Registration week – message from Cllr Paul Godzik

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Children & Families

This week is an important week in the school calendar for all those parents and carers of nursery school children. Paul Godzik (Education, Children and Families Convenor) writes below about Registration Week and the importance of registering at your local catchment school.

It’s Registration Week at all primary schools across the city and if your child is due to start school in August 2014, you must register your child at your catchment school this week.

I hope parents will register their child at their local catchment school rather than expecting to get them in another school in a different part of the city.

As many readers will know, there are less out of catchment requests being granted due to increased space pressures and parents need to be aware of the risks associated with making such requests.

So I’d encourage everyone to register their child at their local school and support their local community instead of making an out of catchment request.

Last week all the primary schools opened their doors for parents and their pre-school age children to look round as part of Primary Schools Open Day.

The feedback from staff and parents has been very positive. I’m delighted that so many were able to see at first hand the benefits of sending their children to their local school – not just for the families involved but for the community where they live.

A great example is Castleview Primary School in Craigmillar which in a recent inspection by Education Scotland was rated as one of the best primary schools in the country.
Broomhouse Primary School is another example of a school being at the heart of their community. The school operates a fantastic initiative called the Big Project which offers daily after school activities encouraging creativity in the expressive arts for Broomhouse children.

The Council had a record low number of placing requests last year which illustrates the growing recognition among parents that the days where you could choose which primary school you wanted your child to go to have gone.

Rising primary school rolls and pressures on classroom spaces will be with us for many years to come so it’s vital parents play their part in helping us tackle this issue.

With school rolls in the city predicted to rise by around 15% by 2019 – bringing our primary school population to over 31,000 – local catchment schools are the most suitable option.

All of our high schools offer a high quality education and your input as a parent can help make your local school better!

Register your child at your local catchment school.

PLEASE NOTE: Registration has to be in person and everyone should contact their local school to find out what time they can register.

When deciding the school you wish your child to attend, there are a number of important points you need to consider.

• Placements are allocated to children based on their residence at the time of allocation. All parents must provide proof of residency for a catchment place when they register their child for school.
• Your child is only entitled to a place in the primary school where they attend nursery if you live in the catchment area.
• Catchment places will only be guaranteed to children living in a primary school catchment by 28 February 2014.  Where a denominational Roman Catholic school is oversubscribed, priority will be given to catchment baptised Roman Catholics.
• If your placing request is successful for one child, this does not guarantee that requests for younger children will be successful.  This could mean that your younger children would attend a different school to their older brother or sister – would you be able to manage the school run to two different schools?