The Local Authority Education Department

 

The Local Authority Education Department are responsible for allocating your child a school place.  Every Education Department which is now part of Children's Services, has a legal duty to provide a school place for every child within their area.  The difficulty for some parents is that the school place allocated may not be at a school that they would choose.

 

If a school has places and parents request a place for their child, the Education Department and school are obliged to allocate a place for that child in that school, except in certain unusual situations.  Places must be allocated following the Local Authority's own published admission criteria. 

 

If there are too many requests for a school then priority must be given to children who fulfil the highest single or combination of criteria.  As a parent, it is vital that you obtain details of this criteria, which should be easily available from the Education Department, either in the Admissions Policy document, or in other notes to help parents.

 

Examples of admission criteria tend to be about catchments or priority areas, siblings at the school already, exceptional social or domestic circumstances, vulnerable children - such as those in care.  Admission policy varies greatly between Local Authorities and foundation or voluntary aided schools.

 

There are cases where more than one child meets the same criteria and so by law each Authority must have a 'tie break' criteria.  These vary greatly, but many authorities will use distance.

 

Your home Education Department has the duty to provide a school place for your child, a neighbouring Education Department has to allocate a school place at a school of your choice only if there are spaces and the admissions criteria are correctly applied.

 

New arrangements were put in place by the government in 2004 to prevent some children holding more than one school place until the start of term.  Now every parent has to apply for a school place to their own Education Department, even if the desired school is in a different Authority or is, for example, a foundation school.  Parents should be aware that some Education Departments have different policies and even different transfer cycles. 

 

It always pays to check with the Local Authority or school that you want the child to attend what their admission criteria are and ask for details about transfer.  For example in some areas of the country there is middle school provision, ie children change school at 11+ and then 14+ for GCSEs.  An application will have to be made in the Autumn before the transfer to ensure a place is available.

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