St Brigid’s Catholic Primary School is part of the Lumen Christi MAC. The admissions authority for the school is the Board of Directors of the Lumen Christi MAC who has responsibility for admissions to this school. The Board of Directors has delegated responsibility for the administration of the admissions process to the Local Governing Body (School Standards Committee) of St Brigid’s Catholic Primary School.
The admissions process for St Brigid’s Catholic Primary School is part of the Birmingham Local Authority co- ordinated admissions scheme. To apply for a place at St Brigid’s Catholic Primary School in the normal admissions round, an application must be made using the school admission application process of the local authority in which you live naming St Brigid’s Catholic Primary School on the application form. A Supplementary Information Form (SIF) must also be completed and returned directly to the school by the same date (see Note 2).
All applications which are submitted on time will be considered at the same time, after the closing date. You will be advised of the outcome of your application on 16th April, or the next working day, by the local authority on behalf of the school. Please note that throughout this policy, the term parent means all natural parents, any person who is not a parent but has parental responsibility for a child and any person who has care of a child.
The ethos of this school is Catholic. The school was founded by the Catholic Church to provide education for children of Catholic families. Whenever there are more applications than places available, priority will be given to Catholic children in accordance with the oversubscription criteria listed below. The school is conducted by its Board of Directors as part of the Catholic Church in accordance with its Articles of Association and seeks at all times to be a witness to Our Lord Jesus Christ.
As a Catholic school, we aim to provide a Catholic education for all our pupils. At a Catholic school, Catholic doctrine and practice permeate every aspect of the school’s activity. It is essential that the Catholic character of the school’s education be fully supported by all families in the school. We therefore hope that all parents will give their full, unreserved and positive support for the aims and ethos of the school. This does not affect the right of an applicant who is not Catholic to apply for and be admitted to a place at the school in accordance with the admission arrangements.
The Local Governing Body (School Standards Committee) acts for the Board of Directors who is the admissions authority and has responsibility for admissions to this school. The Local Governing Body has set its admission number at 60 pupils to be admitted to the Reception class in the school year which begins in September. (See Note 1 below)
Where there are more applications for places than the number of places available, places will be offered according to the following order of priority. If there is oversubscription within a category, the Local Governing Body will give priority to children living closest to the school determined by the shortest distance (see Note 5).
For the purposes of this policy, the parish boundary for Our Lady & St Brigid parish is as shown on the parish map which can be seen here. Z:Parish Map.pdf
Note 1
Children with an Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan that names the school MUST be admitted. This will reduce the number of places available to applicants. This is not an oversubscription criterion.
Note 2
In all categories, for a child to be considered as Catholic, evidence of Catholic Baptism or Reception into the Church will be required. For a definition of a Baptised Catholic, see the Appendix. Those who face difficulties in producing written evidence of Catholic Baptism or Reception into the Church should contact their Parish Priest.
Parents making an application for a Catholic child should also complete a Supplementary Information Form (SIF) which should be returned directly to the school. If you do not provide the information required in the Supplementary Information Form and return it by the closing date, together with all supporting documentation, this is likely to affect the criteria that your child is placed into, which is likely to affect your child’s chance of being offered a place at this school.
For the purposes of this policy, a looked after child living with a family where at least one of the carers is Catholic will be considered as Catholic. The carer must forward a copy of their own Catholic Baptismal or Reception certificate directly to the school in order for this priority to be given to the child as failure to do so will result in the looked after child being ranked as a non-Catholic.
Note 3
A “looked after child” has the same meaning as in section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989, and means any child who is (a) in the care of the local authority or (b) being provided with accommodation by them in the exercise of their social services functions (e.g. children with foster parents) at the time of making the application to the school. A “previously looked after child” is a child was looked after, but ceased to be so because he or she was adopted or became subject to a child arrangements order or special guardianship order and includes those children who appear to the School Standards Committee to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state case as a result of being adopted.
For the purposes of this policy, a looked after child living with a family where at least one of the carers is Catholic will be considered as Catholic. The carer must forward a copy of their own Catholic Baptismal or Reception certificate directly to the school in order for this priority to be given to the child as failure to do so will result in the looked after child being ranked as a non-Catholic.
Note 4
For all applicants the definition of a brother or sister is:
Note 5
Distances are calculated on the basis of a straight-line measurement between the child’s home address and the main front gate of St Brigid’s Catholic Primary School. The Local Authority uses a computerised system, which measures all distances in metres. Ordnance Survey supplies the co-ordinates that are used to plot a child’s home address and the address of the school.
In a very small number of cases, where the school is oversubscribed, it may not be possible to decide between the applications of those pupils who are the final qualifiers for a place when applying the published admission criteria.
For example, this may occur when children in the same year group live at the same address, or if the distance between the home and the school is exactly the same, for example, blocks of flats. If there is no other way of separating the application according to the admissions criteria and to admit both, or all, of the children would cause the Published Admission Number for the child’s year group to be exceeded, the Local Authority, on behalf of the School Standards Committee, will use a computerised system to randomly select the child to be offered the final place.
The School Standards Committee will, where possible, admit twins and all siblings from multiple births where one of the children is the last child ranked within the school’s published admission number.
A child’s home address refers to the address where the child usually lives with a parent or carer and will be the address provided in the Local Authority’s Common Application Form.
Where parents have shared responsibility for a child, and the child lives for part of the week with each parent, the home address will be the address provided in the Local Authority’s Common Application Form, provided that the child resides at that address for any part of the school week.
Parents may be requested to supply documentary evidence to satisfy the Local Governing Body that the child lives at the address put forward by the parents. If a place in the school is offered on the basis of an address that is subsequently found to be different from a child’s normal and permanent home address, then that place is liable to be withdrawn.
Note 6
For the purpose of this policy, a ‘member of staff’ is defined as an individual who has been employed by St Brigid’s Catholic Primary School for two or more years prior to the local authority Common Application Form submission deadline for the relevant admission round, or where the staff member has recently been recruited to fill a vacant post where the is a demonstrable skill shortage.
Parents must, by law, ensure that their child is receiving suitable full time education from the beginning of the term following the child’s fifth birthday, when they will have begun to be of compulsory school age.
Where a place is offered in the school, the pupil will be entitled to take up that place, on a full-time basis in the September following their fourth birthday.
A child’s parents may defer the date at which their child, below compulsory school age, is admitted to the school, until later in the school year but not beyond the point at which they reach compulsory school age and not beyond the first day of the summer term.
A child may take up a part-time place until later in the school year, but not beyond the point at which the child reached compulsory school age.
Upon receipt of the offer of a place a parent should notify the school, as soon as possible, that they wish to either defer their child’s entry to the school or take up a part-time place.
The parent of a child whose fifth birthday falls during the summer term who wishes to defer their child’s admission until the beginning of the following academic year (when the child will have begun to be of compulsory school age) will therefore need to make a separate in-year application for a place in Year 1 at the school. Any reception class place offered following an application made for the admission round will be withdrawn if the child does not take up that place by the first day of the summer term
The Local Governing Body of St Brigid’s Catholic Primary School is committed to taking its fair share of children who are vulnerable and/or hard to place, as set out in locally agreed protocols. Accordingly, outside the normal admission round the Local Governing Body is empowered to give absolute priority to a child where admission is requested under any locally agreed protocol. The Local Governing Body has this power, even when admitting the child would mean exceeding the published admission number subject to the infant class size exceptions.
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