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Getting into reigate parish school

3 replies

Theprocrastinator31 · 28/07/2014 12:43

Hi, we've found a house in reigate which we love, but it seems to be outside of the effective catchment area from parish church school gates (we'd be about 650m away and this year the limit is 408m). If we fail to get into the parish by going to church regularly, we will have to look at schools like sandcross and dovers green, which are both about a mile away. Here are our worries:

  1. If we go to church regularly, what are our chances of getting into parish, given that we are quite close?


  1. If we fail to get into parish, is it much harder getting into priory as parish is a feeder school?


  1. If we get into Dovers green or Sandcross, is traffic going to be a major issue at drop off and pick up? We don't have off street parking.


Really grateful for any advice!
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LIZS · 28/07/2014 13:32

How soon are you applying? iirc you need to establish your church link( not sure how the active and regular criteria is defined for Parish) and even then distance comes into it within these categories.

There are no official feeder schools in Reigate although there was some discussion about changing admissions policy which got dismissed. Dovers Green pupils , Holmesdale etc all have to apply at Year 3 for a junior place. Depending where you live traffic may be an issue but ime it is far worse on other side of Reigate near the park/High street/station or around St Mary's. You could also consider St John's as I understand they are expanding their intake and the drive is relatively easy from south of Parish.

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Theprocrastinator31 · 28/07/2014 14:32

Hi Lizs, thanks for your advice, St. John's is certainly worth considering. Our son is only 13 months old so hopefully that should be enough time time to establish the church link!

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TIL3 · 29/07/2014 21:17

Hi,

I think for a church place you need to go at least twice a month for two years (hope I haven't got this wrong, we don't go to church and got a non-church place, but I'm pretty sure that's what my church-going friends have said!).

This year they didn't fill all the church places, so the catchment went quite far for church places, but it does seem to fluctuate year by year. It's almost always considerably further than for the non-church places though. Likewise the catchment of Dovers green and sandcross seem to fluctuate a lot, this year Dovers green has a bulge class so the catchment extended further than in previous years.

It shouldn't make a difference to the Priory admissions which infants school you attend, but they have just changed the criteria to give priority to people for who the Priory is their nearest school with an intake at that age, rather than just basing it on distance. So if you end up living nearer to Sandcross than the Priory, it's much harder to get into Priory.

Traffic always seems to be awful in Reigate, but it's probably easier to drive to Dovers Green / Sandcross than across town to Holmesdale as at least you're avoiding the town centre.

Hope that helps!

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