mickagnew

Apologies if this has been asked before but if I have a home within a certain school catchment area will this get me a place or will I be on a waiting list as per UK. I guess I probably know the answer is the latter but any personal experience would be appreciated.

Ta in advance

Mick

quoll

Dont know about Perth in particular but generally schools are obliged to offer places for children in their catchment area. They can negotiate for out of area children if they have vacancies but they are not obliged to take them. Many schools have maps of their catchment areas and you do need to be very careful - it may be the case that one side of the street is zoned for one school and the other side of the street is zoned for another school.

benlast

I can't necessarily answer the question, but what I do know is that we visited one very good (and therefore very popular) state school in the Perth area and asked about their enrolment area policy and waiting list. Their reply was clear: "There is no waiting list. Unless you have a residential address within the catchment area, your child isn't getting in."

Now that's just one school, and not a categorial statement. Nor does it state that your child will get in if you're in the area.

The advice we've been given is: call the school and ask.

Cheers
b

tawkins1

I emailed both Primary & Secondary schools & my children have been excepted in both!
Primary is in the catchment area for where we want to live but the secondary school isn't. They have said if there's places theres no problem. I have completed application forms etc & sent them back to secure their places
This will depend on the school tho. Can't do any harm to ask

mickagnew

Hi

How did you decide which ones to contact and did they want to know the exact dates you would be there?

Ta Mick

tawkins1

We have friends there who advised us on which ones were the best. We had a good read thru on their websites & contacted them via email. On our enrollment forms we had to give a date to start, I contacted the heads of both schools & told them about our house selling problems. They just said to give a rough idea & then if we dont get there by then they would extend their places if they had no one waiting. We have given them a date of 14th Oct 08 which is just after their half term. If we dont sell by then we'll go out to validate & visit the schools whilst were there.
I've contacted quite a few schools via email & they all responded very quickly & were very helpful

mad.chef

We looked a lot on the internet about areas we liked the look of so that when we got here we had narrowed it down a bit, we knew we wanted to live NOR.

We liked areas like Butler (but too far for OH to work), Joondalup, Currambine, Connolly, Tapping, Carramar etc. I know people with kids in most if these schools and they all seem pretty much the same and everyone seems pleased with them.

We decided to put our son in Tapping school and looked for rentals in this area, at the time there wasn't any so ended up in Ashby which is next door but falls under the catchment area for Tapping. We phoned the education department which will tell you which school is for which area, as some suburbs have 2 schools.

All we then had to do was turn up at the school (no appointment was necessary) and show our lease and fill in a form and decide when he would start. This school has to take you if you live in the area and since my son joined in October 2008 the student numbers have gone up by 100s! I am not sure if Ashby still falls under the catchment area anymore as I have heard rumours they are going to change it because of the student intake.

The only problem we have here is the lack of a good high school. We fall under the area for Wanneroo High School and have heard a lot of negative things about it. So depending on the age of your children it might be worth looking at picking an area with a good high school, ready for when they go there. My son is only 7 so I ahev a few years to sort that out.

Sorry about the long winded post. I hope some of it helps.

Sarah.

mickagnew

Thanks for the info guys

Mick

this charming man

oops sorry,thought the thread was about sandals. Ill get my coat...........