Deadline looms for primary school applications (From Hampshire Chronicle)

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Deadline looms for primary school applications

7:20am Thursday 12th January 2012 in Education Photograph of the Author By Jon Reeve, Education Reporter

Children going to school with an adult

PARENTS across Southampton and Hampshire whose children are due to start infant, junior or primary school this September have only got a few days left to apply for a place.

Application forms for reception classes and for those transferring schools ahead of Year 3 must be submitted to council admissions teams by midnight on Sunday.

Uni admissions

TIME is also running out for students to get their university applications in.

Admissions service UCAS has also set a deadline of Sunday night for those wanting to study courses at university and college from this summer.

The organisation is urging prospective students to send in their applications as soon as possible, but say late submissions received by June 30 will be considered by institutions, so long as they still have vacancies.

Council chiefs are urging parents to get their forms in on time to give themselves the best chance of gaining a spot for their youngsters at the school of their choice.

Competition for places is expected to be especially tough this year, as councils battle to create enough spaces in schools to cope with rising numbers of children.

Some 75 youngsters were left without a school for up to two months at the start of the academic year because of a crisis in the bursting-at-theseams system, despite their parents having applied on time.

But a further 20 children whose parents had submitted applications late had to wait into November to be allocated a spot.

Southampton City Council’s education chief, Councillor Jeremy Moulton, said: “It’s important that parents and carers get their applications for reception class and junior school places in on time.

“If an application comes in after the closing date, it will only be processed after all the on-time applications have been completed and it may mean that you could miss out on your preferred schools.”

Last year one in ten Hampshire children missed out on their parents’ preferred choice of school for reception class.

The county council allocated first preferences to 89.6 per cent of Year R requests and 97.3 per cent of first choices for Year 3 transfers, from more than 21,000 applications. In Southampton, 24 schools were oversubscribed last year, with Springhill Catholic Primary School receiving 239 applications for 90 places.

Comments(9)

parent222 says...
9:51am Thu 12 Jan 12

My child is one that has not yet started school, even though our application WAS on time. Having not been offered a place at any of my preferred schools (including catchment school) has left us extremely concerned. We have this year been offered a school out of area and that has failed the offsted 3 years in a row. Not the start in education we as a parents want. Parents having a choice where there children go is a joke. We have been on waiting lists for our 3 local schools and keep being pushed down the list. We have been home tutoring and will continue to do so until we are given a decent school. Is it too much to ask for the best start in life.