Guide to starting school or moving up to junior school

If we're not able to offer your child a place at your preferred school on National Offer Day and you still want us to, we'll try to do this in a later allocation round if places become available.

Some vacancies may be created if families decline the school offered to their child. 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 only 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 will take away any existing school place that your child has been allocated 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 a higher preference school than the one 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 school admissions 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.

After 24 June, late allocations round will be held approximately every 3 weeks, or when places are available. If you apply after 31 May, your application will be part of the ad-hoc process.

Further waiting list positions will be advised to parents on 20 July 2026 and at the end of August.

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 20 April, changes to the schools in a child’s application
• 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

After 24 June 2026, we will offer any further places as they become available. There are usually very few places at this time of year.

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. So, if there have been successful admission appeals for a school we will not be able to offer any places unless the number of children due to join the school in September falls below the schools Admission Number.

From the beginning of September 2026, 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.