that the child will live with one parent or carer more than the other, the address to be used will be the one where the child is expected to live for the majority of the time. For other children, the address to be used will be the address where the child lives the majority of the time. Where the child lives equally with both parents and carers at different addresses the authority will consider all available evidence the parent or carer provides in order to confirm which address the authority will use to process the application, for example:
any legal documentation confirming residence
where the child spends the majority of the school week
the pattern of the residence
the period of time over which the current arrangement has been in place
confirmation from the previous school of the primary contact details and home address provided to them by the parents
where the child is registered with their GP
any other independently auditable evidence the parents may supply to verify the position
The onus is on parents to liaise with each other regarding their child’s admission, school preferences and school acceptances. Where more than one application is lodged, both will be deemed unprocessable until a consensus is reached. Admissions staff are not able to mediate parental conflicts, so if the parental relationship is contentious, please allow extra time to resolve disputes before the admission deadlines, because processing cannot happen while disputes are resolved, and you may lose out on your school place of choice.