Age range

All the borough’s schools which cater for pupils aged 4 to 11 years are co-educational, where boys and girls are taught together. The schools provide for children of various age groups:

• infant schools have pupils aged 4 to 7 years
• junior schools have pupils aged 7 to 11 years
• primary schools have pupils aged 4 to 11 years
• all through schools have pupils aged 4 to 18 years

Types of school

A small number of the primary schools in Bexley are community schools, which are provided by the local authority (LA) and are totally maintained by it. There are also voluntary controlled and voluntary aided schools, Academies and 2 free schools.

A voluntary controlled school is one which was founded by a voluntary (usually religious) body but which is now fully maintained by the LA. The Governors still have some rights and duties relating to religious education but in most other respects a voluntary controlled school is similar to a community school. Foster’s Primary School is a voluntary controlled school.

A voluntary aided or faith school is one which was founded by a voluntary (usually religious) body and where the Governors have retained significant rights and responsibilities relating to the maintenance of the school building and religious observance and instruction.

The Governors of these schools have control over their admission arrangements, subject to agreement with the LA as to the maximum number of pupils to be admitted each year.

Faith schools can also be Academies and free schools. There are 15 faith schools and all require parents to complete a supplementary information form as well as the Primary Common Application Form.

Academies are Government funded schools that are independent from the LA. Some schools were established as Academies and others have changed status from community school to Academy. The Governors of Academies are responsible for the admission arrangements.

There are 2 free schools, Hope Community School and Lime Wood Primary School. Free schools are state-funded schools set up in response to what local people say they want and need.

There is an all-through school - Harris Garrard Academy. Pupils have the right to transfer from the primary section to the secondary section at age 11, without re-applying for admission.

The list of schools shows how many places are offered at each school. In the case of infant and primary schools, this number is the number of places in the school available in the school year 2025/26 for pupils who become five years of age during that academic year. For junior schools, it is the number of places available in Year 3 (for seven year old pupils).

The number of places available to children is based on the school’s size and the number and size of classrooms, and other teaching spaces. If too many children apply for a particular school, the allocation of places will be based on the admissions criteria.

The Infant Class Size Regulations state that infant pupils cannot be taught in classes of more than 30 pupils (with some limited exceptions). The admission number for each school has been set to ensure it is possible for schools to meet this requirement.

Legislation also affects the position regarding appealing against a decision not to offer a place. Whilst parents can still appeal, the independent School Appeal Panel will not be able to allow an appeal if this would result in the number of pupils exceeding 30 in a class, unless there are exceptional circumstances as specified in the legislation.

• More information about appeals.

If you need help deciding which primary schools to apply for or completing the application form, you can contact the Customer Services Team on 020 8303 7777.

The person making the application for a school place must have parental responsibility for the child named on the application form and will normally be the parent in receipt of or eligible to receive Child Benefit or Child Tax Credit.

Where a child is living with a relative or carer and not one of their parents, you must provide evidence of a court order before the application will be accepted. We may ask to see evidence of parental responsibility before processing your application form. Only one application may be made for each child to the home local authority.

If you are looking after a child who is not your own child or a close relative, it may be considered to be a private fostering arrangement, and you must notify the Council’s Children’s Social Care Team. If we receive an application for a school place for a child who is not living with one of their parents, we will ask you for further details if not provided with the application and make sure that the Social Care Team is aware of any child who is being privately fostered. (This does not apply to children in public care who are being looked after by foster parents or who are subject to formal court or guardianship orders).

If you are applying for twins or children from multiple births, you must complete a separate application for each of the children. They will not be given priority for a school just because they are twins, triplets etc, but all will be offered a place at the same school unless parents/carers list the preferred schools in different preference order. If one or more children but not all of them could be offered a place, each school has a section in its admissions policy to decide how places should be offered.

