Can a primary school reject a new pupil because they are too young??

[Monobrow]

I've got a couple of years to go yet, but want my dd to go to the local Catholic primary. It is quite difficult to get into as it has very good ofsted reports and a great reputation. A friend of mine has just had her son accepted but a friend of hers was turned down. The friend of hers lives 2 doors away from her, is a regular churchgoer, are both practicing Catholics..the only difference is that her ds was a summer baby and will be only 4 yrs 2 mths when he starts in Sept (just one intake). Would a school turn down the younger children?

My dc go to a Catholic primary and age doesn't come into the admissions criteria. Faith schools don't have a "catchment" area in the same way that non-faith schools do but if the school is oversubscribed and there are too many people who meet the baptised, siblings, church-going etc criteria, the boundary line for admissions will have to be drawn somewhere and it could unfortunately have extended to your first friend's house and not two doors further down. Best thing would be to call the school and find out what their actual criteria is.

As far as I am aware Monobrow, your dd will go to school when she is 4.2 as, as someone else said, the reference to turning five is the school year (Sept - end Aug)in which she will turn five. As someone else said, you can defer for a year so she starts when she is five but she will then be going straight into Year 1 and you have to hope that there is a Year 1 place available and that she is not behind other people on a waiting list. At least when you start in reception, you know there are 30/45/whatever number of places the school has in its intake. Starting in other years at an oversubscribed school, you are at the mercy of families moving out of the area.

Thanks all, this has been very helpful.

Many Catholic schools in oversubscribed areas you need to attend Mass every single Sunday plus Holy Days of Obligation (you can miss a very limited number for holidays etc.).

If your DD starts in Reception she will start at 4.2. Legally she doesn't have to start until she is 5.2, in Year 1, but it's unlikely that an oversubscribed school with a waiting list would have a place for her to start in Year 1 as all the places would have been filled by children starting in Reception.

pedilia - are you saying you want your DS to go to school THIS September, but haven't yet applied? I think you will have missed the deadline for most if not all schools by now, but yes, he should be going this year if he will be 4.11 in Sept.

This is slightly off topic but how does anyone know if you actually go to church every Sunday and on Holy Days? My dc go to an oversubscribed Catholic school and while dh and I genuinely are practising Catholics, went to Mass pre-children and are probably now at church 9 out of 10 Sundays, I don't think anyone would know that we miss some Sundays. The priest signed our form after church one Sunday and while he obviously knows our faces, he didn't check in any little black book of attendance!

Also, if I was turned down on that basis, I would be flippin' furious as who is to say that on the Sundays you haven't been at church you haven't attended elsewhere for a Christening, been to church on holiday etc?

At our local Catholic church (don't go myself but know people who do) there is a book that parents have to sign in in every week. Apparently some parents do turn up, sign, then leg it before Mass . I have heard of others that hand out coloured slips at the start of Mass then collect them up at the end (to avoid the ability to leg it, presumably).

I think here it's "involvement in the church community" that is pushed, rather than just attendance -- so someone who was at that church every week would get precedence over someone who was at a church every week if there were sufficiently few places available that the school couldn't take both. The local CofE school is the same.

I suspect how strict a church is / how much bureaucracy there is around the whole process depends on how oversubscribed it is. I don't think our local Catholic school has spaces to take all the practising Catholics, so they need to narrow it down somehow. In other areas where there isn't that pressure then a less formal idea of whether you are, broadly speaking, "practising" or not would suffice perfectly well.

P&L - Omygoodness, a book you have to sign! I have never heard of that before. And coloured slips - even worse!