Admission Policy
Children are admitted to nursery at the beginning of the academic year in which they become four. Children are admitted to the Academy at the beginning of the academic year in which they become five.
All prospective parents are advised to make an appointment to visit the Academy.
The Academy has an agreed admission number of 60 for entry in Reception. The Academy will admit up to 60 pupils in the relevant age group each year if sufficient applications are received. All applicants will be admitted if there are 60 or fewer.
If the Academy is oversubscribed, after the admission of pupils with a Statement of Special Educational Needs or Education, Health and Care Plan where the Academy is named in the Statement of Plan, priority for admission will be given to those children who meet the criteria set out below, in order:
- A ‘looked after child’ or a child who was previously looked after but immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, child arrangements, or special guardianship order. 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 (see the definition in Section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989).
- Children with a sibling attending the Academy at the time of application. Sibling is defined in these arrangements as children who live as brother or sister in the same house, including natural brothers or sisters, adopted siblings, stepbrothers or sisters and foster brothers and sisters.
- Children who are attending the Nursery at the Academy on a full time basis at the time of the application.
- Children who are twins or from multiple births.
- Other children by distance from the Academy, with priority for admission given to children who live nearest to the Academy as measured by using Ordnance Survey data to plot an address in this system. Distances are measured from the main entrance of the child’s home to the main entrance of the Academy.
Random allocation will be used as a tie-break in category ‘5’ above to decide who has highest priority for admission if the distance between two children’s homes and the Academy is the same. This process will be independently verified.
As there is no ‘catchment’ area and the academy is often over-subscribed, we recommend that parents register their children for Nursery after their child’s second birthday.
A waiting list is kept in Academy for all year groups and places are allocated based on the above criteria.