You will need to provide the following documentation as proof of your principal home address:

• a current Council Tax statement or Council Tax Benefit letter, or a valid tenancy agreement from a commercial letting agency. If you are applying online, you can scan and upload copies of the documents. If you will be providing a paper copy, please send it to the School Admissions Team, ensuring it is clearly marked with your online application reference number and your child’s name and date of birth. Please do not send original documents

If you are unable to provide the requested documentation, you can seek advice from us on 020 8303 7777.

Please note that if you submit your application without the relevant proof of address, it may not be processed.

In establishing your principal home address, we will check records held by the Council, by schools and by external agencies. We do not accept place of employment or child minding addresses. We may also ask you to provide additional proof, such as:

• opening/closing accounts for Council Tax
• child arrangements orders (or other court orders) if relevant
• evidence confirming the completion of the sale or purchase of a new property and closure of accounts from previous address
• for families of service personnel with a confirmed posting to Bexley or crown servants returning from overseas to live in Bexley, proof of address, accompanied by an official letter confirming the posting, will be accepted ahead of the return to the UK

Primary schools will ask to see evidence of your address and your child’s date of birth after offers are made. Places may be withdrawn if your details do not match the information on your application form.

If you make an on-time application and move home within Bexley after 15 January 2025 but before 9 February 2025, and you can provide proof that you are living at the new address and have no connection to your previous address, your application will be dealt with using the new address. We will require closure of accounts from the previous address before we will accept the new address. If you move after that, or if you cannot provide proof of the new address, your application will be processed using your address at the time of application until after the offer date of 16 April 2025.

If you move to Bexley from another area before 9 February 2025 and have already made an on-time application, your previous home authority will forward your application to Bexley, and we will take over responsibility for offering a place. However, again we will require closure of account from your previous address before we will take the application over. If you move after 9 February 2025, your previous home authority will continue to be responsible for your application until after the offer date of 16 April 2025.

The London Borough of Bexley is committed to removing disadvantage for service children. Where families of service personnel have a confirmed posting to Bexley or crown servants are returning from overseas to live in Bexley, proof of address, accompanied by an official letter confirming the posting, will be accepted ahead of the return to the UK.

You must notify the School Admissions Team if you move after you have submitted your application. If you do not, and you are offered a place which you would not otherwise have qualified for, the offer may be withdrawn.

The application form contains a statement that the information supplied is true and that providing false or misleading information may render the application invalid. Where there is suspected fraud, investigations will be undertaken and in certain cases we will refer it to the Fraud team to do further checks.

If we find that an offer of a school place was made on the basis of false or misleading information, the London Borough of Bexley reserves the right to withdraw the offer at any stage during the admissions process.

In disputed cases, the London Borough of Bexley will make a judgement based on all available evidence.

You can make only one application to your home local authority. If you live in Bexley and want to apply for schools in other boroughs, you should list the schools on the Bexley CAF. Do not apply both to Bexley and another local authority. If you do, the London Borough of Bexley reserves the right to consider only the preferences made on the Bexley CAF and your child may lose the opportunity of being offered a place at schools named on a second form.

The London Borough of Bexley encourages parents to apply online. If you apply online, we would ask you not to submit a paper CAF as well. If you submit a paper form as well as an online application, the details on the application submitted on the latest date (prior to the closing date) will be taken as the valid application.

If the online application and the paper CAF are submitted on the same day, the London Borough of Bexley will use the online application as the valid application.

All children can start in a reception class in the September of the academic year when they become five years old. Compulsory school age is the beginning of the school term after the child’s fifth birthday, and entry may be deferred to the January or April after the fifth birthday.

Parents of children born between 1 April and 31 August, classed as Summer Born, may request entry to Reception (rather than Year 1) in the September after the child’s fifth birthday. Requests should, where possible, be made during the normal application period for primary places, accompanied by any available supporting evidence. Please note that this is not an automatic right for schools to accept.

Parent/carers should still make an application for the relevant reception year. If the request is agreed, the parent/carer must complete an application for the agreed reception year as the place offered for the correct year cannot be kept. The application for a school place will be processed for the following year’s application period. If the request is not agreed, the child must either start school before the fifth birthday or start school in Year 1 in the September following the fifth birthday and in this case an in year application must be made wit no guarantee that a place will be available in the preferred school. As a place will not be allocated at a preferred school unless the child qualifies for a place under the published admission criteria either in the normal or deferred year of entry.

