School places/moving area/associated panic! (ridiculously & prob unnecessarily long)

[risingpanic]

Am starting to flap about this and am hoping someone can calm me down

DS is in year 6. We are (almost definitely)moving area in the next 6 months, we will be living about 30 miles from where we do now. The move is subject to an office transfer for me which should be a formality, but which can't be confirmed for another 3 months, I therefore dont feel I can look to enter into a lease on a house etc until I have that confirmation in my hand.

Also DS wants to finish school year with his friends (who he has known since 3/4) so plan is to move in the school hols.

The obvious problem is schools. We are moving to a grammar area, DS has sat the exam but I dont think he has passed (he is bright enough to but his primary have never encouraged him...but then this is the only school in the borough with no children on the G&T programme!) I have put other schools on the form but I know places thereare very much catchment dependant and of course our current address is 30 miles from the schools....

I went to an average but not awful school which always had places (we should have been 30 to a class, but were always around 24/25). however I am now flapping - probably far too late in the day - that I have fcuked up DS chances of going to a good school, that there won't ben any places for him in the area & he'll either end up having to go to the one awful school in the new area (all the others are great), or have to travel miles to a school in an entirely different town or worst of all he won't get a place anywhere. He is a lovely boy and has been through an awful lot. I just don't want to let him down by not getting him into a good enough school..........

I think I really need to calm down, but the more I think about it the worse it gets. It doesnt help that Im a single parent and my friends either have no children yet or babies/toddlers so I have no-one in RL to talk to!

Hello Risingpanic.

I suspect you may need to go into more detail, mainly about which area you are moving to, in order to get more detail in your responses. Of course, you may not wish to do that because you may not want to give out personal details.

I don't know the area or the schools, so I don't know what the options are, what the non-grammars are like, what ds's chances of having passed a grammar entrance test are and what the chances are of your ds being able to get into the school that suits him best.

How much information do you have about the various school options in the area you're moving to? do you need more? What, precisely, do you need to know?

The only thing I can say is something very general, based on the experience of friends where I live, which is London. A friend pointed out to me that all schools were full in September of Year 7 but nearly all had vacancies come up over the ensuing year. I know quite a few people whose dc changed school after September Year 7.

Of course, I don't know if that's an option where you are moving. However, it probably is and if so, is quite heartening. Whatever happens in September is not necessarily set in stone.

I also should say that I know many people who haven't moved their dcs - because most schools have worked out and been fine.

Hope it's OK for you.

Cherry - thanks, I hadn't appreciated I'd entirely left out mentioning where the move was to....I am normally quite a coherent person but this is really stressing me out!

DS will - hopefully - be going to school in Chelmsford. The grammar is HIGHLY competitive, hence we're not banking on him getting a place there but thought it was worth a try as its a first past the post system, ie the top 100 or so boys in the test get a place irrespective of where they live etc.

From my research all the non selective schools which would be local to us (about 6) are ok. Some are better than others, but there's only 1 I really wouldnt want him to go to as the results are a lot worse than the others - however that seems to be the only school that is generally undersubscribed.

I am concerned he might end up there- or that he might have to travel a long way (Brentwood or Colchester which are the nearest other big towns) to school if all the Chelmsford ones have no places. Or ending up with no school place at all.

I would be more than happy for him to go to any of the 6 schools but am so concerned he won't get a place at any of them. I put the grammar plus the 3 best on our form....am assuming if none will offer a place & he has failed 11+, we just get offered the nearest available school with a place - which presumably would be where we live now, not based on where we will be living.

I am worried that by the time we move, there will be no place at any local schools, or only at the worst. I am a little encouraged though by what you say about there being places over the course of the year, even though I appreciate its a totally difference LEA etc,