Pye Green Academy
2024/2025
2022/2023 & 2023/2024
1. Aims
This policy aims to:
- Explain how to apply for a place at a Greenheart Learning Partnership (GLP) school
- Set out the school’s arrangements for allocating places to the pupils who apply
- Explain how to appeal against a decision not to offer your child a place
2.Legislation and statutory requirements
This policy is based on the following advice from the Department for Education (DfE):
- School Admissions Code
- School Admission Appeals Code
As an academy, the school is required by its funding agreement to comply with these codes, and with the law relating to admissions as set out in the School Standards and Framework Act 1998.
This policy complies with our funding agreement and articles of association.
3. Definitions
The normal admissions round is the period during which parents can apply for state-funded school places at the school’s normal point of entry, using the common application form provided by their home local authority.
Looked after children are children who, at the time of making an application to a school, are:
- In the care of a local authority, or
- Being provided with accommodation by a local authority in exercise of its social services functions
Previously looked after children are children who were looked after, but ceased to be so because they:
- Were adopted under the Adoption Act 1976 or the Adoption and Children Act 2002, or
- Became subject to a child arrangements order, or
- Became subject to a special guardianship order
A child reaches compulsory school age on the prescribed day following his or her fifth birthday (or on his or her fifth birthday if it falls on a prescribed day). The prescribed days are 31 December, 31 March and 31 August.
4. How to apply
For applications in the normal admissions round you should use the application form provided by your home local authority (regardless of which local authority the schools are in). You can use this form to express your preference for a minimum of 3 state-funded schools, in rank order.
You will receive an offer for a school place directly from your local authority.
Please note, pupils already attending our nursery will not transfer automatically into the main school. A separate application must be made for a place in reception.
5. Requests for admission outside the normal age group
Parents are entitled to request a place for their child outside of their normal age group.
Decisions on requests for admission outside the normal age group will be made on the basis of the circumstances of each case and in the best interests of the child concerned. In accordance with the School Admissions Code, this will include taking account of:
- Parents’ views
- Information about the child’s academic, social and emotional development
- Where relevant, their medical history and the views of a medical professional
- Whether they have previously been educated out of their normal age group
- Whether they may naturally have fallen into a lower age group if it were not for being born prematurely
- The Headteacher, acting Headteachers, Head of School or Executive Headteachers views
Wherever possible, requests for admission outside a child’s normal age group will be processed as part of the main admissions round. They will be considered on the basis of the admission arrangements laid out in this policy, including the oversubscription criteria listed in section 6.
Applications will not be treated as a lower priority if parents have made a request for a child to be admitted outside the normal age group.
Parents will always be informed of the reasons for any decision on the year group a child should be admitted to. Parents do not have a right to appeal if they are offered a place at the school but it is not in their preferred age group
6. Allocation of places
6.1 Admission number
Each academy within GLP has an agreed admission number of pupils for entry in each academic year.
6.2 Oversubscription criteria/ Tie Break
As a Trust body all of our Academies operate within LA admissions procedure. Guidance on oversubscription policies can be found in the LA guidance.
6.3 Children below compulsory school age (optional)
Where children below compulsory school age are offered a place at the school, they will be entitled to attend the school full-time in the September following their fourth birthday.
Parents may defer their child’s entry to the school until later in the school year but not beyond the point at which the child reaches compulsory school age, and not beyond the beginning of the final term of the school year the offer was made for.
Where the parents wish, children may attend part-time until later in the school year but not beyond the point at which they reach compulsory school age.
7. In-year admissions
You can apply for a place for your child at any time outside the normal admissions round. As is the case in the normal admissions round, all children whose statement of SEN or EHC plan names the school will be admitted.
Likewise, if there are spaces available in the year group you are applying for, your child will normally be offered a place as long as this does not prejudice provision or efficient education or the efficient use of resources.
If there are no spaces available at the time of your application, your child’s name will be added to a waiting list for the relevant year group. When a space becomes available it will be filled by one of the pupils on the waiting list in accordance with the oversubscription criteria listed in section 6.3 of this policy. Priority will not be given to children on the basis that they have been on the waiting list the longest.
Applications for in-year admissions should be sent to the relevant academy.