In-year requests for admission outside the normal age group (ie other than for entry to reception) should be made at the time of application with supporting evidence.

If a child is admitted to reception one year later than normal, new requests must be made for entry outside the normal age group when transferring to junior school (for a child attending an infant-only school) and secondary school.

All decisions on admission outside the normal age group to community and voluntary controlled schools will be made by the London Borough of Bexley in consultation with the Head Teacher of the preferred school. There is no right of appeal against a decision not to admit a child outside the normal age group.

The majority of applications for primary school places are decided on home-to-school distance, except for faith schools. For many schools, you need to live very close to the school to qualify for an offer. Parents are advised to be realistic and include the closest school to their home address when deciding on the references to list on the application form. This will increase the likelihood of the Council being able to offer a local school, although there is no guarantee of this.

If you do not apply for your closest school, it may not be possible to offer a place at a later date if you are unsuccessful for schools further away. All preferences are treated equally when prioritising applicants for a school.

Advice on home-to-school distance

For all primary schools in Bexley, measurements of home-to-school distance are provided by the School Admissions Team but it is not possible to provide individual requests from parents/carers. Distance is measured in a straight line, or as the crow flies.

Home-to-school distances are measured by the Council’s GIS system using the intersection of the geographical grid co-ordinates (known as eastings and northings) supplied by the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG), or equivalent database, for the home address and for the nearest school entrance approved by the Governors as an official entrance, the measurement will be taken from the intersection of the NLPG co-ordinates of the home address to the school entrance approved. The system measures in miles and is accurate to three decimal points.

The home address will be taken as the child’s permanent registered home address on 15 January 2025 unless there is a qualifying change of address by 9 February 2025. It must be the address at which the child lives with the parent or registered guardian who is the main carer, ie, the parent eligible to receive Child Benefit and Child Tax Credit.

The table below shows the maximum distance from each school for offers of places based on home-to-school distance in recent years. Please note that until 2015, home-to-school distances were measured by the shortest, safe walking route for most Bexley primary schools. In 2015, community schools, voluntary controlled schools and most academies adopted a straight-line measurement policy. From 2016, all primary schools in Bexley now measure home-to-school distances by straight-line measurement.

In general, straight-line measurements are shorter than walking distances, and it is not possible to make a direct comparison between the two methods of measurement.

Whatever the method of measurement, maximum home-to-school distances vary from year to year, and the table is only a guide to what happened in previous years.

The distances are those reached on the offer day in the relevant year.

Also detailed in the table below are appeal figures for last year, showing the number of appeals heard and the number successful.

Note: The table, distances in miles, below does not include distance measurements for the faith schools in Bexley because home-to-school distance is much less important than meeting the schools’ faith criteria.

* Phased expansion 1st Year

(TB) Tie-Breaker required

For most children, transport needs will be met by the provision of free travel by Transport for London (TfL). Children who travel by bus will need to obtain the appropriate Oyster photocard in place at the time. It will be the parent/carers’ and child’s responsibility to meet the requirements set by TfL for retaining their Oyster photocard.

The parent/carer of any children whose transport needs fall within the criteria set out within The London Borough of Bexley’s Travel Assistance Policy but which are not met by the TfL scheme should write to the Schools Admissions Team setting out why they believe that they need additional support. The transport needs of children with Statements or Education Health and Care Plans will be considered as part of the child’s annual review.

Home-to-school travel assistance and Special Educational Needs (SEN) for children aged between 5 and 16

The majority of children with an EHC Plan will not need or receive specialised travel assistance from the Council, and the completion of an EHC Plan does not confer an automatic entitlement to the provision of travel assistance by the Council. Please see Bexley’s Travel Assistance Policies.

