Admission arrangements for Garden Village Primary Academy, Amington for the 2024-2025 school year

Our vision for Garden Village Primary Academy is to work in close collaboration with parents, the local and wider community to inspire all to excellence.  In all pupils, we will foster an absolute feeling of belonging, self-worth, high aspiration, and independence alongside the self-belief that there are no limits to what they can personally accomplish.

Our ethos will reflect the values of the Fierté Trust:  we care, we leave no one behind, we celebrate individuality, and we are brave.  We will bestow the experiences, resources, structures, and systems to enable all to engage, all to progress, all to achieve their full potential, living their life to the full.

The Trust’s intrinsic commitment to pupils, parents and staff is embedded within our Trust Proposition:

We pledge to assure pupils will engage with learning that inspires and fosters curiosity. We seek to deliver an education that develops well-rounded individuals, accessing a range of experiences that challenge and enhance skills, talents, and aptitudes. The culture of elevated expectations will lead to high pupil achievement. Strong ambitions will be fostered through the development of self-belief, mental well-being, and aspiration.

We pledge to parents that as a family of schools, we will improve your child’s education by sharing ideas and expertise with each other. This commitment to collaboration will continue to place the investment with children, allowing them to flourish, love learning and access a rich curriculum that meets their needs. As the Fierté Family grows, we will remain true to our vision and values.

We pledge to teaching staff that, as a family of schools, we work closely together, share excellence and value the core threads of education - quality first teaching; curriculum; assessment and behaviour. We will strive to offer structured career pathways for all teaching staff, supported by high-quality professional investment so that staff at all levels learn collectively.

Published Admission Number (PAN)

The school has an admission number of 30 for entry in the Reception year.  It will admit this number of pupils if there are sufficient applications. If fewer than 30 applications are received, all applicants will be offered a place.

Application process

The applications will be processed through the normal Staffordshire local authority process for co-ordinating school offers. Applications for this school should be sent to Staffordshire School Admissions Service or an online application form can be completed at www.staffordshire.gov.uk/admissions.

The closing date for applications is 15/01/2024.

Offers will be made on 16/04/2024. If we have not entered into a funding agreement with the Secretary of State opening the school by that date, they will be conditional offers and will be confirmed once we have a signed funding agreement.

Please see the letter below from Staffordshire County Council which contains further details.

Oversubscription criteria

The academy trust will admit any pupil with an Education, Health and Care plan which names the school. Priority will then be given to children who meet the criteria set out below, in order. 

1. Children in care and children who ceased to be in care because they were adopted (or became subject to a child arrangements order or special guardianship order), including those children who appear (to the admission authority) to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted see additional note * below.
2. Children who satisfy both of the following tests:

Test 1:  the child is distinguished from the great majority of other applicants either on their own medical grounds or by other exceptional circumstances.

Medical grounds must be supported by a medical report (obtained by the applicant and provided at the point of application). This report must clearly justify, for health reasons only, why it is better for the child’s health to attend the preferred school rather than any other school.

Exceptional circumstances must relate to the choice of school and the individual child, i.e., the circumstances of the child, not the economic or social circumstances of the parent/carer. They should be supported by a professional report (obtained by the applicant and provided at the point of application), e.g., social worker. This report must clearly justify why it is better for the child to attend the preferred school rather than any other school.

and

Test 2:  the child would suffer hardship if they were unable to attend the preferred school.

Hardship means severe suffering of any kind, not merely difficulty or inconvenience, which is likely to be experienced as a result of the child attending a different school. Applicants must provide detailed information about both the type and severity of any likely hardship at the time of application.

3. Children who have an elder sibling in attendance at Garden Village Primary Academy and who will still be attending the school at the proposed admission date. (For admission purposes, a brother or sister is a child who lives at the same address and either: have one or both natural parents in common; are related by a parents marriage; are adopted or fostered by a common parent or are unrelated children who live at the same address, whose parents live as partners.)
4. Children living within the catchment area of the school. See additional notes ** below and appendix attached.
5. Other children arranged in order of priority according to how near their home addresses are to the main gate of the school, determined by a straight-line measurement as calculated by the local authority’s geographical information system. See additional notes *** below.

Where it is not possible to accommodate all children applying for places within a particular category then the local authority will allocate the available places in accordance with the remaining criteria. If for instance, all the catchment area children cannot be accommodated at a school, children who are resident within the catchment area will be arranged in order of priority according to criteria 5). 

Tie-break

If a tie-break is necessary, random allocation will be used to determine which child will be offered a place. The local authority will conduct the random allocation on our behalf.  This process will be independently verified.

