St Chad's Roman Catholic Primary School

Admissions Policy

If you would like your child to attend our school, please see full details of our admission arrangements below.

Children are admitted to our Nursery class in the September of the school year they turn three years old. Children are admitted to Reception for full time education in the September of the school year they turn five years old.

Please be aware that admissions to our nursery does not guarantee admission to the reception class.

Parents must follow normal procedures when applying for full-time education.

All parents wishing their child to be admitted to the school are invited to make an appointment to visit the school, meet the Headteacher and look around.

It is important to emphasise that any admissions request are subject to the Manchester Local Authority admission procedures and policies. As such, all applications to attend St. Chad’s R. C. Primary School must go through Manchester Admissions.

St Chad’s is a Catholic Voluntary Academy in the trusteeship of the Diocese of Salford. It is maintained by the directors of Emmaus Catholic Academy Trust. The Local Governing Board is the Admissions Authority and is responsible for taking all decisions on applications for admissions.

The co-ordination of admission arrangements is undertaken by the Local Authority. Parents must complete a Local Authority Common Application Form (CAF)*.

For the school’s year the Local Governing Board’s planned admission is 30.

If there are fewer than 30 applications, all applicants will be offered places.

The following criteria will be used, in accordance with stated parental preferences, to form a priority order if there are more applications for admission than the school has places available.

• Baptised Roman Catholic Looked After Children, Baptised Roman Catholic previously Looked After Children and Looked After Children adopted from overseas.
• Baptised Catholic children who have a sibling attending the school at the time of admission and resident in the parish of St Chad’s.
• Baptised Catholic children resident in the parish of St Chad’s.
• Other Baptised Catholic children who will have a sibling attending the school at the time of admission and are resident in another parish.
• Other Baptised Catholic children who are resident in another parish.
• Looked After Children and previously Looked After Children.
• Other children who have a sibling attending the school at the time of admission.
• All remaining applicants.

Explanatory Notes

• In the autumn term all parents who have expressed an interest in the school will be asked to complete a Common Application Form (CAF). This form will be sent out by Manchester Local Authority who co-ordinate the admissions to schools in Manchester. Parents/carers will also be able to make their application on line.
• All applicants will be considered at the same time and after the closing date for admissions which is 15th January. Decisions regarding the allocation of places will be posted to parents on 16th April ). Applications received after this date will be treated as a late application and will not be considered until after the main allocation of places has taken place.
• Each Catholic applicant will be required to produce a baptismal certificate.
• All applicants will be asked to provide proof of address. Home Address is considered to be the address where the child normally lives. Where care is split and a child moves between two addresses, the household in receipt of the child benefit would normally be the address used but the admission authority body reserves the right to request other evidence as fit the individual circumstance. Applicants should not state the address of another relative or person who has daily care of the child.
• Sibling is defined as a brother or sister, half brother or sister, adopted brother or sister, step brother or sister, or the child of the parent/carer’s partner where the child for whom the school place is sought is living in the same family unit at the same address as the sibling. This does not include cousins or other family relationships.
• A Looked After Child is a child who is (a) in the care of a Local Authority, or (b) being provided with accommodation by a Local Authority in the exercise of their Social Services functions (under section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989. A previously Looked After Child is one who immediately moved on from that status after becoming subject to an adoption, residence or special guardianship order.
• If in any category there are more applications than places available, priority will be given on the basis of distance from home to school. Distance will be measured in a straight line from the centre point of the child’s home address (including the community entrance to flats) to the centre point of the school using the Local Authority’s computerised measuring system with those living nearer to the school having priority. In the event of distances being the same for 2 or more applicants where this distance would be last place/s to be allocated, a random lottery will be carried out in a public place. All the names will be entered into a hat and the required number of names will be drawn out.
• A waiting list for children who have not been offered a place will be kept and will be ranked according to the admission criteria. The waiting list does not consider the date the application was received or the length of time a child's name has been on the waiting list. This means that a child's position on the list may change if another applicant is refused a place and their child has higher priority in the admissions criteria.
• For ‘In Year’ applications received outside the normal admissions round, if places are available, they will be offered to those who apply. If there are places available but more applicants than places then the published oversubscription criteria will be applied.
• It is the duty of governors to comply with regulations on class size limits for children aged between rising five and seven. The governing board may exceed the regulations for twins and children from multiple births where one of the children is the 30th child admitted. This also applies to in-year applicants who are looked after/previously looked after children of UK service personnel or children who move into the area for whom there is no other school available within a reasonable distance.
• If a child is a “summer born child”, parents may request that the date their child is admitted to school is deferred to later in the school year. However, the child must start school before the end of that school year. If a parent wishes their child to be educated out of their normal school year (kept back a year), they must discuss this with the school before applying. However, the final decision on this rests with the headteacher.
• Parents may request that their child attend school part-time until he/she reaches his/her fifth birthday.
• Admission arrangements to the reception class are separate to those for the Nursery. Attendance at the Nursery does not give a child any guarantee or priority when it comes to consideration of applicants for admission to the Reception class.
• Where a child lives with parents with shared responsibility, each for part of a week, the child’s ‘permanent place of residence’ will be determined as the address of the parent who normally has responsibility for the majority of school days in a week.
• If a child has a Statement of Special Educational Needs (SEN) or Education Health and Care (EHC) Plan naming a specific school there is a duty for the school to admit the child.
• If an application for admission has been turned down by the Governing Body, parents can appeal to an independent appeals panel. Parents must be allowed at least twenty school days from the date of notification that their application was unsuccessful to submit an appeal. Parents must give reasons for appealing in writing and the decision of the appeals panel is binding on the governors.
• The Governing Body reserve the right to withdraw the offer of a school pace where false evidence is received in relation to Baptism, sibling connections or place of residence.