First school application for reception yr 1

[Mummyoply]

I am only applying for one (very popular) primary school in my catchment area for DS. Intake is 2021 and application due now. I wondered if i need/should complete the supplementary evidence? It's not compulsory as I can skip the box but I wondered if I should put something but what would I write for a 3year old?

He has no siblings/cousins etc at the school, we live very close and it's the best in the area and is always over subscribed.

It's a LA school.

Any advice? Thanks Mumsnetters

Can anyone help explain what this means in terms of how good the school is?

It won't tell you that. There are good and bad schools of each and every type.

Thanks @meditrina

What is the difference between an academy school and a community school?

I seem to remember lots of Academy schools getting bad press a few years ago and have a vague recollection that some schools put into special measures converted to Academy schools - but I'm wondering if I just got the wrong end of the stick? I'm off to read up! I may be back with more questions....:

They are two types of maintained school (there are others)

A community school is run by the Local Education Authority (part of your local Council) whereas an academy has more freedom in its finances, curriculum, term dates etc. The idea in converting failing schools to academies was intended to revitalise them with new and more independent leadership.

This might help:

childlawadvice.org.uk/information-pages/types-of-school/

It's a bit different at primary and secondary level. Around here at least, the majority of primaries are not academies (though some are church schools, so they're not quite community schools either - eg they have their own admissions criteria). But at secondary level they're almost all academies now - I can only think of one local secondary that's still a community school. Personally (based on local experience only) I don't think there's necessarily much difference, but I would look a bit more closely at free schools - the couple I know of are very different in all sorts of ways from other schools (good or bad, depending on your viewpoint). But I don't know if my experience is typical, sorry.

(Oh, and there's no correlation around here between special measures and academies - all of the most 'elite' schools near me, both primary and secondary, are academies.)

Well done you are ahead of the game now 🙂. When you compare primary schools the progress 8 score is helpful because it shows which schools 'add more value' and which ones just coast by with a more advantaged socio economic intake. Although SEN specialist schools or schools known locally for good SEN provision are not fairly reflected on the tables imo. www.gov.uk/school-performance-tables

Lots of schools that converted into academies and were successful then became umbrella 'Multi Academy Trusts' so our local MAT has three secondaries and six primary schools (and can share leadership, finance functions etc). Being an academy doesn't make much difference in practice in our area I don't think.

@ScrapThatThen

Isn’t progress 8 just for secondary schools?

Oh sorry