Overshadowed by the main weather event this week, National Offer day on Thursday, 1st March saw 92.8% of new year 7 pupils allocated a place at one of their preferred secondary schools in Bath and North East Somerset for September 2018.

This year, the local authority introduced a five preference system (replacing the previous three preferences) and encouraged parents to name five schools, particularly if they wanted to guarantee a place in a B&NES school, as competition for places was going to be high. This was due to a combination of increased demand, the popularity of B&NES’ good and outstanding local schools, and some reduction in the availability of places.

B&NES Council says that despite the changes and although there are enough school places for all the local pupils, the pattern of applications received meant that it was particularly challenging to ensure places in a Bath secondary school for every pupil living in the city of Bath this year, but it was achieved.

Some schools continue to receive significant numbers of applications from outside Bath and these have to be dealt with in line with the statutory admissions process, meaning that where they already have a sibling in the school, or where more local parents haven’t named that school on their application, these applications have to be accepted.

Cllr Paul May, Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, said: “We have been working with local schools to see how additional capacity can be identified and we are grateful to Oldfield, Hayesfield and St Mark’s School, who have all agreed to make additional places available to ensure that every Bath pupil can have a Bath school place, rather than having to travel to a more distant school.

"We found that a lot of parents did not take full advantage of the opportunity to list five preferred schools in their local area – with many listing only one or two. Therefore, we appeal for parents in future to make full use of the five preferences on the application form – this will not reduce your chances of achieving your top choice school or schools, but will help to guarantee a local place is allocated for your child if you are not successful with your higher preferences" (see https://www.theschoolrun.com/equal-preference-system-explained).