Schools - Transactions

P1 and S1 intake handover

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, including maintenance of waiting lists, is now delegated to Head Teachers.

Where possible 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.

The following schools have waiting lists and will be emailed to you this week:

Primary schools

• Balgreen
• Buckstone
• Canaan Lane
• Castleview
• Corstorphine
• Cramond
• Dalry
• Davidson’s Mains
• Flora Stevenson
• Forthview
• Fox Covert ND
• Frogston
• Gilmerton
• Hermitage Park
• Holy Cross RC
• James Gillespie’s
• Juniper Green
• Leith
• Liberton
• Longstone
• Murrayburn
• Pirniehall
• Preston Street
• Prestonfield
• Roseburn
• Sciennes
• St Catherine’s RC
• St Francis' RC
• St John Vianney RC
• St John’s RC
• St Joseph’s RC
• St Mary’s RC (Edin)
• St Mary’s RC (Leith)
• St Peter's RC
• Stockbridge
• The Royal High
• Towerbank
• Trinity
• Victoria
• Wardie

Secondary schools

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

Waiting list procedure

Children on the waiting list are divided into priority categories as follows:

Non-denominational schools

• 0 – Late catchment (priority is given to those with siblings in attendance in session 2025/26)
• 1 – Children with exceptional circumstances (as agreed by the Committee on Pupil/Student Support) (Please note that this category is no longer applicable, as all of those children have now been placed)
• 2 – Children with brothers/sisters who will be attending the requested school in session 2025/26
• 3 – All other children living within the City of Edinburgh area
• 4 – Children living outwith the City of Edinburgh area

Roman Catholic schools

• 1 – Baptised Roman Catholic children living in the catchment area
• 2 – Children living in the catchment area with exceptional circumstances (as agreed by the Committee on Pupil/Student Support)
• 3 – Children living in the catchment area who are not baptised but have brothers/sisters who will be attending the requested school in session 2025/26
• 4 – All other catchment children
• 5 – Children with exceptional circumstances (as agreed by the Committee on Pupil/Student Support)
• 6 – Children with brothers/sisters who will be attending the requested school in session 2025/26
• 7 – All other children living within the City of Edinburgh area
• 8 – Children living outwith the City of Edinburgh area

You will notice that there is a measurement column.  Children are placed on the list within each category based one the distance from their home to the nearest school gate. However you may notice some children have the same measurement.  If you are in a position to offer a place to a child and there are at least two children with the same measurement in the same category, please contact us and we will provide an accurate measurement to determine the correct order.

Any new requests you receive in future can be added to this list – please note that after term begins place on the list is not by measurement and these will be added to the bottom of each category, in date order.

Please remember that before you can offer a place to the first non-catchment pupil on the list, you must have all of your reserved places for incoming catchment. 

As per the Placing in Schools timetable, any child allocated a place who fails to attend can be removed and reallocated after 5 September 2025 if no reply has been given by the parent by then.

You are not required to inform us of any subsequent changes which may take place after term begins.

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 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 the case of P1 places, the pupils granted by the appeal committee are legally ‘excepted’ and do not count towards the pupil roll.

Details on 2026 Intake

Procedures for next year's intake are being finalised as we will share the timetable in September.

In the meantime, we'd be grateful if you checked the following:

• Nursery year groups - All nursery children born between 1 March 2021 and 28 February 2022 will be eligible for P1 in August 2026. 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.

Free school meals, milk and clothing grants

Over 7,600 children have been awarded free school meals over the summer. 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.

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.

High schools - confirm your S5 & S6 pupils

You need to confirm any children over the school leaving age have returned to school for the new term. We can't approve FSM on SEEMiS or pay the clothing grant until this is done. The FSM Help Sheet has details on how to do this.

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.

P6 & P7 pupils

Children in P6 and P7 whose parents do not qualify for income-based free school meals may receive this if they receive the Scottish Child Payment. All P6 pupils awarded in 2024/25 have been carried forward and approved for 2025-26. Applications are open here: www.edinburgh.gov.uk/freeschoolmealsP6P7

Education Maintenance Allowance

EMA applications opened in June and we are receiving a steady flow of applications. Payments will begin on 5 September.

We are continuing the system of school approval by sending weekly spreadsheets, and the first of these will be emailed to you on 18 August.

Next update

The next update will follow in September when the timetable for the 2026 P1 and S1 Intake will be shared. 

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