How school admissions actually work

Who actually decides

You apply through the council you live in, even for a school in the next council, and the council coordinates the offers. But the council does not necessarily set the rules. Community schools use the council's criteria; academies, free schools, foundation schools and faith schools set their own, published each year in their admission arrangements. Two schools on the same road can rank applicants in different orders, so the criteria are always worth reading for the specific school.

The calendar

Where a date falls on a weekend the next working day applies. A late application is considered only after every on-time one, whatever the reason, which is the single most common way a family with a house in the right place still misses out.

The order the criteria are applied in

When more children apply than there are places, the school's oversubscription criteria decide who gets one. By law, children who are or have been in local authority care come first. After that, the usual order, though each school's arrangements can differ, is:

1. Siblings of children already at the school.
2. A catchment or priority area, where the school or council uses one. Many do not.
3. Faith criteria, at schools with a religious character: regular attendance at worship, usually evidenced by a clergy form.
4. Selection, at grammar schools: the entrance test decides before anything else.
5. Distance from home to school, nearest first, until the places run out.

Distance is last, which is why it decides so much: it is the criterion that separates the children who share all the others. And it is why a house near a popular school guarantees nothing if the year's siblings and faith applicants fill it first.

What "distance" means

Councils measure distance precisely, but not all the same way. Most use a straight line from a fixed point at the home (often the address point held by Ordnance Survey) to a fixed point at the school, a gate or the centre of the site. Some use the shortest safe walking route. The arrangements say which, and it matters: a house across a river or a railway line can be near by straight line and far by road.

After each round, councils publish the last distance offered for each oversubscribed school: how far away the furthest child admitted under the distance criterion lived. That is the figure on every school page here, and on the council pages. It is a real number about a real year, not a model, and each page says which council published it and for which round.

Why most schools have no catchment area

A catchment area is a fixed boundary drawn on a map, inside which children get priority. Some councils use them, and where they exist they are a genuine advantage. But most English schools have none. When they are oversubscribed, places are simply offered outward from the school until they run out, and how far out that reaches changes every year with the number of applications and where those families live.

So a circle drawn around a school is not a catchment, and anyone selling you one as a boundary is guessing. It is last year's outcome. Used honestly, that is still the best evidence there is: a school that admitted from 0.4 miles for three years running is unlikely to reach 1.5 miles next year, and a house at 0.3 miles is a sound bet even though it is not a promise.

Reading a distance before you buy

• Compare your distance with last year's figure. Well inside it is reassuring; near it is a coin toss; outside it means you are hoping for a quiet year. Every school page here has a checker that does this for a postcode.
• Look at more than one year. A figure that shrinks each year is a school under growing pressure. Where we hold several rounds, the school page shows them.
• Check how full the school is. A school at 100% of capacity has no slack; one at 85% may admit everyone who applies.
• Read the criteria for siblings and faith. If half the places go before distance is considered, the published distance is being set by a smaller pool than it looks.
• Know the closing date for the address. Councils use where the child lives on the deadline, and check it. A completion that slips past 15 January is a primary application from the old address.

If you do not get a place

You can appeal to an independent panel, and you go on the waiting list, which the council must keep at least until the end of the autumn term of the year the child starts. Appeals for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 are hard to win, because infant classes are capped at 30 by law and the panel can usually only overturn a decision that was itself a mistake. Secondary appeals turn on whether the harm to your child outweighs the harm to the school of taking one more.

Check a school, or a house

Admission distances, council by council →
Every school near a postcode, on a map →
The full report on one address: every nearby school, and the house itself →