Admissions

Reception Admissions September 2024

If you applied online and provided an email address, we will email you on Tuesday 16 April 2024 to tell you which primary school your child has been offered.

We cannot guarantee the exact time you will receive your email as this depends on your service provider. However, we expect you to receive your offer email by 4pm on Tuesday 16 April 2024.

We will also send you a formal offer letter posted by 1st class post on Tuesday 16 April 2024, allowing at least three working days for your letter to arrive.

The offer letter will explain how to accept or refuse the offer that has been made.

Do not contact Birmingham City Council before you have received the offer of a school place.

The school admissions team cannot tell you which primary school place has been offered to your child by phone or email.

You must have received your email or letter before contacting the school admissions team.

If you have not received your email or letter by Monday 22 April 2024, you may contact school admissions.

Accepting the Place Offered

The email and letter you receive will name the primary school your child has been offered for September 2024.

You do not need to let us know if you plan to accept this offer.

If you want to refuse this offer, you must tell us before Tuesday 30 April 2024.

Your offer letter will tell you how you can refuse the offer. If you do not refuse the offer, our records will show that the offer has been accepted.

If your child has not been offered a place at any of the schools you applied for, this will be because the school(s) received more applications than there were places available and other children met the admission criteria more closely than your child.

You are strongly encouraged not to refuse the offer so your child has a guaranteed place for September 2024.

By refusing the offer, the place may be given to a child on the waiting list for that school.

The offer being accepted will not affect your child's waiting list position for any of your higher preference schools or influence the outcome of any appeal you may submit.

Waiting Lists

If you do not receive an offer of a place at your higher preference Birmingham schools, your child's name will automatically be placed on the waiting lists for those schools.

Note that waiting lists are compiled in the same order as the over subscription criteria. For example, children with siblings are a higher priority. Late applicants are also added according to this order, so your child's name could move down and up a waiting list. Having a place on the waiting list does not mean a place will become available.

Information on waiting list positions will not be available until Tuesday 7 May 2024.

From 7 May 2024, you can phone children's services on 0121 303 1888, who will let you know who holds the waiting list for the school you want. This will be either school admissions or the school itself.

Waiting list advice will not be available before 7 May 2024 to allow time for offers to be accepted and refused.

The admissions team will contact you if a school place becomes available for your child from a waiting list.

For schools outside of Birmingham, check the relevant local authority's website for information about their waiting lists.

Nursery Admissions

30 hours' free childcare entitlement for working parents

Currently, all 3 to 4-year-olds are eligible for 15 hours' free early education per week. This is a universal entitlement, for all children.

From September 2017, all 3 to 4-year-olds of working parents will be eligible for an additional 15 hours' early education per week.

The 30 hours entitlement is intended to support working parents with childcare costs and enable them to return to work or work additional hours.

This and more information on the entitlement is set out in a Department for Education (DfE) policy statement: (see link below).

Eligibility

The additional 15 hours' free childcare is only available for working parents of children aged 3 to 4 years old.

Page 8 of the DfE policy statement says that households will be eligible for the additional free entitlement where:

Both parents are working, or the sole parent is working in a lone parent family (this includes self-employed parents and those on zero hours contracts)
Each parent earns:
- On average, a weekly minimum equivalent to 16 hours at national minimum wage or national living wage, and
- Less than £100,000 per year

The additional 15 hours' free childcare is only available for working parents of children aged 3 to 4 years old

When at least one parent in a household has income of £100,000 or more, that family will not be eligible to take up the extra free hours.

A DfE representative confirmed that this refers to each parent earning less than £100,000 per year rather than a combined income of less than £100,000 per year.

Special circumstances

Though two-parent families where one parent does not work (or neither works) will not usually be eligible for the extra 15 hours, there are some exceptions. These are likely to be where:

Both parents are employed but one or both parents is temporarily on maternity, paternity or adoption leave
Both parents are employed but one or both parents is temporarily on statutory sick pay
One parent is employed and one parent has substantial caring responsibilities based on specific benefits received for caring
One parent is employed and one parent is disabled or incapacitated based on receipt of specific benefits

How parents can apply

Current arrangements

To apply for free childcare parents should use the calculator to work out what childcare support they are eligible for: (see link below).

New online application form

Working parents will be able to apply for the extended childcare entitlement and tax-free childcare at the same time by submitting an application though the GOV.UK website.

Please follow the link below to apply