If you have a young family and are thinking of buying a new home, the location can suddenly be very important when it comes to the school catchment area. It is soon to be more important than ever if you want to get your children into some of Lanarkshire’s best schools as the council warns of placement requests being rejected.
At the moment if you are out with the catchment area for a particular school, a placing request can be applied for and often these are accepted. However it has been revealed that in Lanarkshire 6,000 children travel to a school that is not in their catchment area and schools are reaching their maximum capacities. This will result in future placing requests likely being rejected, according to Motherwell Times.
Some schools have already reached their capacity or are now operating over capacity. New Stevenston is nearly full and Ladywell is 34 pupils over capacity whilst Our Lady and St Francis are also operating over capacity.
Recently the council produced a list of schools which will likely have to reject placing requests as they will need to keep the places for pupils from the catchment area. This includes; Christ the King in Holytown, Keir Hardie in Newarthill, Knowetop, Ladywell, St Brendans’s and Muirhouse in Motherwell. It will also include New Stevenston, St Patrick’s in New Stevenston and St Francis in Carfin.
The joint campus that serves New Stevenston and St Patricks is to have two temporary classrooms built to cope with the influx. Despite the schools opening only ten years ago, various new housing developments in the area have led to pupil numbers increasing.
This means that if you want your children to get into one of Lanarkshire’s best schools, it would be a wise move to make sure you live within the catchment area of that school now. As more of these schools reach their capacity, it is going to become increasingly difficult to get a placing request accepted for a pupil living out with the catchment area.
If you are preoccupied about school admissions and moving into the right catchment area for your children, please call us today for local property advice at 01698 338777 or come visit us at our Hamilton office.
