Guide to moving up to secondary school
Later allocation rounds
On 1 March, most Buckinghamshire schools are full.
Some vacancies may be created if families decline the school offered to their child on 1 March. We have later allocation rounds to fill these places.
For your child to be considered in a later allocation round, their name must be on the waiting list for the school(s) you are interested in.
After each allocation round, we will contact you if we can offer a new school to your child. You will need to either accept or decline the offer by a given deadline.
We must take away any existing school place that your child has before we can offer a new school in a later allocation round. You will not be offered the choice between two schools. If your child is on a school’s waiting list, we assume you would prefer that school over the school your child has been offered (even if you have accepted it). If you are happy with the school your child has been offered and do not want a different school, you must contact us to remove them from any other waiting lists.
If you live outside Buckinghamshire and your child is on the waiting list for a Buckinghamshire school, we will tell your Local Authority if we can offer a place in a later allocation round.
Other Local Authorities will tell us about any offers they can make for Buckinghamshire children. These offers will be included in our next scheduled allocation round.
Schedule of later allocation rounds
| Allocation Round | Deadline to provide new information | Date that offers are published | Waiting list positions provided |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reallocation of places following 1 March declinations | Not applicable | 31 March 2023 | No |
| Second Round | 10 April 2023 | 12 May 2023 | Yes |
| Third Round | 19 May 2023 | 16 June 2023 | No |
| Final waiting list positions* | Not applicable | 3 July 2023 | Yes |
| Later allocations | Not applicable | Ad hoc | No |
*on 3 July we will email you your child’s waiting list position for the final time under the secondary transfer process. You will need to tell us if you would like your child to remain on the waiting list for your preferred schools. If we do not hear from you, we will remove your child from the waiting list(s).
New information we may consider in a later allocation round
Here are examples of the types of information we will consider in each allocation round. The deadline to provide this information is set out in the table above.
- new applications
- requests to remove a child from a waiting list
- after 31 March, changes to the schools in a child’s application
- a change of address (if the required evidence has been provided and agreed by the deadline)
- evidence to support a new exceptional medical or social needs application.
What happens after the last allocation round?
After 16 June 2023, we will offer any further places as they become available. There are usually very few places that become available at this stage in the year.
By this point, there may also have been successful appeals for many schools: the Independent Appeal Panel have the authority to grant places to children even if a school is full, which pushes schools over their planned admission number. This means that we will have to wait to receive enough declinations for the school to have places again before we can make any more offers.
If your child is still on the waiting list after the Transition Days, we will ask you to tell us if you want your child to stay on the waiting list. At this point in the year, we will ask you before offering a different school.
From mid-September 2023, waiting lists will be passed to those schools who manage their own admissions. Waiting lists for all other schools will be part of the co-ordinated in-year admissions process until July 2024.
Grammar schools have their own qualification periods for waiting lists so you should check admissions policies for more information.