These policies and strategy documents cover aspects of our role as a Local Authority in the schools admissions process for BANES schools. Schools are legally required to publish their own individual school policies, including their admissions criteria. To explore these in more detail, we recommend visiting the website for the individual school you're interested in, or contacting the school directly.
Annual policy consultation and determination
Each year, we consult on, update and manage the following policies dealing with schools admissions, to give parents and carers and other interested parties an opportunity to raise any issues that concern you. We will take account of all responses, before publishing our determined arrangements for the coming admissions round.
Select any item to find out more about what it includes and how we use it to manage the admissions process.
To find the most recent versions of each document, please consult the relevant page within our School admissions section.
There are separate schemes for primary schools (including junior schools) and secondary schools. They describe how we will handle the 'bulk' school admissions process (entering a new school at the normal time for each stage). They include the planned timetable of events (such as application deadlines and timings of place offers) and special circumstances, such as late applications or circumstances where we may have to withdraw a school place. We recommend that all parents and guardians should read this policy, to have a clear idea of how to complete the application process, and to know what to expect.
The In-Year Admissions Scheme describes how we will handle admissions into our schools, outside the 'bulk transfers' at the normal starting time for each stage of your child's education. The policy and process is the same for primary and secondary stages.
This policy covers the process we will use when there is more than one applicant ranked equally for a school place, according to the published admissions policy, and there are not enough places available for each equally-ranked student.
This includes the number of available school places for the coming admissions round, in each of the schools where we are responsible for the admissions process.
Please note that there is a national limit of 30 places in all primary school classes, and neither we nor the schools can change this.
These will be the term dates for local schools under local authority control. We always discuss our planned term dates with neighbouring authorities to try and offer similar term dates, for the convenience of parents, carers and schools.
Starting primary education earlier or later
We also have a policy for how we handle deferred, delayed or accelerated admissions for children at the start of their school career, who may be entering primary school earlier or later than normal. This policy doesn't normally change annually, and is not part of our annual round of public consultations on school admissions policy, numbers and dates.
If you're not sure how the process works
Find out more about what to expect in our step-by-step guide, How school admissions and school appeals work