How to complete the Common Application Form

Every preference is assessed against that school’s published admission rules without using its position on your form. A school cannot reduce your priority because you listed it second or third.

Your order is used later. If more than one school can offer your child a place, your home council offers the one you ranked highest. You receive one state-school offer.

Use every preference your council permits. Include ambitious choices, but also include schools where your child appears to have a realistic chance under the published criteria and which your family would accept.

• Check each school’s current policy rather than relying on reputation.
• Compare your address and circumstances with its priority rules.
• Include at least one realistic option; naming only one school does not improve your chance there.
• Do not list a school you would refuse, because it could become your official offer.

Place your most wanted school first, your next genuine choice second, and continue in that order. Do not move a safer school above one you actually prefer.

A higher-performing grammar school should go above another school only if it is genuinely your preferred school. Performance does not create extra CAF priority. Your child must qualify and meet that grammar school’s oversubscription rules.

Submit the CAF to your home council by its deadline. Some faith, grammar and other schools also require a supplementary information form, test registration or separate evidence. These do not replace the CAF.

• Secondary applications normally close on 31 October.
• Primary applications normally close on 15 January.
• Check earlier test and supplementary-form deadlines.
• Save your confirmation, preference order and submitted documents.

The relevant admission authority ranks applications under the school’s criteria. Councils exchange results, and your home local authority sends the single official offer, including an offer for a school in another council area.

National Offer Day is 1 March for secondary places and 16 April for primary places. If that date falls on a weekend or bank holiday, offers are sent on the next working day.

Read the letter or portal message carefully and accept the offer by the deadline given. GOV.UK warns that a place may be withdrawn and offered to someone else if it is not accepted by that deadline.

If none of your preferred schools can offer a place, your home council must offer another school with space. GOV.UK says this is usually the nearest school with places available.

Accepting the offered place protects your child’s school place while you pursue another option. You can still ask to join a preferred school’s waiting list and you can appeal a refusal.

Check your council’s instructions because some waiting lists are automatic and others require you to opt in. Waiting lists are ordered using the school’s admission criteria, not by how long a child has waited, so positions can move up or down.

An appeal is separate from a waiting list. The refusal letter should explain the appeal process and deadline. An independent appeal panel considers the case, but an appeal does not guarantee a place.

• Accept the available offer by its deadline so your child has a place.
• Ask whether waiting-list entry is automatic or requires a request.
• Read the refusal reason and the school’s oversubscription criteria.
• Submit any appeal separately by the deadline in the offer letter.

Use the current statutory School Admissions Code alongside the parent application and admission-criteria guidance on GOV.UK.