North and South Shropshire secondary schools

Oversubscription Criteria

The Admissions Team allocates the places for all Local Authority secondary schools using an agreed set of criteria, in strict order of priority.

These are the criteria which apply to all North and South Shropshire Secondary Schools (excluding Shrewsbury Schools). See further information on this webpage for oversubscription criteria for Shrewsbury schools.

Children with a Statement of Special Educational Needs naming a particular school will be offered a place at that school. After that the priority for places will be allocated as follows:

Priority 1
Looked After Children

Priority 2
Children living within the catchment area. If there are not enough places for all children living within the catchment area, we will look at the following two criteria:

• Firstly, those children living within the catchment area who will have an older sibling* at the school on the day they are due to start there.
• After that, other children who live in the catchment area.

Priority 3
After that, any places that are left will be offered to children who live outside the catchment area. If there are not enough places for all of them, we will look at the following criteria:

• Firstly, those children living outside the catchment area who will have an older sibling* at the school on the day they are due to start there.
• Secondly, priority will be given to children living outside the catchment area without an older brother or sister at the school, but who have attended a maintained primary school that lies within the secondary school's catchment area for more than a whole academic year immediately prior to transfer.
• After that, priority will be given to other children who live outside the catchment area.

If, in any of the above categories there are more applications than places available, priority will be given on the basis of distance from home to school measured as a straight line on a computerised mapping system. The shortest distance being given priority.

* Definition of a sibling is explained in the Parents Guide booklet (page 46).

Priority due to exceptional circumstances
Very exceptionally where a child has a particular health reason requiring them to attend a specific school, that child may be given a place before any of the children who qualify under Priority 2 and 3. This will only be allowed if Parents/Carers can provide medical evidence that attending that particular school is essential to the medical well being of their child. The County Council reserves the right to check the relevance of the medical condition.

If you wish to look at a school's catchment area you can look on ShropMap (see the link to ShropMap on this webpage).