School catchment areas

laurence2163

Hope someone can assist.
I am looking to move from the Romford area to the Doddinghurst area soon.

I have a couple of young children and would really like to know if there is a site that you can put a postcode into and it gives you the primary/secondary catchment areas you fall into.

The Ofsted site shows the NEAREST school, but from what i gather this doesn't always mean that you are in that school's catchment area.

lynnexxxo

If you have a particular school in mind why not phone them up and ask their catchment area?

System

Or go to the county website. Most have a facility to enter a postcode and will then show the primary and secondary school catchments.

GunJack

Also, call the LEA and they will advise you. Some (cheshire is one) have maps available on their website which shades the area for a particular school. Remember, the LEA's still work through the school hols !!

littlesos

Phone or email (if possible) your school allocations officer at the council. Should be details on the county council website. They will be able to send you a map with the catchment areas marked on it. We got one for our area from Leicestershire, the school allocations officer was also really really helpful.

laurence2163

Thanks guys, here's hoping Essex CC are up to scratch.

fabwitch_2

http://www.schoolswebdirectory.co.uk/leasearch.php?lea=Essex

This does a post code search for Essex Schools. I live in Brentwood and my daughters best friend lives in Doddinghurst. To be honest the Schools are excelant and the secondary School catchment is St Martins technology School which is one of the top Schools in the Country and top comprehensive in Essex.

Dead_Eye_Jones

Be aware that they may have switched to the new lottery selection process by the time your kids get to that age. This will have an interesting affect on house prices, some peeps who bought overinflated houses in good catchment areas could lose thousands. Ho hum.

I had a little read around and the implementation of all this is sketchy right now so it would be another question for your LEA (which they may not know the answer to yet!)

"A spokesperson for the Department for Education and Skills said: "Record investment has delivered more good schools and increased parental choice and through our Education Act we are raising standards and ensuring fair access for parents. "

"Random allocation is one criteria that schools may use to allocate places at oversubscribed schools to give pupils fair and equal access."

Altarf

!!!!!! wrote: »

Or go to the county website. Most have a facility to enter a postcode and will then show the primary and secondary school catchments.

Except they don't then use that when allocating the places to an oversubscribed school as these parents found out - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=471306&in_page_id=1770

headintheclouds

As a result of new legislation and guidance relating to admissions policies, Local Authorities will be reviewing them. If you have children who are not yet at school, or even currently at primary school, you can't assume that if you buy a house in a particular area, the secondary school catchment areas will remain the same over the next few years. The intention is to improve schools and to be as fair as possible to families applying for popular schools. Whatever you may think about the politics and practicalities of this, it will still happen. Different local authorities will adopt different mechanisms, so you need to keep an eye on what is going on.

Please don't start having a debate about the rights and wrongs of it here though - I just wanted to say that nothing can be guaranteed, so a house purchase in a particular area must be right for your family for other reasons too.

(by the way, there is no separate Local Education Authority now, it's all under the Local Authority, and the DfES is now the Department for Children, Schools and Families - just to prove that change is the only sure thing!).

cuffie

St Martins school is excellent. At present, you will need to be in catchment for your child to get in (we went to the open day in October and there has never been a case yet where a child in catchment has not got in). They do take 20% outside of catchment for those who sit an exam - they take the top 20% and this has been the case for years. Of course, things change. Things do change though. This year, for the first time, it is not top priority for a sibling of a child at the school to get in - I think that has moved to third criteria.
Things do change, but to be honest, we have moved for schools. We do love the area, and we needed a bigger house so would have had to have moved anyway. I'm sure we have paid for the fact that we have moved within the catchment area, but we're not hanging around waiting - our sons application will go in next year.....
(PS We got our catchment area map from the school directly - they sent it through the post)