Receiving an offer of a primary school place
Primary school applications for September 2026
The first round of primary school applications ran between 12 September 2025 and 15 January 2026. First round applicants will receive school place offers on National Offer Day - 16 April 2026.
If you haven’t yet applied for a primary school place for September 2026, you can still do so. The second round of applications is open between 16 January and 30 April 2026.
If you apply during the second round, we will process your application during the week commencing 11 May 2026. We will post you a letter with the school place offer via Royal Mail second class post by 22 May 2026.
How and when you receive the outcome of your application
If you submitted your application by the first round deadline, you will receive the outcome on National Offer Day – 16 April 2026.
We will:
- Email offer letters to parents / carers who applied online
- Post offer letters Second Class via Royal Mail to parents / carers who made paper applications or submitted an amendment by the deadline date
You can also log into your Parent Portal account to view the offer.
Accepting or declining the offer
Your email or letter will explain the next steps. In summary, we will give you two options:
Failure to respond to a school place offer by the deadline may result in the place being offered to another child on our waiting list.
Allocation information will be published following National Offer Day.
Waiting lists
How the waiting list process works
Once we have allocated all available places, we create a waiting list for each oversubscribed school. We automatically add your child to the waiting list of any school you named on your application that was a higher preference than the school where we allocated your child a place.
Positions on a waiting list must follow the same order as the oversubscription criteria for that school. We do not allocate places on a 'first come, first served' basis. If a place becomes available at a school, we will offer it to the child at the top of the waiting list. If they decline the offer, we then move to the second child on the waiting list and so on until the place is accepted.
If future applications have a higher priority under the oversubscription criteria, they will be ranked higher than those who have been on the waiting list for some time. Therefore, over time, it is possible that a child's position on the waiting list can change.
Appeals
If you are unhappy with your child’s school place offer, you have the right to appeal to an Independent Appeals Panel.
You can find further information on the appeals process, including infant class size appeals, and how to appeal on our School Admissions Appeals page.
You can only appeal for a school for which you have expressed a preference and have been refused. If you wish to appeal, it is best to accept the offered school place. This won't affect the appeal outcome and will ensure your child isn't left without a school place should your appeal be unsuccessful.