The kettle calendar
Most panic is just a calendar nobody explained. Here is a gentler one, with the only safe rule printed first.
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Europe does not share a school year in any way that would make a planner happy. Some popular houses are already in conversation a year or more ahead. Some are still listening in June. The only safe rule is to ask the school in front of you — not a blog, including this one — for this year’s dates.
What follows is climate, not a promise. We do not invent a national deadline where there isn’t one. We describe the weather parents actually walk through, then send you to the school’s own page.
There is the academic year (often late August or early September through June) and there is the admissions year (which may have started while you were still unpacking).
There is also a third clock: your posting. If the email that moves you arrives in April, you are not late in moral terms. You are late in diary terms. Say the posting in the first sentence. International campuses are built for this, even when they are full.
A useful personal deadline: start reading when the move is real. Start applying when you can name a city, an age, and a leaving-certificate preference. Tours can sit between those two. Paying a non-refundable application fee before you have seen a corridor is how families collect souvenirs.
For the well-known 11+ and 13+ routes, many families begin reading a year or two ahead. Registration can sit well before assessments. Eton’s own public pages, for example, close ordinary 13+ registration at the end of Year 5. Sevenoaks publishes separate 11+, 13+ and 16+ deadlines a year out. That is those schools. The school down the road may still be meeting families in January.
16+ is its own season: often an autumn assessment for the following September, with a deposit that is not small.
If you are relocating from abroad, say so early. Some houses will assess in a different city or online for the first stage; some will not. Confirm each school’s timetable on its admissions page, then put the registration fee date in the family calendar in red.
Boarding houses like a winter visit if you can manage one. A sunny Open Day is a party. A Thursday night in November is the job.
Many boarding houses like a winter conversation before the following autumn — files, interviews, a weekend on campus. That is a pattern, not a law. Some will take a strong candidate in May because a bed opened. Day internationals in Geneva, Zurich, Lausanne and Basel keep their own clocks: often rolling, often full in the years everyone wants.
Swiss fees are frequently published as a PDF or sent after an enquiry, not hung on the homepage. Ask for this year’s document before you book flights. Ask, too, whether the year includes a mountain campus or a ski term. That changes both the suitcase and the invoice.
Public calendars and sous contrat private houses often sit closer to the national rhythm: inscription conversations in winter and spring for the following September. The famous bilingual and international lycées in and around Paris fill earlier in the years that matter (sixième, seconde).
International sections and établissements that teach in English may run a separate, earlier file: tests, dossiers, sometimes a waitlist that is a personality. AEFE-network schools abroad have their own movement.
If you want maternelle as well as lycée, start with the younger year. A campus that has space at terminale and none at petite section is a common surprise.
Sixteen German Länder will not share one deadline. City internationals — Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna, Stockholm, Copenhagen — are often the scarce ones, with rolling admissions that still mean “apply the autumn before you need the chair.” Local private or independent houses, church Gymnasien, and friskolor may still have room later — or not, if you want a particular bilingual stream.
Austria’s internationals cluster in Vienna and move on posting time. Church and konfessionell houses closer to the Volksschule and AHS rhythm like to meet a child in late winter or early spring. Boarding in Salzburg or the Tyrol is a winter-weekend decision if you can make it one.
In Sweden, remember that many municipal schools are a kö and a proximity story, not a UK-style catchment speech. Private and international options are a different queue. Do not borrow a London metaphor.
Fee-paying colegios and international campuses often mix rolling conversations with a spring crunch. Concertado houses can sit closer to the public calendar and to a parish or cooperative story. Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Rome and Lisbon internationals fill first in the years that feed the IB or a national Bachillerato / Maturità / secundário.
If you need boarding (a residencia, a house from 11), ask when those beds are actually offered. Day places and boarding beds are not the same list.
European Schools and the popular internationals follow institutional calendars the schools themselves name — categories, inter-school transfers, a language-section logic that is not “we liked the tour.” If your life is tied to an EU or agency posting, start the week you know it is real, and ask which category you are in before you tour the prettiest campus.
Dutch internationals and the Hague/Amsterdam cluster are often rolling and still tight in the middle years. Luxembourg mixes public international options with fee-paying campuses; they are not interchangeable on price or on who they are for.
Dublin’s fee-charging secondary schools often talk to families a year ahead for first year, with assessments that are the school’s own. Some houses are still human in late spring. Boarding is a smaller, more specific conversation than the English one. If a government inspection report exists, read it; do not invent a judgement from a prospectus.
Early is allowed to mean reading, walking past the gate at pickup, talking to one parent who is not trying to impress you. Early does not have to mean hiring a consultant and losing sleep when the child is seven.
A sane early list:
Write anyway. Late letters that are specific and warm still open doors, especially in August, when a family has been posted somewhere unexpected and a chair is suddenly free.
Say the age, the language, the date you land, and the leaving certificate you think you need. Attach the last two reports if you have them. Do not apologise for three paragraphs. Do not name-drop. Ask whether a visit is still useful even if the year is full, so you know the campus for the following September.
Mid-year entry is ordinary in international schools and unusual in many national private houses. Ask which world you are standing in.
Put these on one sheet, then throw the sheet away when the school sends its own:
The last line is the kindness. Research has a bedtime.
Friendly orientation, not formal admissions advice. Always confirm dates with the school.
The letters on the leaver’s certificate matter. They are not the whole child. Here is how to tell them apart without a headache, and without pretending every door stays open.
16 minYou do not need a perfect algorithm. You need a few true things about your child, a boring list on the fridge, and the courage to ignore a beautiful campus that does not fit.
15 minTuition is the number on the homepage. The PDF is the number that arrives in March. Here is how to read the second one, without inventing a euro, a krona, or a deadline.
12 minSkip the question about last year’s average. Ask the ones that make a teacher’s face change. Then look at the corridor while they answer.