Bexley parents/carers, can contact the Travel Assistance Commissioning Team, email tact@bexley.gov.uk, telephone 020 3045 4321 for guidance or complete an online application form via the Bexley Local Offer website.

All referrals are assessed for eligibility and most appropriate form of transport provision against Bexley’s Home to School Travel Assistance Policy.

The London Borough of Bexley requires good standards of behaviour on all transport to and from school and reserves the right to withdraw transport where a child places himself or herself, other passengers or transport staff, at risk in terms of health, wellbeing or safety.

Travel training

Travel training is designed to help young people get more from life by giving them the confidence to travel independently.

Being able to access public transport helps people to make their own choices about how they live and what they want to achieve. If you would like more information about home to school travel training, please contact the Travel Assistance Commissioning Team, email tact@bexley.gov.uk or telephone 020 3045 4321.

Many children who live in Bexley attend schools in neighbouring boroughs. You should contact the local authority responsible for any out-borough schools that you are interested in to request further information. You should make sure that you find out the oversubscription criteria for out-borough schools before applying, as they may be different from similar schools in Bexley. You should include any out-borough schools that you wish to apply for on your Bexley Primary Common Application Form. Offers of places in out-borough schools will come from Bexley as your home local authority. The contact details for the nearest boroughs are:

London Borough of Bromley
School Admissions Team
Website London Borough of Bromley
Email school.admissions@bromley.gov.uk
Telephone 020 8313 4044

Royal Borough of Greenwich
School Admissions Team
Website Royal Borough of Greenwich
Email school-admissions@royalgreenwich.gov.uk
Telephone 020 8921 8043

Kent County Council
School Admissions Team
Website Kent County Council
Email kent.admissions@kent.gov.uk
Telephone 03000 41 21 21

Nursery education is provided for children aged 3 and a half and 4 years old in those schools with 'Nursery' shown against the age range in the list of schools. You should contact the school that you are interested in for further details. You can apply online, or a booklet and application form are available from schools with nursery classes or directly from the School Admissions Team. The application period for children to start nursery in September 2025 is 16 January 2025 to 6 April 2025.

Nursery classes can be heavily oversubscribed and there is a range of other high quality private and independent providers in the borough.

Parents must make a new application for a reception place even if their child attends a nursery class at the preferred school.

Attending a nursery class does not give any priority for admission to the Reception class at the same school.

The London Borough of Bexley prides itself in the work it undertakes to plan for and commission school places. That said, like the rest of London, it is coming under increasing and unprecedented pressure. In the case of applications for reception places received by the published closing date, offers of first or second choices remain amongst the highest in London. For applications received at any other time in the academic year including all other year groups, options are far more restricted. Therefore, before you consider applying please be aware of these limitations.

If you need to apply for a primary school place for your child in Years 1 to 6, or in Reception after the start of the school year, because you have just moved into the area or because your child does not have a school place for any other reason, you should complete the in-year application form. You must send evidence of your address and your child’s date of birth when you apply.

You can apply for up to six schools in Bexley on the application form and the School Admissions Team will offer a place at the highest available preference. If your child lives in Bexley and does not have a school place, we will offer a place at the closest school to your home with a vacancy if we cannot offer one of your preferred schools. If your child is continuing to attend a school elsewhere, we will not offer an alternative but will let you know which schools do have spaces.

You can also apply direct to schools in Bexley, and you must apply direct to these schools and local authorities outside Bexley. If none of your preferred schools can offer a place, you have the right to appeal against the decisions. Many primary schools in Bexley are full in all year groups.

If you are moving to Bexley, it may not be possible to offer your child a place at one of your preferred schools and it may not be possible to place siblings in the same school. You are advised not to remove your child from the previous school if it is within travelling distance. All primary schools hold in-year waiting lists that are kept in the order of the oversubscription criteria for the school.

If your child has been permanently excluded from another school or is having difficulty finding a suitable place, the London Borough of Bexley and the primary schools may apply their Fair Access Protocol. A panel of primary Head Teachers will consider applications for places made under the protocol and recommend an appropriate placement.

