If you do not name any school, we will give your child a place at the normal school for your home address if there are places available. If the normal school is oversubscribed, we will give your child a place at the nearest school with a place available, which, depending on circumstances, may be some distance from your home. Parents who have expressed preferences for a school will be considered first. Listing only one school will not improve your chances of being offered a place there and may lead to us offering a place at a school you would prefer your child not to attend.

If your neighbour's child, or even one of your own children, were offered a place at a certain school last year, this does not guarantee a place for another child this year. This is because the number of pupils who apply, and where they live, changes from year to year. Infant and junior schools are separate schools. This means that if you apply for a place for your child at an infant school, and they have a brother or sister at the junior school, we will not give your application priority.
 
If you have twins or triplets we will try, wherever possible, to offer all of your children a place at the same school. Infant classes (those where the majority of children will reach the age of five, six or seven during the school year) must not contain more than 30 pupils with a single school teacher. Additional children may be admitted under limited exceptional circumstances. These children will remain an "excepted pupil" for the time they are in an infant class or until the class numbers fall back to the current infant class size limit. One of the excepted categories of children is children whose twin or sibling from a multiple birth is admitted otherwise than as an excepted pupil.

Our overall aim is to make sure that a single offer of a school place is made on the allocation date and that we meet your highest available preference wherever possible.

We will write to you on 1 March 2013 for secondary applications and 16 April 2013 for primary applications to offer your child a school place.

We will try to give your child a place at your preferred school, even if you live outside the County. However, we do not need to do this if:

• this would affect the education of other pupils because more pupils have applied to the school than there are places available;
• your preferred school is an academy, aided, foundation or trust school and meeting your preference would not be in line with their admission arrangements; or
• the arrangements for admission to the preferred school are based totally or partly on your child's ability, and meeting your preference would not be in line with these selection arrangements.