West Midlands primary schools - can I find out detailed information about catchment areas?

[ToftheB]

Hi,
We’re thinking of moving from central Birmingham to a village just south of Birmingham, partially because we hope it will be better for schools for our young family.

The village we’re hoping to move to has an outstanding first school (primary equivalent in a three school system), but it is a C of E school and, as we’re not religious, I’m concerned about admissions. We’d be within the catchment area given on the schools website, but I am concerned that we might be unlikely to be allocated a place as we don’t fit the first two admissions criteria (attendance at the local church or a sibling already at the school).

I’m not looking to challenge or complain about those criteria in any way, but I would be really keen to find out what proportion of previous years intakes were ‘non religious’ children. Obviously I understand that each year is going to be different, but I’d just like to be able to have a rough idea of the likelihood of getting into the school before we commit to moving to the village.

Sorry this is so long winded - but I just wondered if anyone had been able to find similar information out in the past, and if so how you went about doing it.

no one here will be able to tell you if this school filled all of its places to children under the religious criteria, so you really need to ask the school a direct question.

We have a few schools in our town - the more academic ones are seriously oversubscribed and only get to offer to children of church goers, however the less academic schools do offer places to non faith children based on distance. you definitely need to ask.

Yes, ask the school or look in the relevant local education authority's school admissions booklet, which should be on its website and should list how many children were admitted under each criterion under the most recent admissions round (and so it may be a while until the latest information is available).

Thank you for your replies. I’ve emailed the school, so hopefully they’ll be able to give me a bit more info or point me in the right direction for who to ask at the local authority.