Admissions

Any child with an Education, Health and Care Plan is required to be admitted to the academy that is named in the plan. This gives such children overall priority for admission to the named academy. This is not an oversubscription criterion.

NB: Places in our Resource Base Provision are only allocated through SENAR/ Birmingham Local Authority

Children who are looked after (or immediately after being looked after) became    subject to an adoption, child arrangement order or special guardianship order. This includes any child/ young person who is subject to a Full Care Order, an interim Care Order, accommodated under  s22(1) of the Children Act 1989, is remanded or detained into Local Authority accommodation under Criminal Law or who has been placed for adoption.

Evidence may be requested from carer’s whose children are looked after or were previously looked after by another Local Authority.

Children adopted from state care outside of England

Children who appear (to the Governing body) to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted will be given equal first priority in admission arrangements, alongside looked after children (LAC) and children who were previously looked after by English local authorities (PLAC). These children are referred to as internationally adopted previously looked after children – “IAPLAC”.

Evidence will be required from the carer confirming that their child meets the above criteria

in accordance with the DfE’s non-statutory guidance on the admission of IAPLAC.

Siblings (brothers or sisters) are considered to be those children who live at the same address and either:

1. have one or both natural parents in common; or   
2. are related by a parent’s marriage; or   
3. are adopted or fostered by a common parent

Unrelated children living at the same address, whose parents are living as partners, are also considered to be siblings.

Children not adopted or fostered or related by a parent’s marriage or with one natural parent in common, who are brought together as a family by a civil partnership and who are living at the same address, are also considered to be siblings.

Distances are calculated on the basis of a straight-line measurement between the applicant’s home address and a point decided by the academy – this is the main entrance of the school. The Local Authority uses a computerised system, which measures all distances in metres. Ordnance Survey supply the co-ordinates that are used to plot an applicant’s home address and the address of the academy.

Where parents have shared responsibility for a child, and the child lives with both parents for part of the week, then the main residence will be determined as the address where the child lives the majority of the week. Parents may be requested to supply documentary evidence to support the address used.

In a very small number of cases it may not be possible to decide between the applications of those pupils who are the final qualifiers for a place, when applying the published admission criteria.

For example, this may occur when children in the same year group live at the same address, or if the distance between the home and academy is exactly the same, for example, blocks of flats. If there is no other way of separating the application according to the admissions criteria and to admit both or all of the children would cause the Published Admission Number for the child’s year group to be exceeded, the Local Authority will use a computerised system to randomly select the child to be offered the final place.

In the event of this occurring with twins or other multiple birth applicants, academies will be asked to admit over their Published Admission Number to accommodate the pupils.

Waiting lists will not be fixed following the offer of places. They are subject to change. This means that a child’s waiting list position during the year could go up or down. Any applicants will be added to the academy’s list in accordance with the order of priority for offering places. Waiting lists will be maintained until the end of each academic year.

Appeals are administered by the Local Authority for this Academy.  Parents who wish to appeal against the decision to refuse their child admission should visit www.birmingham.gov.uk/schooladmissions for more information. 

Applications made outside the normal admissions round (in-year admissions) should be made directly to the academy. Parents/carers can apply for a place for their child at any time and to any academy.  On receipt of an in-year application, the academy will notify the local authority of both the application and its outcome, to allow the local authority to keep up to date with figures on the availability of academy places in Birmingham.

Birmingham City Council’s School Admissions Website

Birmingham City Council’s In Year School Admissions

The Academy Advisory Board (AAB) of Topcliffe School is committed to taking its fair share of children who are vulnerable and/or hard to place, as set out in locally agreed protocols. Accordingly, outside the normal admission round the AAB can give priority to a child where admission is requested under any locally agreed protocol.  The AAB has this power, even when admitting the child would mean exceeding the published admission number subject.

Parents can request that the date their child is admitted to school is deferred until later in the academic year or until the term in which the child reaches compulsory school age. 

Parents have the right to request, but not insist, that their child be considered for admission to a class outside of their normal age group.  This could be the case, for example, if a child is gifted and talented, has experienced problems such as ill health, or that the child is summer born, i.e. a child born between 1^st April and 31^st August. 

Parents who wish for their child to be considered for admission to a class outside of their normal age group must make an application for the normal age group in the first instance.  Parents must then submit a formal request to the AAB for the child to be considered for a different age group class instead. This request should be in the form of a written letter of application outlining the reasons why they wish for their child to be considered to be admitted into a class outside of their normal age group and enclosing any supportive evidence and documentation that they wish to be taken into account as part of that request.

The AAB will consider requests submitted for a child to be admitted into a class outside of their normal age group and advise parents of the outcome of that request before national offer day, having taken into account the information provided by the parents, the child’s best interests and the views of the Head Teacher.

If the request is refused, the original application for the normal age group class will progress through the Local Authority co-ordinated admissions scheme, be considered by the AAB and the parents advised of the outcome.

If the request is agreed and the year group for which the parents have requested a place is a current year group in the school, then the application will be considered by the AAB and the parents advised of the outcome.

If the request is agreed and the year group for which the parents have requested a place is for a future year group, i.e. Reception in September 2024, then the original application is withdrawn and the parents must submit a fresh application for Reception 2024 when applications open in the autumn term of 2023.  Please note that parents only have the right to re-apply for a place. 

Where the AAB agrees to consider an application for Reception the following year, that application is considered alongside all other applications received and parents will be advised of the outcome of that application on national offer day.  No place is reserved or held for the child in advance.

Parents do not have a right to appeal if they are offered a place at the school but it is not in their preferred age group.

If parents are considering submitting an application for their child to be admitted into a class outside of their normal age group, it is strongly recommended that they also read the DFE guidance which can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/summer-born-children-school-admission