For those of you who are wondering how to sort out which school you’re sending your child to here is a handy guide to help:
- Request prospectuses for several schools
- Select 3 from these and order them according to preference
- 1 Year before your child is due to start school you will receive the paperwork to apply to your top 3 schools
- Your Local Authority then uses a criteria to decide who gets in to each school
The criteria used to determine who gets a place is:
- Children who live within the catchment area
- Children who have siblings at the school
- Children who live out of the catchment area
Obviously this is a simplified version of the process but it pretty much covers the basics. My advice is to start looking before you receive the paperwork. My daughter is 2 and I have started looking into which school to send her to as there are a few schools which have nurseries attached to the school and so if I decide to send her to 1 of those it makes sense to send her to the nursery. However I must stress that even if your child attends the nursery/preschool that does not guarantee your child a place at the school.