School offers for children starting Reception in September 2021 will be released on Friday 16 April 2021. They will be sent to the online parent portal and should be visible by 12 noon.
Accepting the place offered
We highly recommend that you accept the primary/infant school place that is offered to your child, even if it is not your preferred school.
If you applied online, log in to your online account to accept the school you have been offered.
Make sure you click the accept button on the online portal in order to confirm your acceptance of the school offered. This information will then be sent to the school you have accepted.
Declining the school place offered
If you do not wish to accept the school place which has been offered to your child then please contact the Admissions Service via email at admissions@warwickshire.gov.uk
You will not be able to use the online parent portal to decline a school place.
Additionally, if you are declining the primary/infant place offered to you by Warwickshire County Council, you should have an alternative provision in place for your child, for them to start in September 2021. This could include a confirmed place at an independent (private) school or that you have made the decision to home educate your child.
Waiting lists
If your child has not been offered a place at one or more of the preferred schools on your application, this is because there were more applications received for that school than there were places available. When this happens, applicants are ranked in the order of the oversubscription criteria, as determined by the admission authority of the school concerned. Places are then offered to the applicants who score highest according to these criteria until all available places at the school are filled.
Your child will automatically be added to the waiting lists of any schools listed as a higher preference on your application than the school you have been offered. The waiting lists are ordered according to the oversubscription criteria, as determined by the school concerned, and will include both on time and late applications equally.
Your child’s position on any of those waiting lists could change at any time and applicants can move both up and down on the waiting lists. This is due to vacancies at the school being filled and further late applicants being added to the waiting lists, in criteria order.
Late applications can be received (and will be processed) until the coordinated admissions process ends on 31 August 2021.
School appeals for Warwickshire schools
You have the right to appeal for any school that you have named on your application but not been offered, as long as that school is ranked as a higher preference than the school your child has been offered.
It will be very difficult to be successful in winning an appeal for a place in Reception at many of Warwickshire’s infant and primary schools. This is due to the fact that any school that operates in classes of 30 children in Reception, Year 1 or Year 2 has to abide by specific infant class size legislation.
If this is the case for any of the schools you are considering lodging an appeal for, then you should be aware that there are very specific grounds where an appeal panel can allow for your appeal to be successful.
A school place that makes it impossible for you to transport all of your family to school on time, or even impossible for you to continue working, will not be considered to be sufficient grounds for you to win your appeal. This has been established in previous court cases.
Lodging an appeal, submitting relevant evidence, attending an appeal hearing and awaiting the outcome of an appeal can be quite a daunting and emotional process. Many appeals that are heard for Warwickshire’s schools are not successful. Therefore, we recommend that you think carefully before lodging an appeal.
If you wish to appeal for a Warwickshire school please complete the online appeal form. You cannot lodge an appeal until your child has formally been refused a place at a school. Therefore, appeals cannot be lodged before 16 April 2021, as you will not know before that date if your child has been offered or refused a place at a school you have applied for.
Some schools in Warwickshire operate their own appeals process. If this is the case for the school you wish to appeal for, you will be advised of it when you attempt to lodge the appeal through the website above. In such cases, please contact the school concerned for more information about their appeal process.