School admissions: Lucky or unlucky?

I don’t actually feel either of these emotions for our four year old twin girls and the reason for that is simple. First of all we moved to an area where we wanted to live which also happened to be where my wife grew up. In this area there are two primary schools that fall within our catchment, although just the one is our chosen school by the council.

My wife had a preference for the one school mainly because it was the school she had attended as a child. My own choice of school was the allocated choice by the council. The reason being is that my older children attended this school and I was always very happy with their school life there. 

As this was the school that was their catchment area it also seemed logical that they attend the nursery there so that they could start to build friendships and accustomise themselves to the surroundings for when they start school full-time. I consider this to be vitally important for those early days of settling in. So my wife and I are very happy that the girls will be starting the school of our choice, which is also our council chosen school. 

There are many things I don’t understand and I really can’t work out why you would send your children to a nursery that will not be your catchment area school. This surely will make it so hard for the child to re-accustomise themselves to new children and completely different surroundings resulting in a lot of heartache in store for the child and also means hard times for parents. This is your small child’s biggest milestone so far in their very short lives. Let’s make the transition as easy as possible. 

The real question is you if you live in an area apply for the school in your area and hopefully nobody gets disappointed. There will be enough places to go around for everyone, but nowadays the pressure on parents to get their children into certain primary schools is crazy and it leads without a doubt to parents using parents addresses because they live in the catchment. Of course people will always try to cheat the system, it’s always gone on and it always will. 

There really is no luck in school admissions. You either live in the catchment or you don’t and councils I’m sure, hope that people tell the truth on applications because they don’t have the manpower to check every application fully. Most schools are over subscribed because people try for schools out of catchment and there is only just enough room for children within the catchment let alone those outside of the catchment area.

My wife and myself are very happy that our four year twin girls are attending the primary school just up the road from where we live. Settling in hopefully will be a breeze as they are familiar with the surroundings after already attending the nursery within the school grounds for nearly a year come the time they start full time.