Moving with children: how school places actually work

Choosing where to live around a school is one of the most consequential decisions in a move, and it is made with some of the worst information. Here is what actually determines whether a child gets a place.

Catchment areas are not what most people think

Very few English schools have a fixed catchment boundary in the way people imagine — a line on a map, inside which you are entitled to a place. What most oversubscribed schools have is a distance tiebreaker.

The admissions criteria run in order. Children in care come first. Then, usually, siblings already at the school. Then sometimes children of staff, or those with a medical or social need for that particular school. Only after all of those are placed does distance decide who gets the remaining seats.

So the "catchment" people talk about is simply how far the last successful applicant lived, in one particular year. It moves. A popular year group or a housing development completing nearby can shrink it substantially, and last year's distance is a guide rather than a promise.

Faith schools often add criteria around attendance and practice, which can outrank distance entirely.

The address you apply from

Applications use the child's permanent home address at the closing date. Councils are experienced at spotting arrangements made purely to secure a place, and they investigate.

Renting a property near a school while retaining another home, or using a relative's address, is the sort of thing that gets places withdrawn — sometimes after the child has started. If you are moving, the honest sequence is to move first, or to be able to demonstrate a genuine and permanent move.

If you exchange contracts after the deadline, tell the admissions team. Most councils will consider a new address with evidence, but only if you raise it.

What Ofsted tells you, and what changed

An Ofsted rating is a judgement made on particular days by particular inspectors. Two things are worth knowing.

First, ratings can be old. An "outstanding" school may have been inspected many years ago, under a different framework, with different staff. Outstanding schools were exempt from routine inspection for a long period, so the label can be considerably out of date. Always check the date, not just the word.

Second, the system changed. From September 2024, English state schools stopped receiving a single overall effectiveness grade. Inspection reports now describe several areas separately. So newer inspections cannot be reduced to one word at all, and a school without an overall grade has not failed — the grade simply no longer exists.

Progress matters more than results

Raw results largely reflect who a school admits. A school in a wealthy catchment with selective admissions will post high grades almost regardless of its teaching.

Progress 8 measures something more useful: how much pupils improve between the end of primary and their GCSEs, compared with pupils who started at a similar level elsewhere. Zero is the national average. A school at +0.5 moved its pupils half a grade further per subject than similar pupils elsewhere.

A school with modest raw results and strong progress is often doing considerably better by its children than one with the reverse.

Moving mid-year

If you move outside the normal admissions round, you apply for an in-year transfer, directly to the council or sometimes the school. The rules differ: you are asking for a vacancy rather than entering a ranked round.

Popular schools are often full in every year group, and being nearest does not create a place where none exists. Councils must offer a place somewhere, but "somewhere" can be a school you would not have chosen and a journey you did not want.

If you have any choice about timing, moving to align with the normal round is worth real inconvenience.

Go and look

Every dataset here — ours included — describes buildings, judgements and numbers. None of them tells you whether a particular child will be happy in a particular school.

Visit on an ordinary day rather than an open evening. Watch how children move between lessons and how staff speak to them. Ask what happens when a child struggles. Those answers are not in any spreadsheet, and they are usually the ones that matter most.