School catchment

[Peasize]

Hi, I was wondering if anyone is familiar with admissions criteria. I’ve found this data sheet on school catchments and wondered if any one could explain it to me. The school I’m looking at is oversubscribed but it says it did take children ‘Out of area-distance only’ then the distance is provided in the next box. I was wondering if anyone knew if that meant the distance the final child was offered from the school or the distance outside of the catchment area. If that’s makes sense 🫤Thanks for any information

Distance from school

I would presume that it refers to distance from the school.

Thank you. That was what I thought but then I thought some of them are less than a mile in distance so I thought surely that can’t include catchment then also out of catchment children (as surely that would be a very small catchment area). So I thought maybe that was just how far the out of catchment children were!

It means they might not take all catchment. Also some catchments are tiny. So schools vary.

I think it’s distance from the school. Sometimes catchment areas are very irregula, not an exact circle (the school should publish this?) so someone close by could still get in but are out of the catchment area.

What are the exact criteria for entry? And look at how big the catchment areas are. But sometimes a school can be atvthe edge of its own catchment area... Our secondary school field actually touches the edge of the catchment area, but it goes 5 miles in another direction.

It’s also poor info. My LA says, for each school, which admissions criteria were successful, eg siblings, looked after etc, and then says distance from school - eg all applicants admitted within catchment up to a distance of 1 mile. It could say all applicants admitted. It says if that’s within catchment or beyond. Very hard to assess your info without looking at each school’s admissions policy.

Yes I agree it’s very little information to go on but thank you all for your replies

If a school says it has a catchment, sc in the catchment usually take priority over others not in catchment. Siblings not in catchment might take priority over those without siblings in catchment. So wording is everything.