Is there anything I can do to improve my child's chances of getting into their preferred school?

Is there anything I can do to improve my child's chances of getting into their preferred school?

Ralph Lucas (Editor, The Good Schools Guide) gives expert video advice on: What kind of admissions criteria might a school apply?; How do schools choose which children to accept?; We don't live in the catchment area of a perfect school, can we still apply? and more...

Yes, absolutely. Simply fit into the school's admissions criteria. Mostly, that's a question of moving house. It can often be changing religion or tutoring your child for academic selection, but the most common way of doing it is for parents to rent somewhere firmly within the cachement area and move there for the crucial period of a year or two, and then once you've secured the place to move back. And that is perfectly legal, if frowned upon. If you try and cheat on that, if you just rent somewhere and don't move there you're liable to find that the headmistress has stuck her head through the letterbox, seen the pile of unopened circulars and crossed you off the list.