I am happy to provide advice through my telephone consultation service on primary admissions or appeals (but read Appeals for the difficulties with appeals). I have additional information on oversubscription levels for individual schools across the county, that assist in informing my unique independent advice service on primary admissions.

For parents applying for any school in Kent or Medway outside the normal admission round, you will not be able to approach individual schools directly to apply, although you are of course to be encouraged to talk to them in advance of an application.  You need to approach the Locally for an In Year Admission Form. You will find further details here.

Information on Individual Schools is here.

•  There are standard application forms known as the Reception Common Application Form (RCAF) and Junior Common Application Form (JCAF). Parents can also apply online here, and I recommend this process.

•  Primary school admissions are straightforward for most parents, with similar rules for entry to most schools, except church voluntary aided schools.

• MAKE SURE YOU HAVE APPLIED FOR THE CORRECT SCHOOL. EACH YEAR, I AM CONTACTED BY PARENTS WHO HAVE PUT DOWN THE WRONG SCHOOL BY MISTAKE, ALMOST ALWAYS TWO SCHOOLS WITH SIMILAR NAMES, OFTEN CHURCH SCHOOLS WITH THE SAME SAINT IN THE TITLE! YOU CANNOT CHANGE YOUR CHOICE, ONLY APPLY AGAIN LATE THROUGH THE  In Year Admission process. However, if the school is full, an appeal is unlikely to be successful because of Infant Class Legislation. The worst scenario i have come across in recent years was a Gravesend child being offered a school in Dover, because parents ticked the box for a school with a very similar name to the one they intended.

• If applying for a Kent primary school place for September 2012 or January 2013 at the normal age of admission, you MUST complete an admission from by 14 January 2012 (online) or Monday 17 January (midday) for a paper application. This allows you to name three schools in order of preference. If you don't have one, a Kent admission prospectus for your area can be downloaded at Primary. 

• There is no need to put your local school down in first place; enter the one you most want your child to attend. You will not damage your chances at your local school by putting it in a lower order.

• The rule about 'ticking the box to indicate church school preference' has thankfully been abolished for church voluntary controlled schools, but if applying for a Voluntary Aided  School, make sure you understand the admission rules and have filled in the supplementary admission form.  For those reading this page outside the normal admission round, such rules should be looked at well in advance, to see what conditions will apply for an application to stand a chance of success.

•  It is worth asking the primary school the distance from home to school of the furthest child  to be offered a place last year, to estimate your chances of success, or in the case of voluntary aided schools the category they were allocated to. 

• You will find primary school league tables here. These need to be treated with extreme caution. They are heavily influenced by (1) the ability of pupils admitted to the school – see the most recent OFSTED Report for details of attainment for local schools on entry, on my Kent or Medway Primary School individual school information pages. or for a single school by direct link to OFSTED here. (2) the importance the school places on achieving high SATs results as distinct from educating the pupils.  I have posted details of Kent Primary School admission and appeal statistics for 2011 entry here.

• If your child is at Infant School and you do not wish to transfer to a Linked Junior School, you can apply for other Junior Schools on the JCAF, or for any All through primary school school on an In Year Application Form, although chances that it will have vacancies are low, and you may have to try through the appeal process. Infant Class Legislation does not apply for such appeals. 

• Key dates for Kent applications are: