Admissions Policy - Beaconfields Primary and Nursery School

The school has a 26 place Nursery and an admission number of 30 for entry into Reception. The school will be a one form entry school. The school will admit this number of pupils to Reception and Nursery in September 2024, if there are sufficient applications. Where fewer applicants than the published admission numbers for the relevant year group are received, the Trust will offer places at the school to all those that have applied.

The school will use Staffordshire Local authority procedures to process all applications and for coordinating offers. When the school is oversubscribed, after those with and Educational Health Care Plan or statement of Special Educational Needs naming the school, priority for admission will be given to those children who meet the criteria below, in priority order

1.       Children in care and children who ceased to be in care because they were adopted (or became subject to a child arrangements order 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, see additional note below.

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.

and

• 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.

2.       Children who have an elder sibling in attendance at the preferred school (or in the case of an infants school, the affiliated junior school) 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.)

3.       Children living within the catchment area of the preferred school. see additional notes ** below

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. see additional notes **** below.

Where it is not possible to accommodate all children applying for places within a particular category then the local authority 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 criteria 5) followed by those children resident within the catchment area arranged in order of criteria 6). 

If 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.