For the attention of all Secondary Schools
You will be aware that an amendment was made to The School Information (England) Regulations 2008 to require local authorities to write to all parents of pupils who have the option of attending schools with atypical age range in the following year. In most cases, this would mean writing to prospective year 10 pupils (i.e. those pupils currently in year 9) about schools within reasonable travelling distance which admit at age 14 (UTCs and Studio Schools).
The amendment to the Regulations came into effect on 14 February 2017 and local authorities were required to write to parents by no later than 14 March 2017 for the application year 2017/18. For all subsequent years, local authorities are required to write to parents by no later than the 12 September in the application year.
You will recall that we asked you to kindly distribute a letter electronically to your year 9 parents on the local authority’s behalf. The DfE has now specified that local authorities ‘who distribute letters via schools or any other indirect route, would be failing to comply with the regulations.’ Therefore, in order to comply fully with the regulations and the requirement of writing to parents by 12 September in the application year, we have sent all year 9 parents a letter utilising either their postal address data (provided through the annual school census) or email addresses from our system. Please see the enclosed letter (external link) which sets out the information we have been required to send to parents.
We are also required under the Regulations to publish information on UTCs and Studio Schools in our composite prospectus (admissions booklet). This information can be viewed on page 54 in our online Secondary prospectus (external link).
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any queries on this matter.
Carlo Kodsi, School Admissions Team Leader