Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Primary School

Admission Policy 2020-2021

SACRED HEART CATHOLIC PRIMARY SCHOOL

ADMISSION POLICY AND ARRANGEMENTS 2020/2021

Sacred Heart is a Catholic School in the trusteeship of the Diocese of Salford.  It is maintained by the Lancashire Local Authority (LA) and is a voluntary aided School.  The Governing Body is the Admissions Authority and is responsible for taking all decisions on applications for admissions.  The co-ordination of admissions arrangements is undertaken by the Local Authority. 

For the school’s year commencing September 2020, the Governing Body has determined that the number of children to be admitted in 2020-2021 will be 28.

The school’s role is to participate in the mission of the Catholic Church by providing a curriculum, including Catholic religious education and worship, which will help children to grow in their understanding of the Good News and in the practice of their faith.  The school will help the children develop fully as human beings and prepare them to undertake their responsibilities as Catholics in society.  The school requires all parents applying for a place here to understand and respect this ethos and its importance to the school community.  This does not affect the rights of parents who are not of the Catholic faith to apply for a place here. 

Admissions to the school will be determined by the Governing Body.  Parents must complete a Local Authority Preference Form or apply online via the website Apply for a primary school place - Lancashire County Council

 If you wish to have your application considered against that school's religious criteria then you must ALSO complete the Supplementary Form which is available from the school. 

If there are fewer than 28 applications, all applicants will be offered places.  If there are more applications than the number of places available, the following oversubscription criteria will be applied:

1. Looked After Children (LAC) and previously Looked After Children. (See note c)
2. Children with an exceptional social, medical, educational or religious need which can be best met, or only met at this school.

(See Note d)

3. Baptised Catholic children who have a sibling in the school at the time of admission and are resident in the former parish of Sacred Heart.
4. Other Baptised Catholic children who are resident in the former parish of Sacred Heart.
5. Other Baptised Catholic children who will have a sibling attending the school at the time of admission and are resident in another parish.
6. Other Baptised Catholic children who are resident in another parish.
7. Other children who have a sibling attending the school at the time of admission.
8. Children eligible for early year’s pupil premium, pupil premium or service premium funding.
9. All remaining applicants.

 Notes for Applicants:

1. Where there are more applicants for the available places within a category, then the distance between the Ordnance Survey address points for the school and the home measured in a straight line will be used as the final determining factor, nearer addresses having priority over more distant ones.  This address point is within the body of the property and usually located at its centre. Where the cutoff point is for addresses within the same building, then the single measure between address points will apply and the Local Authority's system of a random draw will determine which address(es) receive the offer(s).

1. All applications will be considered at the same time and after the closing date for admissions. Applications received after this date will be treated as a late application. They will not be considered until after the main allocation of places has taken place and they will be placed on the waiting list in order of the above stated criteria.

1989. 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.

1. Exceptional needs of those described at criterion 2 above will occur very rarely. It is strongly recommended that a written application is submitted in advance of the normal admissions timetable.

1. ‘Sibling’ is defined in these arrangements as full, half or step brothers and sisters, adopted and foster brothers and sisters who are living at the same address and are part of the same family unit. This does not include cousins or other family relationships.

For a child to be considered as a Catholic evidence of a Catholic Baptism or reception into the Catholic Church is required.  Written evidence of reception into the Catholic Church can be obtained by referring to the Register of Receptions, or in some cases a sub-section of the Baptismal Registers of the Church in which the Rite of Reception took place.  If, for example, a child has been baptised in the Church of England and the parents are subsequently admitted to the Catholic Church through the RCIA programme, the child must also be admitted to the Church by the Rite of Reception. 

The Governing Body will require written evidence in the form of a Certificate of Reception before applications for school places can be considered for categories of ‘Baptised Catholics’.  A Certificate of Reception is to include full name, date of birth, date of reception and parent(s) name(s).  The certificate must also show that it is copied from the records kept by the place of reception.

Those who have difficulty obtaining written evidence of baptism for a good reason, may still be considered as Baptised Catholics but only after they have been referred to the parish priest who, after consulting with the Episcopal Vicar for Formation in Salford Diocese will decide how the question of baptism is to be resolved and how written evidence is to be produced in accordance with the law of the Church.

1. Parents should check carefully whether they are resident with the former parish boundary of the Sacred Heart. A map illustrating the boundary is available in school.

1. 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. 

1. The Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP) is additional funding to support disadvantaged three and four year olds in early years settings.

To check if you are eligible please follow the government guidance found at

Extra funding to prepare for the early years pupil premium - GOV.UK

The Pupil Premium is additional funding given to state funded schools in England to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and close the gap between them and their peers.

