Admissions Information

Admission Criteria
When there are more applications than places available at the school the following criteria will be used to determine which children will be allocated places:
Looked after or previously looked after children 1. Looked after or previously looked after children, including those children who appear (to the admission authority) to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted. Previously looked after children are children who were looked after but ceased to be so because they were adopted (or became subject to a child arrangements order or special guardianship order).
Siblings

2. Siblings: Children with an older sibling already at the school who will still be in attendance at the time at which the application to the school is made.

Siblings are considered to be those children who live at the same address and either:

(i) have one or both natural parents in common;

or  (ii)  are related by a parent’s marriage;

or (iii) are adopted or fostered by a common parent.

Unrelated children living at the same address, whose parents are living as partners, are also considered to be siblings.

Children not adopted or fostered or related by parent’s marriage or with one natural parent in common, who are brought together as a family by a civil partnership and who are living at the same address, are also considered to be siblings.

Children of Staff

3. Children of staff at the school where

a) the member of staff has been employed at the school for two or more years at the time at which the application for admission to the school is made or

b) the member of staff is recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable shortage.

Distance 4. Distance: Children who live nearest to the school. Measured as a straight-line between the applicant’s home address and the front main reception entrance to the school. The Local Authority use a computerised system, which measures all distance in metres. Ordnance Survey supply the co-ordinates that are used to plot an applicant’s home address within the system.
Children with a statement of special educational need/EHC Plan Any child with a statement/EHCP of special educational needs is required to be admitted to the school that is named in the statement/plan. This gives such children overall priority for admission to the named school. This is not an oversubscription criterion.
Looked after or previously looked after children

A ‘looked after child’ is a child who is

(a) in the care of a local authority, or

(b) being provided with accommodation by a local authority in the exercise of their social services functions (see the definition in Section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989) at the time of making an application to a school.

A child is regarded as having been in state care outside of England if they were in the care of or were accommodated by a public authority, a religious organisation, or any other provider of care whose sole or main purpose is to benefit society.

This includes children who were adopted under the Adoption Act 1976 (see Section 12 adoption orders) and children who were adopted under the Adoption and Children Act 2002 (see Section 46 adoption orders).

Child arrangements orders are defined in Section 8 of the Children Act 1989, as amended by Section 12 of the Children and Families Act 2014. Child arrangements orders replace residence orders and any residence order in force prior to 22 April 2014 is deemed to be a child arrangements order.

See Section 14A of the Children Act 1989 which defines a ‘special guardianship order’ as an order appointing one or more individuals to be a child’s special guardian (or special guardians).

Shared Responsibility Where parents have shared responsibility for a child, and the child lives with both parents for part of the week, then the main residence will be determined as the address where the child lives the majority of the week. Parents may be requested to supply documentary evidence to support the address used.
Separating “final qualifier” applications (twins, blocks of flats etc.)

In a very small number of cases it may not be possible to decide between the applications of those pupils who are the final qualifiers for a place, when applying the published admission criteria.

For example, this may occur when children in the same year group live at the same address, or if the distance between the home and academy is exactly the same, for example, blocks of flats.  If there is no other way of separating the application according to the admissions criteria and to admit both or all of the children would cause the Published Admission Number for the child’s year group to be exceeded, the Local Authority will use a computerised system to randomly select the child to be offered the final place.

In the event of this occurring with twins or other multiple birth applicants, academies will be asked to admit over their Published Admissions Number to accommodate the pupils.

Waiting list Following the offer of places, a waiting list will be kept in strict oversubscription criteria order until at least the end of the first academic term.  Each added child will require the list to be ranked again in line with the oversubscription criteria.
Appeals Appeals should be made directly to the school by no later than 9.00am on Monday 15th April 2024. The appeals will be heard within 40 school days of the closing date. The Appeals Form can be downloaded from the website. Appeals will be heard by an independent panel.  The independent Admissions Appeals Clerk will manage your appeal.  You will not hear from the Clerk until after the appeals deadline has passed.  Once the hearing dates have been confirmed, the Clerk will correspond with you accordingly.
In Year Applications

Applications made outside the normal admissions round (in-year admissions) should be made directly to the school. Parents/carers can apply for a place for their child at any time and to any school.

On receipt of an in-year application, the school will notify the local authority of both the application and its outcome, to allow the local authority to keep up to date with figures on the availability of school places in Birmingham. The school will also inform the parent/carer of the outcome and will signpost the appeals process.