Random allocation will not be used if siblings from a multiple birth (twins, triplets etc.) are tied for a place. They will all be offered a place and we will exceed our admission number.

Delayed admission to reception

Parents who are offered a place for their child in the reception class may defer the date they are admitted, or arrange for them to attend part-time, until they reach compulsory school age. Places cannot be deferred beyond the beginning of the final term of the school year for which the offer was made.

Children reach compulsory school age on the prescribed day following their fifth birthday, or on their fifth birthday if it falls on a prescribed day. The prescribed days are 31 August, 31 December and 31 March.

Admission of children outside their normal age group

Parents may request their child is admitted outside their normal age group. Parents who wish to do so should include a request with their application, specifying the year group to which they wish their child to be admitted and why they believe it would be in their best interests. The academy trust will make a decision on the basis of the circumstances of the case and in the child’s best interests, taking into account the views of the headteacher and any information provided by the parent.

Waiting list

Unsuccessful applicants will be placed on a waiting list in accordance with the oversubscription criteria stated above and not based on the date their application was received. There will be a period of two weeks after the national offer date whereby available places will not be reallocated. If places become available after this date, they will be offered according to the child at the top of the waiting list. 

For cases where the infant class size regulations apply, the waiting list will operate until the cohort concerned leaves year 2.

For all other cases, waiting lists will be kept until 31 December 2024. 

Inclusion on the school’s waiting list does not mean that a place will eventually become available at the school. 

A child’s position on a waiting list is not fixed and is subject to change during the year i.e., they can go up or down the list since each added child will require the list to be ranked again in line with the oversubscription criteria. 

Children who are subject of a direction by a local authority to admit or who are allocated to a school in accordance with the fair access protocol will take precedence over those on the waiting list. 

Appeals

Applicants who are refused a place at the school will be able to appeal to an independent appeal panel. Contact Enquiries@Fierte.org or Staffordshire County Council by the date provided in the decision letter for information on how to appeal. Information on the timetable for the appeal process can be found at www.staffordshire.gov.uk/admissions.

Notes

*Children in care means children who are looked after by a local authority in accordance with section 22 (1) of the Children Act 1989 and who is (a) in care of a local authority, or (b) being provided with accommodation by a Local Authority in the exercise of their social services functions (see definition in Section 22 (1) of the Children Act 1989) at the time of making an application to a school. This includes children who were adopted under the Adoption Act 1976 (see section 12 adoption orders) and children who were adopted under Adoption and Children Act 2002 (see section 46 adoption orders).

Child arrangements orders are defined in s.8 of the Children Act 1989, as amended by s.12 of the Children and Families Act 2014. Child arrangements orders replace residence orders and any residence order in force prior to 22 April 2014 is deemed to be a child arrangements order.

Section 14A of the Children Act 1989 defines a special guardianship order as an order appointing one or more individuals to be a child’s special guardian (or special guardians). 

**A copy of our school catchment area map is available from the local authority or the school. See the county council’s catchment areas page or the appendix attached.

***The local authority uses a geographical information system (GIS) to calculate home to school distances in miles. The measurement is calculated using Ordnance Survey (OS) data from an applicant's home address to the main front gate of the school. The coordinates of an applicant's home address are determined and provided by the Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) and OS address point data. 

Home address

It is expected that parents will agree on school places before an application is made, and it may be necessary to request evidence from you to confirm that this is the case. We are not in a position to intervene in disputes between parents over school applications and will request that these are resolved privately. 

The home address is considered to be the child’s along with their parent/carer’s main and genuine principal place of residence at the time of the allocation of places i.e., where they are normally and regularly living. If a child is resident with friends or relatives (for reasons other than legal guardianship) the friends or relatives address will not be considered for allocation purposes. 

Where parents have shared responsibility for a child, and the child lives with both parents for part of the school week, parents will be required to provide documentary evidence to support the address they wish to be considered for allocation purposes. 

If a child’s home address changes during the admissions process it is the responsibility of the parent/carer to inform the local authority immediately. Where there is a proposed house move taking place during the admissions process the local authority will only accept the revised address for purposes of allocation where parents/carers can provide documentary evidence of the move by 8 March 2024. It will be necessary for sufficient evidence of a permanent move to be provided by the applicant by this date before it will be taken into account for allocation purposes at the national offer date.

If a place is offered on the basis of an address that is subsequently found to be different from the child’s normal and permanent home address at the time of allocation of places, then that place is likely to be withdrawn.