8. Appeals
If your child’s application for a place at the school is unsuccessful, you will be informed why admission was refused and given information about the process for hearing appeals.
You can find details of the school’s appeals timetable on our website.
9. Monitoring arrangements
This policy will be reviewed and approved by the Headteacher every year.
Whenever changes to admission arrangements are proposed (except where the change is an increase to the agreed admission number), the Trust Local Advisory Committee will publicly consult on these changes
Full time places in Reception classes will be available in September of the academic year within which the child becomes five years old.
Although parents have the right to express a preference for the school that they wish their child to attend, there is no guarantee of a place being offered at their preferred school.
It is the County Council’s policy to try and meet parents wishes where possible, however in some cases there may be more applications for a particular school than there are places available. Admission to Pye Green Academy is determined by the oversubscription criteria detailed below.
Oversubscription Criteria
If the total number of preferences for admission to PGA exceeds the Published Admission Number (PAN), the following order of priority is used to allocate the available places. (N.B., after applying the oversubscription criteria, where an applicant can be offered a place at more than one preferred school then they will be offered a place at the school ranked highest on their application.)
- Children in care and children who ceased to be in care because they were adopted (or became subject to a child arrangements order or special guardianship order), 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
- Children who satisfy both of the following tests:
Test 1: the child is distinguished from the great majority of other applicants either on their own medical grounds or by other exceptional circumstances.
Medical grounds must be supported by a medical report (obtained by the applicant and provided at the point of application). This report must clearly justify, for health reasons only, why it is better for the child’s health to attend the preferred school rather than any other school.
Exceptional circumstances must relate to the choice of school and the individual child, i.e. the circumstances of the child, not the economic or social circumstances of the parent/carer. They should be supported by a professional report (obtained by the applicant and provided at the point of application), e.g. social worker. This report must clearly justify why it is better for the child to attend the preferred school rather than any other school.
Test 2: the child would suffer hardship if they were unable to attend the preferred school.
Hardship means severe suffering of any kind, not merely difficulty or inconvenience, which is likely to be experienced as a result of the child attending a different school. Applicants must provide detailed information about both the type and severity of any likely hardship at the time of application.
- Children who have an elder sibling in attendance at the PGA and who will still be attending the school at the proposed admission date; (For admission purposes, a brother or sister is a child who lives at the same address and either: have one or both natural parents in common; are related by a parents marriage; are adopted or fostered by a common parent or are unrelated children who live at the same address, whose parents live as partners.)
- Children living within the catchment area.
- Other children arranged in order of priority according to how near their home addresses are to the main gate of the school, determined by a straight-line measurement as calculated by the Local Authority’s Geographical Information System.
Where it is not possible to accommodate all children applying for places within a particular category then PGA will allocate the available places in accordance with the remaining criteria. If for instance, all the catchment area children cannot be accommodated at a school, children who are resident within the catchment area will be arranged in order of priority according to the remaining criteria.
Additional Notes
Copies of school catchment area maps are available from the Local Authority or PGA There is no charge or cost related to the admission of a child to a school.
Admissions are administered through a coordinated admission scheme and preferences will be processed centrally by the School Admissions and Transport Service. Each child will receive only one offer of a place at a Staffordshire school.
In accordance with legislation, children who have a statutory statement of special educational need or an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) that names a particular school as being the most appropriate to meet the child’s needs must be admitted to that school. This will reduce the amount of places available to other applicants.
Children in Care means children who are in the care of, or provided with accommodation by a local authority in accordance with section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989 at the time of making the application.
It is the applicant’s responsibility to provide any supportive information required in order for the application to be assessed against the published admissions criteria, the Local Authority will not seek to obtain this information of behalf of the applicant.
The Local Authority uses a Geographical Information System (GIS) to calculate home to school distances in miles. The measurement is calculated using Ordnance Survey (OS) data from an applicant's home address to the main front gate of the school. The coordinates of an applicant's home address is determined and provided by the Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) and OS Address Point data.
The requirement for PGA to meet the Infant Class Size legislation may result in the refusal of catchment area or sibling applications where a class has already reached its limit of 30 pupils. However, as an exception, the PGA will give careful consideration to offering places above the Admission Number to applications from children whose twin or sibling from a multiple birth is admitted even when there are no other vacant places.
