After you get your school offer

1. Overview

Letting you know

We will send a decision letter on the national offer day.

  • Secondary schools: 1 March 2024
  • Infant, primary or junior schools: 16 April 2024

The letter has all the information you need to accept your offer, or to go on a waiting list or appeal.

If you applied online, you will get an email with a link to your decision letter.
If you applied on paper, we will attempt to send your decision via email. If we are unable we will send your decision letter by first class post.


What to do when you get your offer

How to accept your offer  

Your school should contact you within 10 days of your offer.  

If you don’t hear from them in 10 days, please contact them directly.

What if you don’t want the school you’re offered? 

First, we recommend you accept the school place in your decision letter, even if it’s not your first preference. 

Accepting your school place ensures your child has a school to go to.  

Accepting won’t stop you: 

  • appealing 
  • going on a waiting list for a different school 

If you turn down the place at your allocated school this may be given away to another child and we may not offer this again if you change your mind. We have no duty to offer  another school. This may result in your child being without a school place in September.


Find out why an application may have been unsuccessful

To help you understand the 2024 intake, you'll find details on this page about the number of preferences stated for each school. 

Preference data on national allocation day

Primary and Junior schools including infant schools

Data for the 2024 primary and junior intake will appear here on national offer day, 16 April 2024

Secondary schools

Data for the 2024 secondary intake [23.1 KB] [xlsx]

If you use assistive technology such as a screen reader, please contact us, and we will do our best to help. We will contact you about the next step.

Telephone: 0300 330 9472
Email: Admissions and Transport Team

Data from past years

Find out why an application may have been unsuccessful

Primary and junior schools

Information will appear here on national offer day, 16 April 2024

Secondary schools

For oversubscribed local authority administered schools, we have given the criterion and distance(measure in a straight-line) of the last child allocated. If the tiebreaker was applied, we have stated the distance that relates to the furthest child allocated a place at the school within that admission priority.

School

Furthest place offered in metres (m)

Chailey School

6,117m in category 6*

Claverham Community College

6,645m in category 6

Heathfield Community College

9,789m in category 6

Robertsbridge Community College

16,000m in category 6

Willingdon Community School

8,831m in category 4

*Please note the information for Chailey School have been corrected due to an incorrect distance being given previously.

Categories

  • Category 1 children allocated Looked After
  • Category 2 children allocated in-area sibling
  • Category 3 children of staff members contracted to work at the school in question
    where:
    a) The member of staff has been employed at the school for two or more years at
    the time at which the application for admission to the school is made, and/or
    b) The member of staff is recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a
    demonstrable skill shortage
  • Category 4 children allocated in-area
  • Category 5 children allocated out-area sibling
  • Category 6 children allocated outside area

 

The following schools manage their own admissions and were also oversubscribed. Please contact them for details on why they were unable to offer a place:

Ark Alexandra Academy

Beacon Academy

Gildredge House

King's Academy Ringmer

Peacehaven Community School

Priory School

Seaford Head School

St Catherine's College

St Richard's Catholic College

The Cavendish School

Uplands Academy

All other East Sussex Schools were able to offer places to all on-time applicants who were not offered a higher preference.


Waiting lists

What is a waiting list? 

You can add your child to a waiting list for any of the schools in your original application. 

If a space becomes free, the school uses its admissions policy to decide who they can take. 

That means: 

  • it will look at things like how close your child lives and other individual factors 
  • it won’t decide on a first-come-first-served basis 

Admissions rules – how places are offered in East Sussex 

How to join a waiting list

We are responsible for the waiting lists for local authority controlled schools and manage the waiting list for the following academies:

Primary:

  • Breakwater Academy
  • Burfield Academy
  • Churchwood Primary Academy
  • Dudley Infant Academy
  • Hawkes Farm Academy
  • High Cliff Academy
  • Hollington Primary Academy
  • Peacehaven Heights Academy
  • Phoenix Academy
  • Robsack Wood Primary Academy
  • Silverdale Primary Academy
  • Telscombe Cliffs Academy
  • The Baird Primary Academy
  • West St Leonards Primary Academy
  • White House Academy.

Secondary:

  • The Hastings Academy
  • The St Leonards Academy
  • The Turing School.

For all other own admissions authority schools, please contact the school direct.

To join a waiting list, please email your child’s:

  • name
  • date of birth
  • address
  • relevant siblings and
  • the name(s) of the schools whose waiting list you wish to join

Phase transfers waiting list -for children joining a secondary, primary or junior school in September 2024.

In year waiting list email - for all in-year applications.

What happens if your waiting list application is successful? 

Before your child starts school

  • we’ll automatically withdraw your original allocation and replace it with the new school 
  • we’ll let you know in writing that we’ve changed your child’s school 

After your child starts school: 

  • we’ll give you 10 school days to accept or refuse the place 

If you wish to withdraw from a waiting list at any time, you must do so in writing to the Admissions and Transport Team.

Staying on waiting lists

You need to renew the request each term to keep your child on a waiting list. If you don’t renew we’ll remove your child’s name.

For local authority controlled schools and the academies listed above, please email in year waiting list giving us:

  • your child’s name and

  • reminding us of the school(s) in question.

For all other schools, contact the school directly.

Example (for schools controlled by East Sussex County Council):

Jack, who lives outside a school’s community area, joins their waiting list in January. Jenny lives inside the school’s community area and joins the waiting list in February. A place becomes available in March. This will be offered to Jenny first as she has a higher priority according to the admissions rules.


Request a change of allocated school for September 2024

If your preferred school(s) are full for entry in September 2024, we can look into changing your child’s allocated school, provided the alternative school did not turn down any on-time applications. It is not possible to express a new preference for a school not listed on your application until 1 September 2024.

We cannot guarantee all requests will be successful. It will depend on the number of requests we receive and availability at each school.

If your change of allocation can be met, your original allocation will be withdrawn.

The list of schools available for change of allocation requests and details of how to do this will appear here on national offer day. This is 1 March 2024 (secondary) and 16 April 2024 (primary).

Further schools may become available on 1 July, so please check back later if you are interested in other schools

Make a request

Please put your request in an email to allocationchange@eastsussex.gov.uk and include:

  • your child’s name and date of birth
  • the school you wish to be considered.
  • the reasons you wish to change your child’s allocated school (ie sibling)

The decisions on these requests do not carry a right of appeal nor can you join a waiting list. This service is not available for In year applications

Secondary schools available for requests:

  • Bexhill Academy
  • Hailsham Community College Academy Trust
  • Rye College
  • Seahaven Academy
  • The Turing School
  • The Eastbourne Academy
  • The Hastings Academy
  • The St Leonards Academy
  • Uckfield College
Primary and Junior schools
Area Available schools
Bexhill Available on 16 April
Eastbourne Available on 16 April
Hailsham Available on 16 April
Hastings and St Leonards Available on 16 April
Heathfield Available on 16 April
Lewes Available on 16 April
Newhaven Available on 16 April
Peacehaven Available on 16 April
Rye  Available on 16 April
Seaford Available on 16 April
Uckfield Available on 16 April
Rurals Available on 16 April
Junior schools Available on 16 April

Appeals

If you did not get the school place you wanted, you may want to appeal. Our guidance notes explain what you need to consider:

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