Applying for primary school place outside of LEA

kimmi_b

Hi

My DS will be starting school September 2011 and we will soon need to start the application process for her school place. The school I want her to attend is in a different county. Does anyone on here have experience of applying to a different LEA and how successful have you been with your application?

Any advice gratefully received!

chelle230

Not me personally, but my friend has, she applied for 1 school within the area, and 1 outside as it was closer to her parents, her son got accepted for both so then she just had to choose which to send him to. he is now going to the local one, but at least the choice was there

kimmi_b

Great, good to hear that it can be successful!

mum2one

Again, not me but a friend, she didn't want her local school, she had to apply there, but also one outside the area, it was a little country school, she was told that the 1st places were for people in the area, then outsiders, originally it was full, then her friend who lived in the catchment area, and whose child was allocated a place, they moved so my friends child got the place.

Good luck with it xx

Rainey_LB

I work in a primary school, we have quite a few from out of the county as we are close to the border....what I would say is check with the admissions teams in each area the deadlines etc as they sometimes vary and if you are applying for a church school etc make sure you have filled in both the county application and the schools own application and most importantly return it all on time....late and incomplete applications are dealt with last!!

kimmi_b

That's great, thanks for the advice - didn't consider the difference with application dates either so will check those out tomorrow!

flea72

you have to apply via your own LEA, even if you want to attend a school in another LEA

the selection process is the same for every school. you submit your forms, and the councils then make a decision based on each schools selection criteria - it doesnt matter whether you live in the same county or not, you will be assessed in the same way as all other children who apply for a place at that school

most schools allocate places based on the criteria of 'cared for' children, siblings in catchment, catchment, siblings out of catchment, then all others (apart from 'cared for' these are all then further reduced by distance to school)

if the school you want to attend works in this order, then you are basically at the bottom of the list for getting a place

contact the schools and ask them which criteria was their cut-off for the current school year, as this can give a rough guide on your chances of getting in

maybe contact the local pre-school and see how many children they have who are due to start school sept 11, again would give you an idea on numbers

hth F

Counting_Pennies_2

I would check with both your LEA and the LEA of the school you want.

In my area you used to be able to apply for a school through the other county, and then your back up school within your own LEA, and both counties were non the wiser that you were effectively bidding for two schools.

They have now become wise to this, and so they now have a criteria that you have to apply through your own LEA for the school of your choice in both our county and the other one. They are starting this rule this year, which is quite tricky, and not sure how it will pan out, as Oxfordshire announce places much earlier than our local LEA, so not sure how fair it will pan out.

So definitely do find out when the admission process occurs for the county you want to apply to and see if you can also apply to your county for a local school as a back up.

See also how oversubscribed the school is. You should be able to request statistics from the council as to how many children didn't get in to the school each year, this will give you an indication of how difficult it will be for you.

Check the admission criteria of the school, is it the LEA/council or the school themselves who do the selection, mostly it is councils nowadays. Is it a faith school, can you get your vicar to put in a good word, followed up by the baptism certificate?

We tried to get in to a school in the county that borders our village for my son, sadly it is an oversubscribed school, and despite the faith 'card' were unable to achieve it. We ended up number 6 on the waiting list, and have since been bumped back to somewhere in the 20s, so no chance at all. Luckily we did finally get in to our village school that is also oversubscribed, we too were on the waiting list there, but thankfully made it in to that school!

hth

Good luck

onlyroz

When I applied for schools, despite being on the border of three counties I was only given the paperwork to apply for schools in my own county. I'm not sure what the procedure would have been to apply for a school in a different county, but I guess it would have been possible. Contact both LEAs for advice.

Spendless

Def check the criteria for both areas. My area does NOT do siblings before catchment for community schools. Faith schools each have their own individual criteria which may not follow the same order as community schools in the area.

Rainey_LB

flea72 wrote: »

you have to apply via your own LEA, even if you want to attend a school in another LEA

the selection process is the same for every school. you submit your forms, and the councils then make a decision based on each schools selection criteria - it doesnt matter whether you live in the same county or not, you will be assessed in the same way as all other children who apply for a place at that school

most schools allocate places based on the criteria of 'cared for' children, siblings in catchment, catchment, siblings out of catchment, then all others (apart from 'cared for' these are all then further reduced by distance to school)

if the school you want to attend works in this order, then you are basically at the bottom of the list for getting a place

contact the schools and ask them which criteria was their cut-off for the current school year, as this can give a rough guide on your chances of getting in

maybe contact the local pre-school and see how many children they have who are due to start school sept 11, again would give you an idea on numbers

hth F

But if it is a faith school the applications are dealt with by the school, not the LEA so you must have their application in on time, even if the county application is later. I would still advise double checking the process as each area differs, what could be worse than finding out you would have got a place if only you had done...........

Good point about checking to see how far down the criteria they have got in previous years and if anyone local to you has got in, a quick call the the school office should tell you this and some LEA's publish this too so have a look online at the admissions site.