#relocating school help

Our specialised knowledge of the UK school system and tailor-made School Search Guidance UK adds a unique dimension to our professional relocation service.

The opening in September 2010, of the first bilingual primary courses at the French government's school in Fulham, L'ecole Marie d'Orliac and at Holy Cross School provides free bilingual state school education for local children regardless of religious background.

This innovative project is a joint venture between the two host schools of Holy Cross School, the French L'ecole Marie d'Orliac, the Diocese of Westminster and H&F Council. The terms of the bilingual partnership agreement makes the Diocese of Westminster responsible for the maintained bilingual stream, which is not restricted to Catholic children

It was the first time bilingual classes were taught in Hammersmith & Fulham and only the second in the country, the first being Wix Primary School in Battersea, London, which opened in 2006.

The school is now looking to expand to meet growing demand for core and bilingual places at the two host schools as the school has proved hugely popular with parents in Fulham.

After its first academic year, places for September 2011 were, once again, heavily oversubscribed. In addition to the new bilingual provision, Holy Cross School will be expanding by an extra form of entry in September 2012, enabling more local parents to secure these much sought-after places. This is part of a borough-wide expansion of primary places to cater for the popular and growing school.

With our School Search Guidance UK we've found a high number of families in Hammersmith & Fulham choose private education or schools outside the borough rather than local state schools. The borough is facing the challenge in offering local families new and innovative school choices.

This trend for bilingual schools is increasing with the new bilingual Spanish school in Brighton opening up this academic year (see previous article).

Pavilion Relocation provides a comprehensive UK school search guidance, as we know that schooling and education is one of the most important decisions families make when relocating.

A change in the independent schools charitable status has recently been made. On 5th December 2011 we saw the removal of the previous guidance on how private schools justify their charitable status. The change comes after the Upper Tribunal ruled that the charity commission must withdraw some of its guidelines within 21 days, or face having them quashed.

The Independent Schools Council (ISC) had brought a case against the Commission arguing that its guidance must be quashed because it was too vague, and "should be corrected". The ICS complained that the commission’s guidance was illegal because it suggested that offering free and subsidised places to poor pupils represented the most straightforward way of passing the test

The panel concluded that parts of the guidance were "erroneous and claimed the commission was guilty of "micro-managing" individual charities.

The move follows a bitter row over rules that require schools to provide wider “public benefit” to remain in business and hang on to millions of pounds worth of tax breaks.

It means that schools are technically still bound by the public benefit rules – but the regulator must issue fresh guidance telling them how to comply.

School leaders claimed the move would drive up fees for existing parents and price some families out of independent education altogether. This will have an impact on the bursary places currently offered to fulfil the charitable status.

We are pleased to advise that for families with young children, using our relocating school help, moving from Spain or indeed from any other Spanish speaking area from South America to the UK, or for families that have any other Spanish speaking connection, the following details may well prove extremely interesting:

The current coalition government is pleased to recently announce the latest batch of Free Schools to open their doors from 2012. Among them is the new and exciting Bilingual Primary School, which plans to teach children from the Brighton and Hove in the East Sussex area in both English and Spanish.

Free Schools are schools funded by the government and are free from local authority control.  They are able to set their own curriculum, choose how money is spent and decide on the length of the school day. So far during our relocating school help, we’ve found 24 Free Schools have already opened in this academic year.