Schools - Transactions

Free school meals for children in P5

The Scottish Government is funding universal free school meals for all P5 pupils from January 2022. However, this automatic entitlement does not extend to the holiday payments or child bridging payments. Families must continue to meet the income-based eligibility criteria in order to receive these additional payments, as is the case for pupils in P1-P4.

It would be helpful if you could assist in communicating this to your P5 parents as some may wrongly expect receive these payments automatically, starting with the February mid-term break payment.

Primary 1 registration update

Please download the phase 2 P1 registration process for details on the process from January 2022 onwards.

The deadline for P1 registrations was 24 December. Thank you for inputting these on SEEMiS, however there are several pupils not registered yet. An email will be going out containing all the details and we ask that you check you have received these registration forms and input as soon as possible.

We have also been checking registration discrepancies - these are children who have not been matched to their existing nursery record and a duplicate enrolment has been created. This causes issues at Turnaround, so it is vital we sort these out now.

Discrepancies can be down to just one letter mis-spelled, or a date of birth entered incorrectly - often it’s the nursery record which is wrong!  It is important to always check if the parent has stated the child attends one of our early years settings.  Please note that if the nursery was not listed as it is a private non-partner nursery or one in another authority area, you will not find a current match, and in these cases, you would be expected to create a new enrolment.

For any discrepancies we’ve identified, you will receive an email with the details, and you will be asked to re-register these children.

We originally planned to lock the P1 registration screen from today (12 January), however this will be extended to 21 January to allow you to deal with the remaining registrations and discrepancies.

Admission to Roman Catholic schools

Priority will be given to children baptised in the Roman Catholic faith.  

There are several P1 registrations with RC status 'certificate not provided yet' - please review these and chase up parents if necessary, otherwise they will be counted as non-baptised and will not be guaranteed a place.

To update the RC Requirement status on a registration, just search for the child name in the Intake Registration Details screen, select the correct status received and click on 'Update Proofs':

You can also do this if updating the Address proofs and DOB Proof boxes.

Pupils not registered for P1

Every year there are many children who are never registered for P1 but still require a place in P1. Due to the rising rolls it is important we get as many children registered as possible as we are less likely to be able to accommodate these pupils later after we have allocated all available places.

In these cases when a parent has not completed a registration form, and therefore not provided the child's birth certificate or proof of address - we will simply performed an address check against Council Tax / Benefits records.  We will be registering these children over the coming weeks so you may notice additional children appearing on your registration details report.

S1 school places update

P7 address changes up to the end of term in December 2021 have been actioned letters have been issued to the parents confirming the allocated place. We’ve also allocated places to children who enrolled into P7 from outside Edinburgh between November and December 2021.

We check a weekly report for P7 pupils detailing any new starts or changes, i.e. new addresses.  You don't need to tell us about these separately as we'll pick them up automatically.  In most cases we'll check against Council Tax records to confirm the address and then change the allocated school. However, we may contact you if we need some more information.

Next update

We’ll post our next update in February.