School catchment areas
A school catchment area is the area a school or its council gives priority to when more children apply than there are places. In England, living inside a catchment area or close to a school improves your chances of a place, and each school offers places in the order its published admission criteria set out.
What a school catchment area is
A catchment area is a priority area: it only decides who gets a place when a school has more applicants than places.
The phrase is used in two ways. Some admission authorities draw a fixed boundary on a map and give priority to children who live inside it. Others rank applicants by distance from home, and parents call the distance within which places went last year the catchment area.
A school with spare places must offer one to every child who applies, wherever they live. Catchment only matters at schools that are oversubscribed.
How places are allocated in England
An oversubscribed school ranks applicants by its published admission criteria, and children in care or adopted from care always come first.
The School Admissions Code puts looked after and previously looked after children at the top of every list. Most schools then give priority to brothers and sisters of current pupils, and then to children by distance from home or by whether they live inside a catchment boundary. Some add other criteria, such as children of staff or a medical or social need, and each school publishes the order it uses.
The distance at which the last place went changes every year. It depends on how many children apply, where they live and how many have a brother or sister at the school already, so a distance that won a place one year can miss the next.
Distance based and defined boundary councils
Some admission authorities measure how far you live from the school, and others draw a fixed catchment boundary and give priority to children inside it.
Where distance decides, it is usually measured in a straight line from your home to a point at the school that the admission arrangements define. A few measure the shortest walking route instead. Where a boundary decides, children inside it are ranked first and distance is normally the tie breaker, so a child outside can still get a place if room is left.
Which method applies is set out in each school's admission arrangements. The council sets them for community and voluntary controlled schools, the academy trust for academies and free schools, and the governing body for voluntary aided and foundation schools, so two schools in one town can use different rules.
How faith and grammar schools differ
Faith schools can give priority on grounds of religion, and grammar schools admit by a test of ability, so distance counts for less at both.
When a faith school is oversubscribed it can rank children of its faith ahead of others. Many ask for a supplementary form, sometimes signed by a religious leader, as well as the council application. Free schools with a religious character can give faith priority to no more than half their places.
Grammar schools only offer places to children who reach the pass mark in their entrance test, often called the 11-plus. You register for the test separately, normally in the summer term of Year 5, the test is usually sat in September of Year 6, and you still name the school on your council application by 31 October. Distance is often used to rank children who pass.
Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland each run their own admissions systems, and the rules above are England's.
In Wales each council draws its own catchment areas and sets its own closing dates under the Welsh School Admissions Code. In Scotland every address falls in the catchment of a local school, and choosing any other school means making a placing request to the council. In Northern Ireland the Education Authority runs applications, each school publishes its own admissions criteria, and many grammar schools select by the transfer test.
How to check your catchment
Read the school's admission arrangements, compare your distance with the council's published allocation figures, then measure your own distance.
Each school's arrangements say which criteria it uses and how it measures distance. Most councils publish, in their admissions booklet, the distance at which each school offered its last place in recent years. Those figures are the closest thing to a catchment area that a distance based school has.
Our distance checker measures the straight line distance from your home to every nearby school, nearest first. The admissions calculator page sets out what decides a place and what no tool can promise.
Key dates
In England you apply by 31 October for a secondary school place and by 15 January for a primary school place.
You apply to the council where you live, even for a school in another council area, and can usually list between 3 and 6 schools in order of preference. When a date falls at a weekend, offers go out on the next working day.
- 31 October: closing date for secondary school applications, in your child's Year 6
- 15 January: closing date for Reception applications, and for junior school places in Year 2
- 1 March: secondary school offer day
- 16 April: primary school offer day