The home address is considered to be the child’s along with their parent/carer’s main and genuine principal place of residence at the time of the allocation of places i.e. where they are normally and regularly living. If a child is resident with friends or relatives (for reasons other than legal guardianship) the friends or relative’s address will not be considered for allocation purposes.
Where parents have shared responsibility for a child, and the child lives with both parents for part of the school week, parents will be required to provide documentary evidence to support the address they wish to be considered for allocation purposes.
If a child’s home address changes during the admissions process it is the responsibility of the parent/carer to inform the Local Authority immediately. Where there is a proposed house move taking place during the admissions process the PGA will only accept the revised address for purposes of allocation where parents/carers can provide documentary evidence of the move by 1 April 2019 for September 2019 admission and by 01 April 2020 for September 2020 admission.
If a place is offered on the basis of an address that is subsequently found to be different from the child’s normal and permanent home address at the time of allocation of places then that place is likely to be withdrawn.
If there are a limited number of spaces available and we cannot distinguish between applicants using the criteria listed, such as in the case of children who live in the same block of flats, then the child or children who will be offered the available spaces will be randomly selected. This process will be independently verified.
Deferred Entry to Reception Class
PGA will consider requests from parents to retain a place in the school where the parents wish to defer their child’s entry to a Reception Class until later in the same academic year or until the term in which the child reaches compulsory school age providing it is not beyond the academic year. The effect is that the place will be held for the child and is not available to be offered to any other child. A parent may not defer entry beyond the beginning of the term after the child’s fifth birthday, nor beyond the academic year for which the application was accepted.
PGA will consider requests from parents who wish their child to attend Reception Class on a part time basis until the child reaches compulsory school age.
Admission Outside of the Normal Age Group
Parents may seek to apply for their child’s admission to school outside of their normal age group, for example if the child is exceptionally gifted and talented or has experienced problems such as ill health. In addition, the parents of summer born children may choose not to send their child to school until the September following their fifth birthday and may request that they are admitted outside of their normal age group to Reception rather than Year 1.
These parents will need to make an application alongside children applying at the normal age which should explain why it is in the child’s best interest to be admitted outside of their normal age which may include information such as professional evidence as to why this is the case and why an exception should be made in the case of the child. A decision as to whether this is an appropriate course of action will be made by the Governing Body who will take into account the circumstances of the case and views of the headteacher. Parents do not have the right to insist that their child is admitted to a particular year group.
Waiting lists
Unsuccessful applicants will be placed on a waiting list in accordance with the oversubscription criteria stated above and not based on the date their application was received. If places become available after the offer date they will be offered according to the child at the top of the waiting list.
For cases where the infant class size regulations apply, the waiting list will operate until the cohort concerned leaves Year 2.
For all other cases, Waiting Lists will be kept until the end of the autumn term of admission.
Inclusion on a waiting list does not mean that a place will eventually become available at the preferred school.
A child’s position on a waiting list is not fixed and is subject to change during the year i.e. they can go up or down the list since each added child will require the list to be ranked again in line with the oversubscription criteria listed above.
Children who are subject of a direction by a local authority to admit or who are allocated to a school in accordance with the Fair Access Protocol will take precedence over those on the waiting list.
Late Applications
Preferences received after the closing date will be considered alongside those applicants who applied on time wherever possible. Where it is not practicable because places have already been allocated, or are shortly to be allocated, then late preferences will be considered only after those that were made before this point.
A late application does not affect the right of appeal or the right to be placed on a school’s waiting list.
Repeat Applications
Parents do not have the right to a second appeal in respect of the same school for the same academic year unless, in exceptional circumstances, the local authority has accepted a second application from the appellant because of a significant and material change in the circumstances of the parent, child or school but still refused admission.
“In-Year Transfer” Arrangements
Parents or carers seeking to transfer to a PGA may make an application using the appropriate application form. This application will be processed in line with the procedure outlined in the determined admission arrangements and parents and carers need to be aware that any date set for joining the new school may be after the next term or half term holiday and those parents/carers are responsible for ensuring that their child continues to receive appropriate education in the interim.
Relevant Area
Staffordshire County Council’s relevant area for consultation is contained within the administrative area of Staffordshire County Council.