Featherstone Academy
2025/2026 and 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) academy
- Set out the academy’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.
Admission to primary and middle schools - Staffordshire County Council
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
Admission number
Each academy within GLP has an agreed admission number of pupils for entry in each academic year.
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.
Primary School Admission Arrangements - Staffordshire County Council
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 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 the following webpage your home local authority website.
9. Monitoring arrangements
This policy will be reviewed and approved by the Director of Education 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.