Guide to moving up to secondary school

Your child will automatically be added to the waiting list for the schools in your application that could not be offered, as long as they are higher preferences than the school that was offered.

There are two exceptions. We cannot add:

• unqualified children to the waiting list for any grammar school
• children to the waiting list of The Highcrest Academy if they have not taken the school’s banding test

If you and your child live in Buckinghamshire and their application included a school in another area, we will ask the relevant Local Authority to add your child’s name to that school’s waiting list.

Contact the School Admissions Team if you do not want your child included on a school’s waiting list.

If a place becomes available at a school, we will fill that place by offering it to the child at the top of the waiting list in a later allocation round.

We will email you if we can offer a place to your child.

Before making allocations, each school’s waiting list is sorted into admission rules order. The child at the top of the waiting list will always be the child who best fits the admission rules.

It does not matter when a child’s name was added to the waiting list or when their application was received, waiting lists are always ordered according to the school’s admission rules.

It is important you contact school admissions as soon as you decide you want to remove your child from a waiting list.

If you are happy with the school your child has been offered, but you do not tell us to remove them from a waiting list, you risk losing your child’s original offer. This is because we assume any child on a waiting list would prefer that school above any other and we take the place as we make the higher preference offer.

The school place we remove from your child will then be offered to another child from the waiting list, so we will not be able to offer it back to your child. We will not give you a choice between 2 schools.

If your child is on a Buckinghamshire school’s waiting list, you will be notified of their waiting list position on the following dates:

• 23 March
• 14 May
• 18 June

We will not be able to confirm your child’s waiting list position at any other time.

If your child is on the waiting list for a school outside Buckinghamshire, you need to contact that Local Authority directly to find out your child’s waiting list position.

Children who are ‘qualified’ are eligible to be placed on Buckinghamshire grammar school waiting lists.

A child can be qualified either by scoring 121 or higher in the Secondary Transfer Test, or by having a successful Selection Review.

A child may also be added to a grammar school’s waiting list if they are qualified at appeal by the Independent Appeal Panel, but the appeal for a place was not successful. Where this is the case, the child would only be eligible to be placed on the waiting list of that particular grammar school.

See the appeals guide for more information.

Bear in mind that – for some Buckinghamshire grammar schools – your child’s qualification may lapse after a period of time. This means if you are still interested in a place your child would need to be tested again for entry into Year 8 (or Year 9). Check the admissions policy for your preferred grammar school(s) to see how this may impact your child.

After Transition Day, waiting lists for Buckinghamshire schools will be disbanded, and we will ask you to contact us to tell us if you would like your child’s name to stay on your preferred schools’ waiting lists.

Waiting lists are then held – either by Buckinghamshire Council or by the school directly - until at least 31 December of Year 7.

In the autumn term we will contact the families of children who remain on the waiting list for a Buckinghamshire school to advise how waiting lists will be managed for the remainder of the academic year.