Changing or transferring to a Swindon school

You make an "in-year" application for your child to attend a Swindon school unless they:

• will be starting school in Reception class the following September. See: Primary school places and admissions
• are in year 2 at an infant school and will be starting year 3 at a junior school the following September. See: Primary school places and admissions
• will be starting year 7 at a secondary school the following September. See: Secondary school places and admissions

This means an "in-year" application is necessary when your child is:

• leaving a school in Swindon to go to a different school
• moving to a school in Swindon from a school that’s outside Swindon

If your child is moving from a Swindon school to attend school outside Swindon, you should contact the relevant council about making your application. You can use an online tool to check which council area you will live in.

Depending on your or your child’s circumstances, there are many things you should think about before making an in-year application.

How the application works

As a local authority, we co-ordinate all applications made during the academic year for all year groups for all schools in Swindon. This includes all schools that we, as a local authority, do not actually manage.

You can make an in-year application online.

You get to choose three schools in order of preference. We will work with the relevant admitting authority with the aim of offering your child a place at one of the schools you’ve stated.

All preferences are treated equally, so we will offer the highest preference whenever possible.

We allocate in-year transfers every 15 school days.

We consider in-year applications in “process periods” depending on the term calendar. An application made in any given process period is not prioritised by the date we receive it.

The timetable of process periods is below.

There is an offer date associated with each process period. This is the day that we e-mail parents with an offer of a school place, or inform them that their application was not successful. 

Once you have received your offer letter, you should contact the school to accept the place and agree a start date. You must accept the place within 28 school days of the offer.

Process period for the 2023/24 school year

If your application is not successful

If we cannot offer your child a place at one of your preferred schools and they do not already attend a Swindon school, we will offer a place at the nearest school that has availability. This is assuming you have provided evidence of your Swindon address.

You can be added to the waiting list for a preferred school, if the school has one. A school’s waiting list policy is held in its oversubscription criteria. Your child may move up or down the list as other children are added and removed. No priority is given according to the amount of time your child spends on the list.

For community schools and voluntary controlled schools, the waiting list is held until the end of the academic year. If you wish to remain on the waiting list for the following year, you must make another application in that academic year.