Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Primary Admission arrangements for 2010/11

Our Lady of Mount Carmel is a Roman Catholic Primary School provided by the Diocese of Salford and is maintained by the Tameside Local education Authority as Voluntary Aided School. The School’s Governing Body is the Admissions Authority and is responsible for taking decisions on applications for admissions. For the school year commencing September 2010, the Governing Body has set its planned admissions number at 30.

Admission to the school will be made by the Governing Body, subject to the following set of criteria which will be used to form a priority order if there are more applications for admission than the school has places available. These should be read in conjunction with the additional notes.

1. Baptised Roman Catholic children in public care.
2. Baptised Roman Catholic children who will have a brother or sister attending the school at the time of admission and resident in the parish of St. Ann’s, Ashton.
3. Other baptised Roman Catholic children who are resident in the parish of St. Ann’s, Ashton.
4. Other baptised Roman Catholic children who will have a brother or sister attending the school at the time of admission.
5. Other baptised Roman Catholic children resident in another parish.
6. Other children in public care.
7. Other children who will have a brother or sister attending the school at the time of admission.
8. Other children.

Notes:

a. Parents should check carefully whether they are resident within the parish boundary of St. Ann’s Ashton. This includes what was previously St. Mary’s, Ashton, parish. Two proofs of address will be required from the following list:

Mortgage Statement*
Tenancy agreement or letter from landlord*
Council Tax Statement*
Council Tax benefit statement*
TV licence*
Home contents insurance certificate*
Buildings insurance certificate*
Recent utility bill (gas, electricity, water, land-line telephone bill but not a mobile phone bill)**
Letter from a solicitor confirming exchange of contracts on a house**

* issued within the last 12 months
** issued within the last 3 months

b. All applicants will be considered at the same time and after the closing date for admissions.

c. Roman Catholic applicants will be required to produce a baptismal certificate as proof of baptism. Failure to produce the certificate may result in your application being considered against lower criteria.

d. It is the duty of the governors to comply with class size limits at Key Stage One. This means that the school cannot operate classes in Key Stage One of more than 30 children.

e. If there are more applicants than places within any criteria, the proximity to the school will be used to allocate any available places within that criterion. Distance will be measured as a straight line from the child's home address, using the address point assigned by The National Land and Property Gazetteer, to the main gate to the school property. Measurements will be made using the local authority’s school admissions data mapping software, which employs a Geographical Information System based on Ordnance Survey.”

The address from which distance will be measured will be the permanent residential address, at the time of application, of the parent with whom the child lives. Where a child lives with parents with shared responsibility, each for part of a week, the home address is the address from which the child travels to school for the majority of school days per week. If the number of days is exactly equal the home address will be that of the parent who receives the Child Benefit.

f. A brother or sister is defined as a child living under the same roof as part of the same family. The sibling criterion includes; natural sisters/brothers; half sisters/brothers; step sisters/brothers; adopted sisters/brothers; sisters/brothers of fostered children. In cases where twins, triplets, other multiple birth siblings, or other siblings whose date of birth falls within the same academic year, are split when allocations take place, parents will be offered a choice of breaking the sibling link and being offered places at two or more schools or all siblings being offered a place at the same school which may not be a preference school named on the common application form.

g. Governors have a duty to admit a child with a statement of Special Educational Needs where the statement names our school.

h. If an application for admission has been turned down by the Governing Body, parents can appeal to an independent Appeals Panel. This appeal must be sent in writing to the Clerk to the Governors at the school within 14 days of notification of refusal. The date of notification will be 2 working days after posting by first class post. The parents must give their reasons for appealing in writing and the decision of the Appeals Panel is binding on the Governors.

i. Admission arrangements to the Reception Class are separate to those for the Nursery. Attendance at the Nursery does not give a child any guarantee or priority when it comes to consideration by the governors of applicants for admission to the Reception Class.

j. Late applications. Applications received after the closing date for applications in the normal admissions round will be considered after all applications received on time have been processed.
k If applications are received after the closing date and these take the school above the admission number, then the following will apply.

If the school is oversubscribed the governors will maintain a waiting list. The waiting list will operate until the end of the autumn term 2010 for those parents who have submitted an appeal or who have opted to go on the list. All pupils on the waiting list will be ranked according to the oversubscription criteria. Places will be offered, should any become available, to the highest ranked application received by the date the place becomes available. If new or late applications have a higher priority under the oversubscription criteria, they will be ranked higher than those who have been on the list for some time. A significant change of circumstances, such as a change of address, will be taken into account: evidence must be provided. Children who have been referred under the local authority’s Fair Access protocol or who are the subject of a direction by the local authority to admit must be given precedence over any other children on the waiting list.

l. In the event of distances being the same for 2 or more applications where this distance would be the last place/s to be allocated, a random lottery will be implemented between the applications where the distance is the same. The random lottery will be carried out in a public place and supervised by someone independent of the school. All the names will be entered into a hat and the required number of names will be drawn out.

m. Change of Preference

Admission authorities will not allow preferences, ranking order or pupil details, to be changed after the closing date of (to be determined) except in exceptional circumstances for example, if the family has recently moved address. Evidence must be provided to support the request. No changes can be considered after (to be determined), when the allocations process has started.