Determined Admissions Arrangements
Birmingham School Admission Criteria September 2025/2026
| School name | The Royal Sutton School |
| School address | Reddicap Heath Road, Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham, B75 7DY |
| Acting Headteacher | Mrs N Gould |
| Tel no: | 0121 378 1946 |
| Admission Number | 195 |
| Criteria | Looked after or previously looked after children (including previously looked after children from outside of England). |
| Children with a brother or a sister already at the academy who will still be in attendance in September 2025. | |
| Children who live nearest the Academy. | |
| In the event of an oversubscription in any of the above category’s places will be allocated according to those who live nearest the academy, calculated on the basis of a straight-line measurement between home and academy. The Academy reserves the right to withdraw the offer of a place if a change in circumstances between allocation and admission would have resulted in a child not being offered a place at the time of allocation. | |
| Children with a statement of special educational needs/EHC Plan | Any child with a statement of special educational needs/Education Health and Care Plan is required to be admitted to the academy that is named in the statement/plan. This gives such children overall priority for admission to the named academy. This is not an oversubscription criterion. |
| Looked after or previously looked after children and internationally adopted previously looked after children | Children who are looked after or immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, child arrangement order or special guardianship order. This includes any child/young person who is subject to a Full Care Order, an interim Care Order, accommodated under Section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989, is remanded, or detained into Local Authority accommodation under Criminal Law or who has been placed for adoption. Children who appear (to the admission authority) to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care, as a result of being adopted. |
| Sibling | Siblings (brothers or sisters) are considered to be those children who live at the same address and either: have one or both natural parents in common; or ii. are related by a parent’s marriage; or iii. are adopted or fostered by a common parent. Unrelated children living at the same address, whose parents are living as partners, are also considered to be siblings. Children not adopted or fostered or related by a parent’s marriage or with one natural parent in common, who are brought together as a family by a same sex civil partnership and who are living at the same address, are also considered to be siblings. |
| Distance | Distances are calculated on the basis of a straight-line measurement between the applicant’s home address and the centre of main school building. The Local Authority uses a computerised system, which measures all distances in metres. Ordnance Survey supply the co-ordinates that are used to plot an applicant’s home address and the address of the academy. |
| Shared Responsibility | Where parents have shared responsibility for a child, and the child lives with both parents for part of the week, then the main residence will be determined as the address where the child lives the majority of the school week. Parents may be requested to supply documentary evidence to support the address used. |
| Final Qualifier | In a very small number of cases, it may not be possible to decide between the applications of those students who are the final qualifiers for a place, when applying the published admission criteria. For example, this may occur when children in the same year group live at the same address, or if the distance between the home and academy is exactly the same, for example, blocks of flats. If there is no other way of separating the application according to the admissions criteria and to admit both or all of the children would cause the Published Admission Number for the child’s year group to be exceeded, the Local Authority will use a computerised system to randomly select the child to be offered the final place. In the event of this occurring with twins or other multiple birth applicants, academies will be asked to admit over their Published Admission Number to accommodate the students. |
| Waiting Lists | Waiting lists will not be fixed following the offer of places. They are subject to change. This means that a child’s waiting list position during the year could go up or down. Any applicants will be added to the academy’s list in accordance with the order of priority for offering places. Waiting lists will be maintained until the end of each academic year. |
| Appeals | Appeals are administered by the Local Authority for this Academy. Parents who wish to appeal against the decision to refuse their child admission should visit: www.birmingham.gov.uk/schooladmissions Appeals are considered by an independent panel. |
| In Year Applications | Applications made outside the normal admissions round (in-year admissions) should be made directly to the academy. Parents/carers can apply for a place for their child at any time and to any academy. On receipt of an in-year application, the academy will notify the local authority of both the application and its outcome, to allow the local authority to keep up to date with figures on the availability of academy places in Birmingham. |
| Deferred entry and Admission of children outside their normal year group | Parents have the right to request, but not insist, that their child be considered for admission to a class outside of their normal age group. This could be the case, for example, if a child is gifted and talented or has experienced problems such as ill health, that they had deferred entry agreed for when their child started Reception class or that they have been taught out of the normal year group during the primary phase of their education and have not been reintegrated back into their normal chronological year group. Where a parent wishes to request admission out of the normal age group for their child, they should still make an application for their child’s normal age group at the usual time. Parents must then submit a formal request to the ATLP Executive Group for the child to be considered for a different age group class instead. This request should be in the form of a written letter of application outlining the reasons why they wish for their child to be considered to be admitted into a class outside of their normal age group and enclosing any supportive evidence and documentation that they wish to be taken into account as part of that request. The ATLP Executive Group will consider requests submitted for a child to be admitted into a class outside of their normal age group and advise parents of the outcome of that request before national offer day, having taken into account the information provided by the parents, the child’s best interests and the views of the Headteacher. If the request is refused, the original application for the normal age group class will progress through the Local Authority co-ordinated admissions scheme, be considered by the ATLP Executive Group and the parents will be advised of the outcome. If the request is agreed and the year group for which the parents have requested a place is a current year group in the school, then the application will be considered by the ATLP Executive Group and the parents advised of the outcome. If the request is agreed and the year group for which the parents have requested a place is for a future year group, i.e., Year 7 in September 2026, then the original application is withdrawn, and the parents must submit a fresh application for Year 7 in 2025 when applications open in the autumn term of 2026. Please note that parents only have the right to re-apply for a place. Where the ATLP Executive Group agrees to consider an application for Year 7 for the following year, that application is considered alongside all other applications received and parents will be advised of the outcome of that application on national offer day. No place is reserved or held for the child in advance. If parents are considering submitting an application for their child to be admitted into a class outside of their normal age group, it is strongly recommended that they also read the DFE guidance which can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/summer-born-children-school-admission |
| Fair Access Protocol | The ATLP Executive Group of The Royal Sutton School is committed to taking its fair share of children who are vulnerable and/or hard to place, as set out in locally agreed protocols. Accordingly, outside the normal admission round, the ATLP Executive Group is able to give priority to a child where admission is requested under any locally agreed protocol. The ATLP Executive Group has this power, even when admitting the child would mean exceeding the published admission number subject. |
* No Supplementary Information Form is used at The Royal Sutton School
