Finding a Primary School before Moving

Hi all,

We're  moving in September, but unfortunately  won't arrive until  the school year has started, so I'm  eager to get a school lined up for my 6 year old. My husband  is going over for a week in August  to find a house to rent. Should I start contacting  schools  in the areas  where we're  looking now, or wait until we have an address?

Is there a central  office for a cachment  area, or do I contact  each school?

Thanks!

I am by no means an expert on this, but we did just have to move our 6 yr old mid-school-year. This is what I experienced.

Some schools handle their own admissions. Some school admissions are handled by the council (county). We were not able to apply to move our daughter until we had atleast a job contract and a rental contract showing which catchment area we would be moving to. We had to submit these with our application to the council, along with a list of preferred schools ranked 1-3.

I did contact the school we wanted directly and spoke to the head teacher, and confirmed that they had room for her and that our new address was, in fact, in the catchment area. The headteacher told me there was not any reason she could see for us to be denied a spot, so that was helpful.  The council we are in did have a ten working day reply time.

Ofsted is one site you can check, if you haven't already, to see what the school's last inspection results were and how they are currently graded.

Hope that helps, good luck!

That does help, thank you! My husband  is going over on his own to fund us a house,  so hopefully  it will be fairly  simple once we have an address.

Be careful though, because even though the headteacher may say they have space for your child at your chosen school, they may be listed as "full" with the council. In our situation, we had to wait over 2 months for the council to meet to petition to get our children to get into the school their older brother was already in, which means they only went to school for 2 months of last year instead of the 4 1/2 months we thought they would get.

Thank you! It turned out that once we had an address, we just sent in our top 3 choices to the council. Both kids were in pretty quickly.

The downside is, that they don't seem to be helping our 6 year old with the transition. Are there any threads on this already? They seem to be treating him like he just moved from the next town over, and he's too shy to ask for help. I just found out that he's supposed to have gym clothes -- and only because I saw other kids getting changed.

Have other found that a school counselor, or ESL teacher was available? There aren't many immigrants in our small town, so this isn't an issue that is common here.

Rainydayrun,
We are *still* struggling with this. Our 6 yr old moved from a much bigger school with more parent-teacher interaction, to a tiny village school. It seems like the routine is known to everyone because they've all been here forever, and I keep finding out things that I should have known about, but there's just an assumption that I already knew.
I have had to get downright blunt with the teacher, the TA and the head, asking for information and generally making a PIA of myself. And I'm always met with a blank look and a "oh, we had no idea, so sorry..."
I have found the class TA to be the most accessible to us as far as getting information. But I agree, without a regular influx of students from "the outside" I think their heads are in the sand with regards to doing a better job integrating new kids.

It's tough.

At my daughter's first school....she comes home one day crying. Every child has milk at the morning break....except for her. I had no idea.

It's the sort of thing that just makes a parent's blood boil. Didn't anyone notice? And that kind of stuff matters...

It ended up that the school didn't provide milk any more (thanks Maggie) and you had to go in and get a form from the school and then mail it to the private milk company....so it ended up being about another two weeks before she got her milk.

The property website "right move" has a tab for each property listed with information about the schools in the area.  You can see them on a map and know the ofsted results for each one. Just enter a post code and pick a house. 

As an American with kids in a British school, I am constantly baffled by everything.  My kids come home bragging about getting %64 on some test.  WTF?


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In terms of integration, I am thankful everyday that I am white, American and not hurting for money.  Those that aren't probably suffer more than missing a little milk, no disrespect intended son of a sailor


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In terms of integration, I am thankful everyday that I am white, American and not hurting for money.  Those that aren't probably suffer more than missing a little milk, no disrespect intended son of a sailor

Well my wife is African American Jimbo, but I know what you mean.....

We moved quite a lot when my children were small and I found the best way to get school information in the UK was to befriend the school secretary. They are the ones who handle the paperwork and should be able to tell you what you need to provide/what forms to complete for milk etc.

I'm afraid that collectively we just assume that every system is the same, we had transition issues when moving to the US and I just asked questions, more questions and just got used to everyone thinking that I was a little stupid!

Yes, the area we're in has families who have been here for generations, and they think we'll just magically know things. A parent even told me that an early dismissal day wasn't advertised anywhere, everyone just knew because that's what the school has always done!

I have noticed that several parents grew up here, moved away, and then moved back. I think that shows what a great place we've found.

I've signed up to start volunteering at the school so I can understand how it works. Yes, I am very thankful to have the finances that I can volunteer. I also hope I can help the school better understand what immigrants need. Like a list of school supplies!