School Catchment Map

[LucasTheSpider]

Is there a map/app that will show the locations of the addresses that were given places to specific school?

I tried to find something similar when I was applying for dd for secondary. I couldn't find anything.

What did help was calling the admissions office and asking about catchments and distances the school accepted the last year.

A map would be very handy, but catchments can and do change sometimes yearly

LA will have one if relevant. Many areas do not use catchments.

Many places don't have catchment but a list of criteria and then distance which varies year on year. You can only guesstimate your chances of a place based on previous statistics, but remember birth rates are falling nationally and some places are being impacted more than others due to geographic changes in population eg London.

Local education authorities maintain a document of the outcomes of admissions in previous years. They include a 'furthest distance' if the school was oversubscribed. This is often found on the local authority's website.

We found that it completely depended on how many siblings (or children in care) were going to be in that particular year intake but also how many children are actually closer than you on a particular intake

IYSWIM & IME

eg - if in 2023 intake was within 600m away from front gate or main door (wherever they measure it from) but then in 2024 there are double the numbers of siblings and/or lots of children from UNDER 400m then the circle of intake will be much smaller so 600m will not get in

Admissions criteria should be on the school website. You can see catchment place allocations and out of catchment place allocations via the local authority - there’s usually a link.

It will vary each year. (Ignoring SEN/ IEPs) the first criteria is usually siblings. So you could have a school that has, say, an intake of 15 pupils per year. If 14 children applied who all already have siblings in the school, they could have a 'catchment area' of 20 meters that year if the one remaining place went to the child who lives next door to the school!

The local authority should have a table with how all the previous years admissions were allocated for reception and Y7. It should also state the furthest distance allocated.

My borough has a physical catchment map where catchment usurps siblings. It is worth reading admissions criteria for your borough and the priority order in which they are applied. Every year there are people who have siblings in different schools because they didn't read the admissions process.

All local authorities will give you the furthest distance. Some do publish them as a searchable map which is great (Greenwich do this, including secondary banding).

Yes, we’ve just used it for primary admissions. It’s a website called Locrating, I think you can get that info from the free version but they scrape it all from local authority admissions data I believe, we paid for the paid version for a month to get more data on primary schools too.

This actually happened to us - a very unusual 23 siblings for an intake of 30 ( a one form entry primary school) My DD got in but the little boy next door didn’t at first - got in when I heard someone at toddler group talking about having got a place there which she didn’t need because her DD was going to the ( not actually that great) private school down the road. She had only applied because it was her right and she was curious to see if her DD would get in. I asked her if she had withdrawn and she said she would get round to it ………….I asked her to please do it ASAP.