Reception applications

Applied online by 15 January 2024

You can log in to see your offer and then accept or reject it online. 

You'll receive an email with the details of your child's offer. We may send a letter if we have not offered your first preference or if your child is eligible for free home-to-school transport.

You need to respond to the offer by 30 April 2024.

Applied by paper form by 15 January 2024

You'll receive an offer letter within three working days after 16 April. We cannot give you this information over the phone, so wait for your letter.

You will receive a response form with your letter. Scan or photograph the completed form and send it to schoolofferresponse@oxfordshire.gov.uk.

Or you can return it in the post to:

School Admissions Team
County Hall
New Road
Oxford
OX1 1ND

The deadline for receipt of completed response forms is 30 April 2024.

Independent school

If your child is going to attend an independent school, you must provide us with the name of the school in writing as soon as possible.

Home educating

If you are going to educate your child at home, let us know in writing as soon as possible. Contact the Elective Home Education Team for further information about home education.

Leaving Oxfordshire

If you are leaving the area and no longer require a school place in Oxfordshire, let us know as soon as possible.

Continued interest lists

Lists for most schools will start on 24 May 2024 and will be maintained until 30 June 2025. If a place becomes available, we'll write to you if we can offer that place to your child. We recommend that you accept the offered school to ensure a place for your child in September.

Find out how to add your child to a continued interest list.

Free home-to-school transport

If your child is eligible for free home-to-school transport, you'll receive a paper transport form with your offer. Scan or photograph the completed form and attach it to an email. Send it to schooltransportresponse@oxfordshire.gov.uk.

Or you can return it in the post to:

School Admissions Team
County Hall
New Road
Oxford
OX1 1ND

Change of preference

If you applied on time but want to change your application after 15 January 2024, you can submit a change of preference.

Applications received between 16 January and 30 April 2024 will be considered in the second allocation round on 7 June 2024. However, applications received after the national deadline of 15 January have a lower chance of success.

Any available places will be offered strictly in accordance with each school’s published admissions rules.

We recommend that you accept the offered school to ensure a place for your child in September. 

Appeal a decision

If your child has not been offered the school place you want, you can make an appeal.

Appeals for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2

Most appeals for these year groups are Infant Class Size Reviews, where there are or will be 30 children to one teacher in class, which is the legal limit.

Appeals for these year groups have a slim chance of success.

To win an infant class size review, one of the following has to be proved:

1. There are not, or will never be, 30 children to one teacher in the class while the children are in Reception, Year 1 or Year 2.
2. The application was processed incorrectly and the child was unfairly refused a place, eg, the application was lost and lower priority applications were successful.
3. The decision to refuse admission was so unreasonable that no reasonable person acting reasonably could have made it. In law this is the Wednesbury unreasonable test, and the test is a different (and stricter) test than the definition of ‘unreasonable’ used in general conversation.

The explanation given at appeal hearings is as follows: The threshold for finding that an admission authority’s decision to refuse admission was not one that a reasonable authority would have made is high.

The panel will need to be satisfied that the decision to refuse to admit the child was ‘perverse in the light of the admission arrangements’ i.e. it was ‘beyond the range of responses open to a reasonable decision maker’ or ‘a decision which is so outrageous in its defiance of logic or of accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question could have arrived at it.’

Generally, only 2% to 3% of infant class size reviews are successful for appellants each year.