Finding a school for your child

One of the biggest stressors when emigrating to the UK is often finding a school for your child.  You want your child to settle and be happy in their new country, and considering that a considerable number of their hours will be spent at school, the school they are placed in is a big factor.  For us, a big decider about where to settle revolved around where Isabella would be at school.  

There were three big factors that affected our decision about which school to choose for Issy:
1. Ofsted rating
2. whether the school was "oversubscribed"
3. Catchment area

So first, the Ofsted rating: 
The UK makes something called the "Ofsted Report" available to the public, this report rates schools on various criteria and gives them a score from "Outstanding" all the way down to "Inadequate". Obviously, when choosing a school for your child you ideally want it to have an "outstanding" or "very good" rating. (In the interest of transparency I will say that, in my personal opinion, this method of selecting a school isn't always foolproof - the Ofsted is largely based on academic criteria and sometimes, for a child who is not particularly academic, other criteria may be more important. Having said that, I still think there is value in the Ofsted rating, as a school that is performing really poorly is probably not a good option for any child.) 

The dreaded "oversubscribed": In our experience many, MANY of the desirable schools are "over-subscribed", which basically means they are full and not able to take any new pupils. 

Catchment area:  The schools in the UK are quite big on catchment areas - what this means is that once the schools have received applications (for people actually living in the UK, primary school applications have to be in by 15 January and secondary schools by 31 October, of the year before the child needs to attend school) they will then assign spots based on whether you live in the catchment area, whether there are siblings at the school etc; if there is still availability after that, they will then assign places to applicants who live outside the catchment area.  Ultimately, you need to choose a home largely based on what school you want your children to attend. 

A website that was VERY useful was https://www.192.com/schools/  On this website you are able to type in a postcode for the area you are interested in and a list of the nearby schools will then come up and it will state whether they are oversubscribed and what the Ofsted rating is. 

Once we found a school that we liked for Issy, that was not oversubscribed and had a decent Ofsted rating, Roxy emailed the school and made sure that there was availability in the grade that Issy would be going into, only once we had had confirmation that there was, did they go ahead and find a house to rent nearby.  

It does vary from county to county, but in general you need to contact the local council office to assign you a school.  (For people already living in the UK they apply via the council and list their 3 favourite school choices) When Rox contacted the council she stated that she had been in contact with the particular school and that they had a place available for Issy, the council then contacted the school and Rox then received a letter in the post saying Issy had been accepted at the school, after that all correspondence came straight from the school.

In the UK, children begin Reception year the September after they turn 4.  They will generally put your child in the grade according to their age group, even if they were in a lower grade in South Africa - this can mean a jump of 2 grades for some children.  They have teaching assistants to help the child catch up.  

The school day generally runs from about 9am to 3pm.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash