News

Pupil admissions update

11th March 2012

We have now conducted our second round of admissions allocations and are pleased to say that we have been able to offer all applicants a place for September 2012, subject to confirmation of our Funding Agreement with the Department for Education. Mr Faith will be calling all the families who have been offered places on Monday to let them know the good news.

We wanted to explain a few important points about admissions from now on.

First, we have allocated 87 places for entry to Year Seven in September 2012. This means we still have up to 13 vacancies to take us to our maximum approved admissions number of 100 pupils.

As we have now concluded our main admissions round, any applications received from now on will be added to one of the five ability-banded waiting lists. Each week day, until we reach our cap of 100 pupils, we will allocate any pupils on the waiting list at that point to any spare places we have in the relevant band. Once we reach 100 pupils holding offers, we will continue to add late applicants to a waiting list, but will only allocate places to children on the waiting list should a space become available (for example, if a prospective pupil moves out of area and withdraws from their place).

Our oversubscription criteria state that if there are spaces in any ability band, and children on the waiting list for other bands, we will allocate those children a space in the 'wrong' band. Banding will, therefore, only now apply if we receive enough applications on a single day to take us from being under- to over-subscribed, in which case the offers made that day will be determined by ability band.

Second, those families who have already been made conditional offers will be contacted as soon as we have signed our Funding Agreement with the Department for Education. We are one of the Free Schools furthest ahead in this process and are currently finalising a few legal clauses. We expect all the paperwork for the Funding Agreement to be completed and for it to be signed in the next two weeks. We are pushing hard to ensure this happens as quickly as possible. We do apologise for the delay - which is an unavoidable product of the tight timescales to set up this year. Everything has been moving very fast to ensure we're in a position to make firm offers as soon as possible.

As ever, if you have any questions or concerns, please do contact us and ask; Mr Faith is always happy to speak to prospective parents and pupils!