Guide
How school places are actually decided when a school is oversubscribed
Updated
Every admission authority publishes criteria that rank applicants when there are more of them than places. Understanding the order tells you where you really stand.
Check your catchment To check catchment area boundaries, the map is the easy part. Ask your admission authority for last year's furthest distance offered, by year group, and you will know far more than any catchment overlay can tell you.
Question 1
Where do you live?
School admissions are devolved. The body you contact, and the guidance that binds it, differ across the four nations.
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The criteria run in order
A child with an education, health and care plan naming the school must be given a place: gov.uk states this outright, and it sits above everything else. After that, published criteria typically rank looked-after and previously looked-after children, then siblings already at the school, sometimes staff children or faith criteria, and then distance.
Distance is usually the tie-break
Because the earlier criteria rarely fill a year group on their own, home-to-school distance is normally what separates the remaining applicants. How it is measured matters and varies: straight-line from a property's address point, or a shortest walking route. The published arrangements say which, and the difference decides real cases.
Ask for the furthest distance offered
The practical boundary in any year is where the last offered place fell. It moves with applicant numbers and year group size, so a map drawn once cannot show it. Ask the admission authority for the furthest distance offered, by year group, for the most recent round. It is the most useful number in the process, and rarely volunteered.