Admissions criteria for places in community and voluntary controlled secondary schools 2025/2026

When a secondary school is oversubscribed, the following priorities apply in order:

1. Looked after children or a child who was previously looked after, but immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, child arrangement order, or special guardianship order or those children who appear to the school to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted, then 
2. Children for whom the Local Authority accepts that there are exceptional medical, social or welfare reasons which are directly relevant to the school concerned, then 
3. Children eligible for Services Premium, then
4. Children living within the school’s geographical priority area with older brothers or sisters attending the school when the younger child will start, then
5. Children living within the school’s geographical priority area, then
6. Children living outside the school’s geographical priority area with older brothers or sisters still attending the school when the younger child will start, then
7. Children living outside the school’s geographical priority area.

The distance criterion will be used as the tie breaker if there is oversubscription within any of the admission criteria; it is a straight line (radial) measure. 

Tie-breaker

If the Local Authority is unable to distinguish between applicants using the published criteria (eg. siblings, those living the same distance from home to school, or families residing in the same block of flats) places will be offered via a random draw.

The distance measure is a straight line measurement (radial) between the applicant’s home address points and the address point of the school (co-ordinates provided by ordnance survey data).