Schools - Transactions

The final allocation of places for both the Primary 1 and Secondary 1 intake is now complete, and responsibility for any future allocation of places in the current P1 and S1 year group, including maintenance of waiting lists, is now delegated to Head Teachers.

We have included the parent name, telephone number and email address on the waiting lists to make it easier to get in touch when you need to.

This year we have faced unprecedented challenges  which has significantly delayed the handover and we apologise for this.  We are currently reviewing the process to prevent such delays in future.

The following schools have waiting lists and will be emailed to you. We anticipate this will be completed by Friday 22 September.

Primary schools

• Abbeyhill
• Balgreen
• Bonaly
• Broughton
• Brunstane
• Bruntsfield
• Buckstone
• Corstorphine
• Cramond
• Currie
• Davidson’s Mains
• Duddingston
• East Craigs
• Forthview
• Frogston
• Gracemount
• James Gillespie’s
• Juniper Green
• Leith
• Leith Walk
• Lorne
• Murrayburn
• Newcraighall
• Pentland
• Prestonfield
• Queensferry
• Sciennes
• Sighthill
• South Morningside
• St Cuthbert’s RC
• St David’s RC
• St John Vianney RC
• St John’s RC
• St Joseph’s RC
• St Mary’s RC (Edin)
• St Mary’s RC (Leith)
• St Ninian’s RC
• St Peter’s RC
• Stockbridge
• The Royal High
• Tollcross
• Towerbank
• Trinity
• Victoria
• Wardie

Secondary schools

• Balerno
• Boroughmuir
• Broughton
• Craigmount
• Craigroyston
• Currie
• Firrhill
• Holy Rood RC
• James Gillespie’s
• Portobello
• St Augustine’s RC
• St Thomas of Aquin’s RC
• The Royal High
• Trinity Academy

As per the Placing in Schools timetable, any child allocated a place who fails to attend can be removed and reallocated if no reply has been received from the parent by 8 September.

You no longer need to inform us of any subsequent changes which may take place.

Reserved places

In primary schools, where possible one place per class (or two places in team teaching classes) should be retained throughout the year for incoming catchment children.

In secondary schools, where possible one place per every 40 pupils has been reserved in the S1 year group for incoming catchment children, and these should be retained throughout the year until filled by a catchment pupil.

In some cases, it has not been possible to reserve any places in P1 or S1 and the intake is full. In these cases where a pupil leaves the year group mid-year, you would retain this as a reserved place.

Please note reserved places should only be allocated to children whose parents move into and provide proof of residence within your catchment area.

In a small number of cases the number of children allocated places in P1 is over the official intake limit. This is due to children granted places by the Placing in Schools Appeal Committee, who have power to grant places turned down by the authority. In these cases, the pupils granted by the appeal committee are legally ‘excepted’ and do not count towards the pupil roll.

Details on 2024 Intake

Procedures for next year's intake are being finalised and details will be shared with you in due course.

In the meantime, you can download the new timetable for 2023-24.

One significant change is the introduction of a new system for managing P1 registrations and placing requests. SEEMiS is discontinuing the P1 registration module so we needed to find a new way of dealing with these. The new system offers several improvements, including:

• parents can register and submit a placing request at the same time.
• Registrations will be recorded automatically when submitted by the parent – you no longer have to input each registration!

Full details and training will be made available nearer the time.

We expect applications will open on 30 October 2023. To help us prepare for this, we'd be grateful if you checked the following:

• Nursery year groups - All nursery children born between 1 March 2019 and 29 February 2020 will be eligible to start P1 in August 2024. If they attend a nursery, they should be year group N5 - we often find children are wrongly recorded on SEEMiS. Please check you have all children in this date of birth range recorded as N5.
• No UPRN - check your N5 and P7 pupils have a UPRN (unique property reference number). This should be verified when you enter or change a pupil's address. The UPRN is important as we use this to determine the pupil's catchment schools.

You can run the Custom Report 'No UPRN' to view all current pupils in your school who don't have a UPRN. Its good practice to run this regularly.

If you have any go to Records > Edit and in the address tab, click on the 'Verify Address' button and choose the pupil's address. This will populate the UPRN automatically.

Please note:

• some addresses will have a different format (i.e. 22 (3f1) may appear as 22/7) so you may need to check this first.
• if the address does not show when you click on verify address, check you have the right postcode - check it here: www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode
• properties in new build developments may not yet be uploaded to SEEMiS, in this case you cannot verify the address and the UPRN will remain blank.

New primary school in West Edinburgh (Maybury)

It is expected a new primary school in west Edinburgh, within the new Maybury housing development, will open to P1 pupils only in August 2024.

This new school catchment area will cover the new housing developments in Cammo, Maybury and West Craigs, and will affect existing catchment areas of:

• Corstorphine Primary School
• Cramond Primary School
• Hillwood Primary School
• Craigmount High School
• The Royal High School.

The online catchment map will be updated in due course as will SEEMiS.

Click here find out more information about the new school. Parents resident within the new catchment area will be able to register for P1 at the new school.

Over 8,000 children have been awarded free school meals. Applications continue to be received but the numbers are reducing. We are dealing with these within a few days of receipt and successful awards are being approved on SEEMiS the next day.

Please refer to the FSM Help Sheet on the Orb which includes details on how to view reports of your eligible pupils.

Children in P1-P5 and all children in special schools receive ‘universal’ free school meals but this does not include clothing grants or any additional payments throughout the school year. We still record entitlement on SEEMiS for these pupils so you can determine who is entitled to receive free milk or healthy snack.

If parents have a query about their eligibility, they should contact us directly using our contact form www.edinburgh.gov.uk/transactionscontact. We'll respond as quickly as we can.

Strike payment – 26-28 September

We are preparing to issue payments in lieu of school meals for all pupils with an income-based entitlement to free school meals. Please note that this does not include all pupils in P1-P5 – only those with an income-based entitlement.

EMA applications opened in June and we are receiving a steady flow of applications. Over 400 pupils have been successful so far and payments began on 8 September.

We are continuing the system of school approval by sending weekly spreadsheets.

Our next update will follow in October when details of the procedure for P1 and S1 Intake will be shared. 

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