Schools - Transactions

Allocations are very fluid at this time of year, and allocations changing constantly. We will soon be offering more places to those on waiting lists and we’ll confirm these as soon as the parents accept.  It’s good practice to keep checking your Intake Registration Details report (P1) or Provisional Allocations report (S1) to see the latest picture. Details on how to view these can be found in the previous post, dated 28 March 2023.

The placing in schools appeals will begin soon, so this will result in further changes. The appeal committee has the power to grant places to children regardless of availability of places, which in some cases may take you over the proposed intake limit. This is common, and we are normally able to manage these down.

Mark your N5 and P7 leavers

If you haven’t already, primary schools should now confirm with all parents of children registered for P1 or in P7 they are accepting their places. We have had several recent enquiries from parents who were expecting confirmation of their catchment place – the Transactions team do not write to confirm non-denominational catchment places.

At the end of April, SEEMiS Support sent out their latest guidance for Turnaround. They have asked you to mark your leavers to their destination school as follows:

• P7s during the week 22 to 26 May
• N5s during the week 29 May to 2 June.

As mentioned above, the information on your SEEMiS reports shows the very latest information, so this should be used to identify the leaving destination.

After 2 June we will check all the leaver destinations against our own records, and any declined places (i.e. child is going to a private school, moving out of Edinburgh or accepting place in specialist provision), will be withdrawn and offered to the waiting list if applicable.

There are a small number of children with no place allocated yet – this is because there are no available places in their catchment school. We be identifying alternative schools for these children, and they will all be allocated and notified by early June.

Planning has started for opening applications for 2023-24. Applications are still open but only for the remainder of the current term but will close on 31 May, so please don’t advise anyone to apply for the next session just yet!

We will again be automatically awarding parents if they have a current benefit claim and meet the criteria. This will take place in June, and thereafter we’ll open applications for everyone else.

We will be making a payment for those currently in receipt of Free School Meals to cover the summer holiday. We’ll provide further details in June.

Applications for the current session closed on 31 March 2023.

Applications are planned to reopen for 2023-24 on Monday 5 June and we’ll do the usual mailshot out to all age-eligible students.

We’ll post another update in June to let you know when we expect to open FSM applications and provide details of the summer holiday payment.

If you have any enquiries in the meantime, please continue to use our contact form.