Admission and Appeal Arrangements
Key Dates
- Dates for online applications – 3 November 2023 until 15 January 2024.
- National offer date for all Infant/Junior and Primary Schools – Tuesday 16 April 2024
- Closing date for all Infant, Junior and Primary school appeals – Friday 17 May 2024
- Infant/Junior and Primary School appeal hearing dates – Weekdays from Monday 17 June – Friday 19 July 2024
You can apply for a school place online by clicking the link below:
Admissions Arrangements
At Ridgeway Infant School, we can accept 90 children in each year group. By law, infant classes must not have more than 30 pupils, except for limited exceptions.
As the admissions authority, the Council gives priority to children whose parents have applied for a place, by 15 January 2024, at the school they would like their child to attend. Where Community schools do not have enough places available for every child whose parents have applied for a place, we have to use the following order of priority for admissions.
- A ‘looked after child’ or a child who was previously looked after but immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, child arrangements, or special guardianship order. A looked after child is a child who is (a) in the care of a local authority, or (b) being provided with accommodation by a local authority in the excercise of their social services functions (see the definition in section 22(1) of the Children Act (1989).
- Children who are both living in the catchment area served by the school and have brothers or sisters* of compulsory school age still attending the school at the time of their admission.
- Other children living in the catchment area at the time of admission.
- Children who do not live in the catchment area served by the school but who have brothers or sisters* of compulsory school age attending the school at the time of their admission.
- Other children whose parents have requested a place.
- Children whose parents did not request a place by 15 January 2024.
For the purposes of admissions, we class a brother or sister as having:
- one or both natural parents in common
- are related by a parent’s marriage or are adopted or fostered.
Note: A brother or sister must be living at the same address. Cousins are not classed as brothers or sisters.
When choices have to be made between children satisfying the same criteria, children living nearest to the school measured by a straight line have priority. The line will be measured from the centre of the home address to the school using the national Ordnance Survey set points. If two measurements are the same, we will give priority to the child living nearest the school measured by the shortest walking route from the home address to the school’s main entrance. In the unlikely event the two walking routes measure the same distance, the place will be allocated using an independently verified random allocation process.
The ‘home address’ is the address of the primary carer of the child, as shown by who receives the Child Benefit.
We will give pupils who have an Education Health and Care Plan priority admission over all others.
The Council will keep a waiting list of children who have not been offered places at community and voluntary controlled schools. They will rank the children according to the order of priority that we use when schools first allocate places as we outline above. This ranking will change as new pupils go on to, or come off, the waiting list.
Outside the normal admission round, first priority will be given within categories 2-5 to pupils who have not been on a city school roll during the academic year of application.
Applications will be dealt with using the address where the child resides at the closing date. Reassessment of any new address will then be made after provisional offers have been decided. If you do move out of your local school’s catchment area after the closing date and before your child is due to start there, contact the Admissions Team to check if the school can still offer your child a place.
How to Appeal
If you have been refused a place, you can appeal to an Independent Appeal Panel. The panel is completely independent of the schools and the Council. Details on how to apply can be found on the website below:
Contact Information
For general enquiries, contact: School Admission Team, Derby City Council, The Council House, Corporation Street, Derby, DE1 2FS or 01332 642728. Alternatively, you can email admissions@derby.gov.uk and they should respond to you within 2 to 3 working days.
Derby City Council School Admissions