Schools - Transactions

Second allocation of places – week commencing 10 May 2021

After the initial decision letters went out to parents on 26 March there has been a surge in late applications and correspondence from parents about their child’s school place.  There are also many changes of addresses to process and the team are working hard to get through this work.

We didn’t complete our second round of placement allocations as planned on 12 April, however are aiming to do this week commencing 10 May.  This will involve dealing with all late P1 registrations, placing requests, second choice requests, changes and catchment swaps received up to 23 April.  We will also be able to offer a number of places to children on waiting lists.

Once this is complete we’ll ask you to start confirming acceptance of these places with parents.

Late P1 registrations

As always the P1 registration process on SEEMiS was locked in advance of the first allocation taking place.  In the past you would continue to receive registrations and you were required to email the details to us. However as registration is now online, you do not need to do anything as we receive every registration form to a central mailbox.  A number of schools have forwarded these back to us, but there’s no need to do so.

Once we’ve carried out the necessary checks we’ll be in touch with the parent directly, and we’ll also let you know if and when we can register the children – it all depends on there being reserved places available.

The updated Phase 2 guide on the P1 registration process is now available to download – we apologise for the lateness! Click here to download the Phase 2 registration guide.

Contacting us

We are receiving a lot of mail to our personal mailboxes and school placements mailbox, with only some using the transactions contact form.  It is often difficult to manage as we have correspondence coming through various different mailboxes.

All of our mail is scanned into an electronic document management system and logged against the parent’s Council Tax account. Much correspondence does not include either the parent’s name or address, therefore the scan team are unable to log these. Instead they are left for the transactions team to sift through and trace the correct account. This can be time consuming and takes us away from more important work.

Therefore please follow this good practice guide when contacting us:

• Do not email team member’s personal mailboxes.
• Always use the school transactions contact form.
• Be sure to give the child’s full name, date of birth, parent name and full address.

Useful contacts

We often receive correspondence for other service areas, so we’ve compiled a list of contacts for the most common areas of enquiry:

• Schools transactions – administration of P1 and S1 allocation to mainstream schools (not special schools). We offer and allocate placing requests, Roman Catholic school requests and process any changes to addresses. We maintain the waiting lists for P1 and S1 until the start of session.  We do not deal with requests for other year groups, nor can we find places for children requiring a place in other year groups.  These should be directed to individual schools. Use our contact form to advise of any withdrawals, places declined or other enquiries which may affect a child’s place.
• General info on school placements for parents can be found here – www.edinburgh.gov.uk/school-places/apply-school-place
• Info on the P1 and S1 process on the Orb - https://orb.edinburgh.gov.uk/schools-lifelong-learning/primary-1-secondary-1-places
• Early Years (earlyyears@edinburgh.gov.uk) – enquiries relating to deferred entry to P1 and all aspects of nursery and childcare placements.
• Laura Hammersley, Devolved Finance & Resources Officer (Laura.Hammersley@edinburgh.gov.uk) – enquiries relating to your current or proposed class organisation, including any changes which may affect your proposed structure.
• Robbie Crockatt, School Estate Planning (Robbie.Crockatt@edinburgh.gov.uk) – enquiries relating to your school building, capacity and number or and/or size of classrooms. Catchment area enquiries for any new builds not appearing on the online catchment map, or proposed catchment changes. You can check existing catchment areas at www.edinburgh.gov.uk/catchmentmaps.
• Additional Support for Learning (cf.asap@edinburgh.gov.uk) – enquiries relating to placements in special schools, special classes such as language units, inclusion resources, enhanced support based and wellbeing hubs. Also retention in nursery where child is older than deferral age.