Parents should apply as described above for a school place, and the London Borough of Bexley will determine whether the Fair Access Protocol applies and inform you of the process.

If you wish to apply for your child to transfer from one school to another within Bexley for educational or other reasons, you should consult the Head Teacher of your child’s present school before the request is made, to discuss fully whether a change of school is in the child’s best interests.

If, after full consultation with the child’s Head Teacher, you still wish to apply for a transfer, you should complete a primary in-year application form. To avoid a change during term time, it is best that children transfer at the beginning of a new term if at all possible.

Please note that many primary schools do not have spare places, and it may not be possible to offer your child a place at one of your preferred schools even if you have moved within Bexley. You should not to take your child out of their current school until a new place has been offered.

If you apply for a place at the same school for admission during the same school year as a previous application, the Authority will not consider your application unless there has been a significant change in circumstances. It will be for the applicant to provide evidence of any change of circumstances and for the Authority to decide whether or not this is significant enough to allow the new application to be determined.

Midday meals are provided at all schools in Bexley for pupils who wish to have them. Arrangements are also made for pupils who bring their own food to eat at lunchtime.

Free school meals

You can apply for your children to receive free schools meals if you are receiving certain welfare benefits.

All Children in infant; junior and primary are currently provided with a free meal by the school. Your school still needs to know if your child would have been entitled to free meals, as it can claim valuable extra funding.

Please complete a free school meal application if you receive any of the benefits below. Even if you don’t want your child to receive a free meal, it is still important to complete the application form so that the school can get extra Government funding towards things like learning support and after school activities.

Am I eligible?

Parents do not have to pay for school lunches if they receive any of the following:

• income Support
• income-based Job Seeker's Allowance
• income-related Employment and Support Allowance
• support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999
• the Guarantee element of State Pension Credit
• Child Tax Credit, provided you are not entitled to Working Tax Credit and have an annual income (as assessed by HM Revenue & Customs) that does not exceed £16,190
• Working Tax Credit 'run-on' - the payment someone may receive for a further four weeks after they stop qualifying for Working Tax Credit
• Universal Credit - you must annually take home £7,400 or less in Universal Credit payments. This equals an average of £616.67 per month in net earned income (after deductions)

You are not eligible for free school meals if you receive Working Tax Credit or other support payments that are not mentioned above.

How do I apply?

Visit the Free school meals page to find out how to apply.

Apply for free school meals

There are some school where you will need to apply directly to the school for free school meals. You can find a list of these schools on the Free school meals page.

Claims will normally be processed within 10 working days of the form being received, although it may take longer during busy periods at the start of the school year.

You must inform the Council immediately if you change address, stop receiving any of the qualifying support payment/benefits or about any other circumstance that might affect entitlement to free school lunches. If you do not, you may be liable to repay the cost of any lunches taken by your children.

Every effort has been made to see that the information provided is accurate at the time of publication (September 2024). Where future changes could be foreseen they have been mentioned, but it should not be assumed that there will be no further changes either before or during the school year 2025/26, or subsequently.

These pages explains what policies and procedures are used by admission authorities to make decisions on admissions to schools. They are published in accordance with the requirements of the School Admissions Code.

The personal information that you provide will be collected by the Council as data controller in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation and Data Protection Act 2018. The purpose of collecting your personal information is to assist with administering the admissions process as set out in these pages and preventing any fraud/criminal offence or the safeguarding of a child.

The Council may be required to pass on the personal information you have provided to other bodies for administrative purposes and as required by law.

These include:

• the current school (if any)
• the schools which parents have included amongst their preferences
• other admission authorities in the borough for the purpose of securing a school place
• other Local Authorities so as to ensure that parents have provided consistent information and do not hold on to more than one offer of a place
• an organisation legitimately investigating allegations of fraud, criminal offences or child protection
• a government department in order to comply with statutory requirements

Your information will only be retained for as long as required for these purposes.

You can read more about the use of your personal information at Privacy notice.