To check if you are eligible please follow the Lancashire County Council guidance found at Free school meals and pupil premium - Lancashire County Council

The admissions authority reserve the right to check any applicants eligibility using the FSM Eligibility Checking Service (ECS).The Eligibility Checking Service links to welfare benefits data held by DWP and HMRC and returns an “eligible”/”not eligible” result as to whether a parent is entitled to Free School Meals. 

The Service Premium is for children whose parents are serving in the Armed Forces.  Service children as a group do not underachieve but the Premium is provided to meet their specific pastoral needs. 

To check if you are eligible please follow the government guidance found at

The Service Pupil Premium: what you need to know - GOV.UK

1. The position on the waiting list will be determined by the priority order of the admission policy and nothing else.

When the number of children admitted to the school drops below the published admission number, a place will be offered to the child who is at the top of the waiting list. The position of your child on the waiting list may change. They may move up or down each time a child is added or removed, or when the change in circumstances of the child requires them to be considered against a different priority order of the school’s oversubscription criteria. Looked after children, previously looked after children, and those allocated a place at the school in accordance with the Fair Access Protocol must take precedence over those on the waiting list.

The waiting list will be maintained by the school, in accordance with the school’s oversubscription criteria, until 31st December in the academic year of reception year admission. Parents are advised to contact the school, if they want their child’s details to be kept on the waiting list, from the spring term onwards.

The in-year admission waiting list will be maintained by the school, in accordance with the school’s oversubscription criteria.

We will contact the parents of children on the waiting list in the summer term for each year group to ascertain if they wish for their child’s details to remain on the waiting list.

1. 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.

1. If an application for admission has been turned down by the Governing Body, parents may 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 that appeal.  Parents must give reasons for appealing in writing and the decision of the Appeals Panel is binding on the Governors.

1. Admission arrangements to the Reception class are separate from those for the Nursery class. Attendance in the Nursery does not give a child any guarantee or priority when it comes to consideration by the governors for admission to the Reception class.

1. The Governing Body reserve the right to withdraw the offer of a school place where false evidence is received in relation to the application.

1. It is the duty of governors to comply with regulations on class size limits for children aged between rising five and seven. This means that the school cannot operate classes in Key Stage one of more than 30 children. The Governing Body may exceed the regulations for twins and children from multiple births where one of the children is the 30^th 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.

1. 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. 

1. Parents may seek a place for their child outside of their normal age group, for example, if the child is gifted and talented or has experienced problems such as ill health. In addition, the parents of a summer born child [1] may choose not to send that child to school until the September following their fifth birthday and may request that they are admitted out of their normal age group – to reception rather than year 1. Admission authorities must make clear in their admission arrangements the process for requesting admission out of the normal age group.

Admission authorities must make decisions on the basis of the circumstances of each case and in the best interests of the child concerned. This will include taking account of the parent’s views; information about the child’s academic, social and emotional development; where relevant, their medical history and the views of a medical professional; whether they have previously been educated out of their normal age group; and whether they may naturally have fallen into a lower age group if it were not for being born prematurely. They must also take into account the views of the head teacher of the school concerned. When informing a parent of their decision on the year group the child should be admitted to, the admission authority must set out clearly the reasons for their decision. 

Where an admission authority agrees to a parent’s request for their child to be admitted out of their normal age group and, as a consequence of that decision, the child will be admitted to a relevant age group (i.e. the age group to which pupils are normally admitted to the school) the local authority and admission authority must process the application as part of the main admissions round, unless the parental request is made too late for this to be possible, and on the basis of their determined admission arrangements only, including the application of oversubscription criteria where applicable. They must not give the application lower priority on the basis that the child is being admitted out of their normal age group. Parents have a statutory right to appeal against the refusal of a place at a school for which they have applied. This right does not apply if they are offered a place at the school but it is not in their preferred age group.

^[1] The term summer born children relates to all children born from 1 April to 31 August. These children reach compulsory school age on 31 August following their fifth birthday (or on their fifth birthday if it falls on 31 August). It is likely that most requests for summer born children to be admitted out of their normal age group will come from parents of children born in the later summer months or those born prematurely.

1. Parents may request that their child attend school part-time until he/she reaches his/her fifth birthday.

1. The admission of a non-Catholic child in a year where there are vacancies remaining after the demand from Catholics has been met does not guarantee a place for a sibling in a year where the Catholic demand is greater.

Supplementary information forms are available from the school and their completion is strongly recommended.

Determined Admissions Policy 2021-22

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