In year application for year 10 moving from NZ

[RosieBristol77]

Hi Mums, hoping some wise souls can help me.

I am a Brit wanting to move home to Bristol next year - we have completed year 7 applications already for our twins - hoping for City Academy which is closest for us and grown in reputation. Our problem is our 14 year old who we need to get into year 10 for Sept 2026. As a summer born kid she will be ''out of her chronological age group".

What is the best course of action for us? I am guessing we need to try and get her place sorted in time for her to do term 6 of year 9 as otherwise we will be trying to sort her place on the first day of term in September. Schools won't consider places until 4-6 weeks before you want your kid to start. It's such a nightmare trying to move from NZ also ! We do have a registered address sorted in BS5 and I hope that if our twins places are sorted for City academy in March then she'll have more of a chance to get in there too.

My big worry is that she'll be allocated some out of town school only because they have a place.

Can we throw out as many in year applications that I can and hope to get a place? I assume Bristol council can give me a rough idea of capacity in certain schools?

Am well aware that this is all complicated by it being the start of her GCSE years - arrrgh! Am so homesick and need to come home, just can't believe how hard this bit is!
Any help appreciated thanks :-)

Is private an option?

As in for two years just to get her through her GCSEs - got to be mindful a lot of schools start GCSE content in year 9

@Radiator981 Thanks so much for this! Sadly no, private is out of the question. Yes, our moving timeframe for schooling is so tricky🙁

Out of year is tricky.

schools don’t like it because performance measures are by age.

is she behind or ahead of where she should be?

yes, Bristol council will be able to give you some idea of which schools have places.

@Octavia64 hi thanks; she'd be ahead of where she needs to be and its only as we will be moving over from NZ and they don't do GCSE's here!

I may have misunderstood you, but if she would be out of her chronological age group going into y10 then wouldn't it be better to get her into y9 in her chronological age group to give her a chance of a lower pressure year before the onslaught of GCSE's?

It wouldbe way easier getting a y9 place as a lot if kids move schools for y9.

I think she is turning 15 in the summer, so will be year 11 age rather than year 10.

Depending on what she wants to do post-16, I guess the other option would be home education for a year, taking a handful of the most relevant GCSEs as a private candidate. Some sixth forms/colleges would waive their entrance requirements for someone who has come in from abroad.

Given that she's a summer birthday, though, going into year 10 is probably best for her.

Ah ok. If she'd officially be supposed to go into y11 then it moving to the UK that summer is pretty much the worst thing you could possibly do to sabotage her education and life chances. Do you absolutely have to do this?

One thing you could do - still ££ but mich cheaper than a private school - is to start her off into y10 right now using Kings Interhigh or similar online school - cost is about £7k per year but you can do a rolling contract so may not need to do as much as a full year. Then when you finally move she can keep going with online school until you have a suitable place sorted. If they only allow her to join y11 she will at least have covered most of the syllabus online and be used to the uk styles of doing things so hopefully won't be too far behind as exams will come very soon after. If she is allowed to join y10 the online preparation will hopefully mean she's a lot more secure in her knowledge and settles in quicker.

Your twins may or may not get places in City Academy. They will (or should be) bottom of the admissions priority list as you aren't living there yet. If you used your planned bristol address on the application that was fraudulent and the places can be removed if this isn't spotted before places are allocated. Unless you are one of the specific exceptions (eg demobilised military moving back to uk) you have to use the actual residential address where the child is actually living at the application deadline. However, the school doesn't typically nwed to apply oversubscription rules so you may be ok so long as you were honest on the form - a correct non-fraudulent on-time application from 1000 miles away will get a place in the first round if first round applications aren't sufficient to fill up the PAN which is 195. In most years the school does eventually fill up to PAN but this includes a significant number of pupils who applied unsuccessfully elsewhere, and those pupils will be behind your twins in the queue, so your twins have a decent chance.

After the 1st September, your twins will hopefully be on the roll of the school and will be able to start. At that point, your 15yo will become top of the priority list for admission into year 10 if a place becomes available because she will now have sibling priority - so that may be the mechanism that's most successful - in which case the benefit of having continuity of an online school during the chaos and uncertainty might just be sufficient to help your 15yo to survive it.

@lanthanum @FenceBooksCycle
Gosh thank you both so much for your considered and detailed responses.
She will be starting year 10 here in NZ in Feb so will have the majority of that under her belt pre starting in year 10 Bristol in September. I'm not thinking of her starting year 11 in the uk; only year 10 as a summer born kid.

I was honest in my application re residency. They know we have a secured address in Bristol that we will be in by August and that we currently reside in NZ.
I think you're right - the mechanism for getting them in will be through the twins ... we will know by march if the twins got in and can go from there I guess.
I know it's a less than ideal time to move back - if we don't do it now we would have to wait until the end of my eldest's education and the NZ education system is less than ideal.

THanks again so much for the helpful feedback!

The vast majority of state schools will not allow her to start year 10 when she is a year older and should be starting year 11. You might have more success with her doing this if you were considering independent schools.

i wouldn’t be so sure that she will be up to speed either. The curriculum content will be very different to what she has studied in many cases. There is also the issue about year 9 gcse teaching which she will have missed.

my nephew was put into this situation and it was unfortunately a disaster and resulted in him not fulfilling his potential. even things like maths which you would expect to be universal were very different. He was significantly behind despite being bright simply because the content covered in earlier years was so different and teachers don’t have time to go over it again for the sake of one person.

I think some schools are sympathetic to putting someone in the "wrong" year group in this sort of situation. Not all are quite so hung up on the league tables as others. So it's worth asking, but you might need to get on and ask the hypothetical question so you know which schools might be in the running.

If you find you're just getting the answer no, I wonder whether 14-19 schools/UTCs/free schools might be more flexible on year group. For instance the admissions policy at IKB Academy has a section on "Out of age group applications", as does Bristol Free School. It's probably also the case that undersubscribed schools will be more willing than others; they're not having to turn away someone who might in some sense be more entitled to they year 10 place.

Backwell school accepts out of year group admissions and is well regarded, albeit not that near the right part of Bristol

@herebehippos @lanthanum @user927464
Thanks; out of year kids aren't so unusual since Covid from what I can gather and she will only be a couple months older than the eldest kid in that year 10.
Thanks for heads up about backwell and the free school. I hadn't heard of IKB academy so thank you - shall check 😀

Homesick happens. I know the feeling but comfort comes with experience and the times ahead can help you settle in fine.