Welcome to Primary School Places

School Admission Arrangements for 2010-2011

Following the statutory consultation process, and in accordance with the School Admissions Code of Practice and the School Admissions Appeals Code of Practice, the coordinated admission arrangements for the admission of pupils attending a Primary or Secondary School in 2010-2011 for Community and Voluntary Controlled Schools, for which it is the admitting authority, was approved by Cabinet on the 15th April 2009.

The arrangements for both Primary and Secondary Schools for 2010-2011 for Community and Voluntary Controlled Schools are attached below for your information:

Primary Admission Arrangements 2010-2011

Secondary Admission Arrangements 2010-2011

The Local Authority undertook a review of school catchment areas and admission arrangements during 2008, and during Phase 1 of the consultation, it was agreed that further consultation should be undertaken on:

• Catchment areas – retaining, amending or removing;
• The priority given in the oversubscription criteria, relating to sibling connection.

Consultation was carried out between December 2008 and March 2009, involving an initial briefing meeting on 11 December, followed by a number of “cluster workshops” aligned with the Children Services Cluster areas.

• The general feedback from these meetings and as set out in the forms returned to the Local Authority indicated the following:
• There was limited support expressed for removing catchment areas or changing current area boundaries
• There was a stronger view for retaining existing catchment areas
• There was some support expressed for giving a higher priority to sibling connection in the oversubscription criteria

Cabinet therefore agreed that the existing catchment areas should be retained, with the current boundaries unamended, but kept under regular review. A list of the current catchment areas for each school is listed on the How to Apply page.

It was also considered that out of catchment area siblings should be given a higher priority in the oversubscription criteria.  This would result in all children with an older sibling on roll at the preferred school when he or she is due to start, being given priority for a school place over all other children within or outside the catchment area without siblings.  This is a change in criteria from that in 2009/2010.

The agreed oversubscription criteria for admission to Community and Voluntary Controlled Schools in 2010-2011 are as follows:

Oversubscription Criteria

A child who has a statement of special educational needs is required to be admitted to a school named on the child’s statement.

• A child in the care of a local authority or provided with accommodation by that authority as defined by Section 22 in the Children Act 1989;
• Any child who has a sibling attending the preferred school at the same time as he or she is due to be admitted;
• Any child living within the school’s catchment area;
• Any child not living in the school catchment area

Decider

In all cases where schools are oversubscribed, distance measured as a straight-line from the centre point of the rooftop of the home address to the centre point of the rooftop of the school will be used to prioritise applications within individual oversubscription criteria.  If the direct distance measurement does not separate applicants, places will be offered by random allocation.  The random process will be repeated and any previous random order will be discarded.  In the case of multiple births, the Local Authority will direct the preferred school to admit all children.