1. When will I know?
National offer day is the day you find out which school your child has been allocated, if the date falls on either a weekend or a bank holiday, the decision will be sent on the next working day.
For a Reception place in September or a Year 3 place in a Junior School in September, the national offer day is:
- 16 April or the next working day
If your child attends the school nursery, this does not guarantee your child a place in Reception at the school. For further information about how school places are allocated please see School Admissions
2. What if I’m not happy?
If you are not happy with the school your child has been allocated, you have the right to appeal and this will be explained in the letter you receive. The letter will give you a date to submit an appeal by, providing you lodge the appeal on or before this date, your appeal will be heard within 40 school days.
If you lodge an appeal after the given deadline, we cannot guarantee your appeal will be heard with the on time appeals and there is a possibility your appeal may not be heard until September or October as appeals are not heard during school holidays.
All on time appeals will start to be heard towards the end of June and will continue to be heard throughout July, all on time appeals will be heard by the time the schools break up for the summer holidays. If you appeal for more than 1 school, there is a possibility the appeals will be considered on different dates.
Some schools are separated into infant and junior school; therefore, you need to apply for your child’s Year 3 place for September in your preferred junior school.
The schools you need to apply for a Year 3 place are:
- Abbey Junior School
- Moat Farm Junior School
- Ocker Hill Academy
- Tipton Green Junior School
The decision-making process the panel must follow is the same for all year groups from Year 3 up to and including Year 11, for information regarding the decision making process please see here.
For details on what will happen at your appeal hearing please visit the Your Appeal Hearing page.
3. What happens?
Where the number of applications for a school exceeds the number of places available there will be unsuccessful applications.
Places must be fairly allocated following the criteria set by the admission authority. If your application / preference for the school was made after 15 January, the on-time applications will be considered first for example:
- If 100 applications were received for a school where there are 60 places available and you applied for the school on 31 January, all the on-time applications would be looked at first. If the 60 places were offered to children whose applications were made on-time, your child would not be offered a place at the school even if your child has a sibling at the school or you live on the same road as the school
The distance from your child’s home address to the school is measured in a straight-line measurement as the crow flies, to calculate the distance a specialist system is used.
To view the admission arrangements please visit the School Admissions page. If you have any questions in regards to how places are allocated please contact School Admissions.
4. What if my child is not offered a place?
If your child is not offered a place at one of your preferred schools, providing you are a Sandwell resident, Sandwell must allocate your child a school and will offer a place at an alternate school which is usually your nearest school with a place available.
If you live in a neighbouring authority, it is the responsibility of your local authority to ensure your child is allocated a suitable school.
If your child is not offered a place at your preferred school(s), your child is automatically put onto a waiting list which is kept until 31 December. If a place becomes available before 31 December, places are offered in order of position on the waiting list. Your child’s position on the waiting list may change, if your circumstances change please contact School Admissions. For example: if you move home, you must tell School Admissions your new address.
If your child will start Reception in September, your appeal will be considered under Infant Class Size Legislation. It is important to read this guidance before deciding whether to lodge an appeal because the panel does not have the flexibility to consider personal circumstances, the appeal is a ‘review’ of the decision to refuse admission and for this reason it is extremely rare for an infant class size appeal to be successful.
5. What is Infant Class Size Legislation?
Infant class size legislation does not allow a place to be offered to a child if there would be more than 30 children in an infant class per schoolteacher (teaching assistants, support staff etc are not classed as schoolteachers). Although, in exceptional circumstance a child may be admitted to an infant class, taking the number of children in a class above 30 (this is extremely rare).
6. What the Panel look at?
The panel can only allow an appeal where:
- It finds admission of an additional child/ren would not breach infant class size (30 children per class teacher)
- It finds that the admission arrangements did not comply with admissions law or were not correctly and impartially applied, and the child would have been offered a place if the arrangements had been correctly and impartially applied
- It decides that the decision to refuse admission was not one which a reasonable admission authority would have made in the circumstances of the case
The threshold to find that an admission authority’s decision to refuse an admission was ‘unreasonable’ is high.
To determine whether the refusal ‘unreasonable’ the panel must be satisfied the decision was ‘perverse in the light on the admission arrangements’ i.e. it was beyond the range of responses open to a reasonable decision maker or a decision which is so outrageous in it defiance of logic or of accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied their mind to the question could have arrived at it.
For example, if your child has a sibling already at the school, this would not be classed as an unreasonable decision to refuse your child admission to the school.