In-year admissions

Usually, children arriving from overseas have the right to attend schools in England. Schools will not refuse to admit a child because of their nationality or immigration status nor remove them from a roll.

If you are moving to the UK, you must check that you have either:

• a right of abode (you’re allowed to live or work in the UK without any immigration restrictions), or
• a Certificate of Entitlement that the conditions of your immigration status otherwise allow you to access a state-funded school.

Applications from UK crown servants or military families

For families of service personnel with a confirmed posting, or crown returning from overseas, please ensure your application is accompanied by an official letter that declares a relocation date, stating your intended address, so we can use this address to apply the schools’ oversubscription criteria when processing your application. If you do not have a fixed address to return to when you are making your application, you can use a Unit or quartering address as the child’s home address.

Local connection exemption

We understand that service families can be moved at short notice and therefore may not be able to prove a local connection to Waltham Forest. In this circumstance, we will continue to implement our local connection exemption for families of service personnel with a confirmed posting or returning from overseas. The scheme allows service families to apply for and be allocated school places in advance of arriving where there is proof that they will soon be residing in the borough. For service families who know they will be moved to the borough but have no fixed address to return to, they can place a unit or quartering address as the child’s home address which will be used when considering the application against the oversubscription criteria of their preferred schools