Address:
Douglas Green
Salford
M6 6ET
Telephone: 0161 921 1625
Email: stsebastians.rcprimaryschool@salford.gov.uk
Headteacher: Ms C Doyle
School type: Voluntary aided
Total number of places for nursery: 30
Total number of places for reception: 30
Total applications received by offer day for reception: 48
Breakdown of reception offers at offer day (17 April 2023): All applicants in categories 1-7 to a distance of 1.341 miles
Total numbers of reception offers made (including alternative offers): 30
Total reception vacancies: 0
St Sebastian’s RC Primary School is a Catholic School in the trusteeship of the Diocese of Salford. It is maintained by Salford local authority and is a voluntary aided school. The Governing board is the admissions authority and is responsible for taking all decisions on applications for admissions. The co-ordination of admissions arrangements is undertaken by the Local Authority.
For the school year commencing September 2024, the Governing Body has set its planned admissions number at 30.
The school’s role is to participate in the mission of the Catholic Church by providing a curriculum, including Catholic religious education and worship, which will help children to grow in their understanding of the Good News and in the practice of their faith. The school will help the children develop fully as human beings and prepare them to undertake their responsibilities as Catholics in society. The school requires all parents applying for a place here to understand and respect this ethos and its importance to the school community. This does not affect the rights of parents who are not of the Catholic faith to apply for a place here.
Admissions to the school will be determined by the governing board. Applications for school places are made to Salford City Council's Schools Admissions team.
If you wish to have your application considered against the school's religious criteria then you must ALSO complete the supplementary form which is available from the school.
If there are fewer than 30 applications, all applicants will be offered places. If there are more applications than the number of places available, the following oversubscription criteria will be applied:
If it is not possible to offer places for all applications within any criterion above, priority will be given to those living closest to the school measured in a straight line using LLPG (Local Land and Property Gazetteer) information to measure the distance between the address point (including flats) of the child’s home address and the centre of the school in miles. Those children whose home address is closest to the school will be those who get priority for place.
In the event of distances being the same for two or more applicants, places will be allocated by random allocation. This will be carried out by an independent person. Eligible names will be placed in a hat. One name will be drawn from the hat and the remaining place will be offered to that person. This process for random allocation also applies to the waiting list where two or more pupils are eligible for one vacancy because they live the same distance from the preferred school.
a. All applications will be considered at the same time and after the closing date for admissions which is 15th January 2024. Applications received after this date will be treated as a late application and will not be considered until after the main allocation of places has taken place.
b. A Looked After Child is a child who is (a) in the care of a Local Authority, or (b) being provided with accommodation by a Local Authority in the exercise of their Social Services functions (under section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989. A previously Looked After Child is one who immediately moved on from that status after becoming subject to an adoption, residence or special guardianship order. Included in this definition are those children who appear to the governing board to have been in state care outside of England and who ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted.
For a child to be considered as a Catholic, evidence of a Catholic Certificate of Baptism or reception into the Catholic Church is required. Written evidence of reception into the Catholic Church can be obtained by referring to the Register of Receptions, or in some cases a sub-section of the Baptismal Registers of the Church in which the Rite of Reception took place. If, for example, a child has been baptised in the Church of England and the parents are subsequently admitted to the Catholic Church through the RCIA programme, the child must also be admitted to the Church by the Rite of Reception.
The governing board will require written evidence in the form of a Certificate of Reception before applications for school places can be considered for categories of ‘Baptised Catholics’. A Certificate of Reception is to include full name, date of birth, date of reception and parent(s) name(s). The certificate must also show that it is copied from the records kept by the place of reception.
Those who have difficulty obtaining written evidence of baptism for a good reason, may still be considered as baptised Catholics but only after they have been referred to the parish priest who, after consulting with the Episcopal Delegate will decide how the question of baptism is to be resolved and how written evidence is to be produced in accordance with Canon Law.
d. Home Address is considered to be the address where the child normally lives. All applicants may be required to provide proof of address, by supplying original, up-to-date evidence, such as utility bills. Applicants should not state the address of another relative or person who has daily care of the child.
e. ‘Sibling’ is defined in these arrangements as full, half or stepbrothers and sisters, adopted and foster brothers and sisters who are living at the same address and are part of the same family unit. This does not include cousins or other family relationships.
f. A waiting list for children who have not been offered a place will be kept and will be ranked according to the admission criteria. The waiting list does not consider the date the application was received or the length of time a child's name has been on the waiting list. This means that a child's position on the list may change if another applicant is refused a place and their child has higher priority in the admissions criteria.
g. For ‘In Year’ applications received outside the normal admissions round, if places are available they will be offered to those who apply. If there are places available but more applicants than places then the published oversubscription criteria will be applied.
h. If an application for admission has been turned down by the Governing Board, parents may appeal to an independent appeals panel. Parents must be allowed at least twenty school days from the date of notification that their application was unsuccessful to submit that appeal. Parents must give reasons for appealing in writing and the decision of the appeals panel is binding on the governors.
i. The governing board reserve the right to withdraw the offer of a school place where false evidence is received in relation to the application.
j. It is the duty of governors to comply with regulations on class size limits for children aged between rising five and seven. This means that under no circumstance must any Key Stage 1 class contain more than 30 pupils. The governing board may exceed the regulations for twins and children from multiple births where one of the children is the 30th child admitted. This also applies to in-year applicants who are looked after/previously looked after children of UK service personnel or children who move into the area for whom there is no other school available within a reasonable distance.
k. If a child is a 'summer born child', parents may request that the date their child is admitted to school is deferred to later in the school year. However, the child must start school before the end of that school year. If a parent wishes their child to be educated out of their normal school year (kept back a year), they must discuss this with the school before applying. However, the final decision on this rests with the headteacher.
l. Parents may request that their child attend school part-time until he/she reaches his/her fifth birthday.
m. St. Sebastian’s also operate a Nursery class. The planned admission number for the Nursery is 26. The Head teacher will apply the above criteria to those parents wishing a place in the Nursery class. A place in the Nursery does not necessarily guarantee a place in the Reception class.