Schools - Transactions

P1 and S1 school allocations for August 2024

The school intake limits were decided and communicated to schools at the end of January. These are decided based on several factors, including pupil-teacher ratios and number of available classrooms available. For Roman Catholic schools we ensure we can accommodate all children we know of who are baptised in the Roman Catholic faith.

We completed the first round of allocations for the new P1 & S1 intakes in early March. We've just completed a further round offering places from waiting lists, and answering late requests up to early April. Parents have been notified by letter or email.

Waiting lists are now live - as always, any pupils remaining on the waiting list by the start of term will be passed to you in August.

Those turned down RC catchment schools were allocated a place in their non-denominational catchment school, and the allocations for the children we've turned down have been transferred accordingly on Gateway EPR Manager (P1) or on SEEMiS (S1).

As always we have updated the website with information on the allocations, including next steps and listing schools with available places - www.edinburgh.gov.uk/schoolplaces2024

Parents turned down may request a second choice by choosing one of the schools listed on page 2.

Enrolment remains open and the Transactions team will continue to deal with these as well as any applications from families moving to or within the Edinburgh area.

Allocations are very fluid between now and summer, and your intake numbers can change frequently. The placing in schools appeals begin today, 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.

You may notice that there are more children allocated places than the agreed intake limit for your school. This is because we guarantee places for all children at their non-denominational catchment school if they applied by 24 December 2023. We always start with higher numbers and experience from past years shows these numbers do drop. The figures will be carefully monitored, and appropriate action taken if necessary.

Viewing Primary 1 allocations

All pupils can be viewed on Gateway EPR Manager in Reports > Intake Registration Report. This includes any placing requests we've granted.

Some schools may see some new enrolments not yet registered (i.e. at 'Verified' or 'Pending') - please do not do anything with these. Transactions will register if a place is available.

Viewing Secondary 1 allocations

Your allocated pupils appear in Admissions & Leavers > Allocations > Provisional Allocations Report 

• Primary schools - change Report Type to ‘Allocated From Report’
• Secondary schools - change this to 'Allocated To Report'
• click 'Get report Data'. This will generate a list of pupils.

Under the heading 'Allocation Type' the categories are as follows: 

Accepted by Parent - these are non-catchment requests we have granted, or children granted specialist provision within your school (i.e. performance schools, Enhanced Support Base or Inclusion Resource)
Allocated by Authority - these are catchment pupils.
Withdrawn - these are pupils previously allocated places but are now withdrawn and should not be counted in your figures.

Note - children who are attending a non-CEC primary school appear as current school ‘Unknown’ on the report. Please contact us if you'd like to know where these children are coming from.

Mark your N5 and P7 leavers

SEEMiS Support have sent out the instructions for Turnaround Preparation, which includes marking all N5 and P7 children to the primary or secondary school they have been allocated for P1 and S1. They have asked you to mark your leavers to their destination school as follows:

• P7s during the week 20 to 24 May
• N5s during the week 27 to 31 May.

In advance of this primary schools should now confirm with all parents of children registered for P1 or in P7 if they are accepting their places.

Nurseries do not have access to the Gateway EPR Manager system, so Transactions will be sending out a spreadsheet to every CEC nursery with the details of each pupil and their registered primary school. The Early Years team will deal with leavers for the partnership sites.

After 31 May we will cross-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 will be identifying alternative schools for these children, and they will all be allocated and notified by the end of May.

What if a place is no longer required?

If parents contact you advising they no longer require a place, please use the contact form to let us know. However, you don't need to tell us about:

• Places in special schools and classes - these are allocated by the Parent & Pupil Support Manager (Additional Support for Learning). We withdraw these places as and when the ASL team confirm these to us. If you believe a pupil has been allocated a place in a special school or class and they still show on your provisional intake, contact us and we'll check.
• Nursery deferrals - these are notified to us by Early Years. We’ve already deleted enrolments for all known approved deferrals.

If a family is moving to a new address within Edinburgh, please advise the parent to complete the change of address form.

Free school meals and clothing grants

We made payments covering the February and Easter holidays to all parents of children currently in receipt of free school meals.

The February payment was £12.50 and the Easter payment was £30.00.

Please note that these payments were only paid to parents with an 'income-based' entitlement to free school meals. Therefore, it was not paid to all parents of P1-P5 children.

Applications for 2024-25

Planning has started for opening applications for 2024-25. Applications are still open but only for the remainder of the current term and these will close on 31 May, so please don’t advise anyone to apply for the next session just yet!

We are aware communication went out to schools recently about the revised FSM criteria. For the avoidance of doubt, we are not considering any applications for 2024-25 yet, but families can apply for the remainder of the current session.

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.

Education Maintenance Allowance

Applications for the current session closed on 31 March 2024.

Applications are planned to reopen for 2024-25 on Monday 10 June and we’ll do the usual mailshot out to all age-eligible students.

Next update

We'll post another update in June.

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