St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Primary School, Mossley

Admission Policy 2010/11

St. Joseph’s is a Roman Catholic Primary school provided by Salford Diocese and maintained by Tameside LEA as a voluntary aided primary school. The school’s governing body is the admission authority and is responsible for taking decisions on applicants for admission. For the school year commencing 2010/2011 the governing body’s planned admission number is 20. 

Admission to the school will be made by the governing body in accordance with the applications it receives subject to the following criteria which will be used to form a priority order if there are more applications for admission than the school has places available.

Baptised Roman Catholic children who are in public care.

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 Joseph.

Baptised Roman Catholic children resident in the parish of St. Joseph.

Other baptised Roman Catholic children who will have a brother or sister attending the school at the time of admission and are resident in another parish.

Other baptised Roman Catholic children resident in another parish.

Other children in public care.

Children with exceptional needs.(Please see passage below marked *)

Other children with a brother or sister attending the school at the time of admission.

Other children.

*Children with proven and exceptional medical , social or welfare needs will be admitted where admission to the school might best help satisfy those exceptional needs. Supporting professional evidence will be required. This may be from whatever sources the applicant feels are most appropriate. Examples of such evidence are doctors, health visitors and social services.. A panel of Governors will make a decision as to whether to admit a child under this criteria using the evidence provided. All information provided will be treated in the strictest confidence

Parish Boundary

Parents should check carefully that they are resident within the parish boundary of St. Joseph’s Mossley. The parish boundary is the same as the town boundary.

Please read the above policy in conjunction with the attached notes.

Notes

The governing body is the admissions authority. The admissions committee is comprised of the following: chair of governors, parish priest, head teacher, parent governor and independent clerk.

In the autumn term all parents who have expressed an interest in a school place will be sent a copy of the Local Authority ‘Primary Admission Booklet’ which gives details of the LA co-ordinated admissions arrangements. These are available from Local Authority offices, public libraries and primary schools.

Parents must complete a common application form and express 3 preferences for primary school admission. The closing date for all applicants is the same. All applicants will be considered by the governors at the same time in a fair way according to the published criteria.

Parents requesting a place at St. Joseph’s are asked to complete a supplementary form.

Parents will be informed of the governors’ decision by Tameside LA . An offer of a place does not guarantee a place for brothers and sisters in subsequent years.

Each Roman Catholic applicant will be required to produce a baptismal certificate to prove they are baptised at the time of application for admission to the school.

Parents should check carefully whether they are resident within the parish boundaries of St Joseph’s.

All applicants resident in the parish of St Joseph will be required to provide 2 proofs of address, e.g by supplying an original, up-to-date, utility bill, land phone bill and family credit book etc. Please refer to the list of suggestions in Tameside’s “Starting Out” book. Please note mobile phone billing addresses are not suitable.

It is the duty of 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.

If the school is named in a Statement of special educational needs, the Governing Body has a duty to admit the child to the school.

If in any category there are more applications than places available, preference will be given to pupils living nearest the school. 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 of 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. Ease of access will be considered when parents provide details of particular reasons that mean their child could reach their nearest school but will have a disproportionately long journey to another school if denied admission to their nearest school. Details must be provided in the special circumstances section of the common application form. At all times the school hopes to promote sustainable, healthy travel to school.

Where a child lives with parents with shared responsibility, each for part of the week, the ‘home’ address will be determined as being where the child resides for the majority of the school week.

The term ‘brothers and sisters’ will be taken to include step brothers and sisters, foster children and children of partners living in the same household. 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.. However, the governing body must comply with maximum class size of 30 children in KS1.

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 applications received by the date the place becomes available. If new or late applications have a higher priority under the over subscription 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 Process 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. Parents who have not been allocated their preferences will not automatically go onto a waiting list but will be advised about waiting lists in their allocation letter.

Applications received after the closing date will be dealt with as late and will be considered after all applications received on time have been processed .Late applications will be considered in accordance with the published admissions criteria. If the school is over-subscribed, late applications will have the option of going on a waiting list, as above. Parents will be notified if a vacancy subsequently arises.

In the event of distances being the same for 2 or more applications where this distance would be the last place 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.

A place in nursery does not guarantee a place in reception class.

Parents are asked to read and confirm receipt of the Governors’ published admission policy. Any changes to the policy will be circulated to all applicants on file for subsequent years.

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: parents will be given at least 10 school days from the date 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. The outcome of appeal is binding on parents and the governing body.