- What is a catchment area?
- A catchment area, which some councils call a priority area or a defined area, is a map drawn around a school in its admission arrangements. Children who live inside it are offered places before children who live outside it, once higher priorities such as children in care, and often siblings, have places. It is fixed before anyone applies, and living inside it does not guarantee a place.
- Why do many schools have no catchment area?
- Each admission authority sets its own rules. Many, especially in towns and cities, rank applicants by how far they live from the school, so there is no area to be inside. Others, many of them county councils, give nearly every school one. Of the 17,443 schools SchoolFacts holds admissions cutoff data for, the council's latest figures name a catchment or priority area at 295. The rest may still have one, because many councils publish only the distance at which the last place went, so check the school's admission arrangements.
- How is a cutoff distance different from a priority area?
- A cutoff distance is not drawn in advance. It is how far from the school the last child offered a place lived in one year, and it moves with every intake; a school that placed every applicant has none that year. A priority area is fixed. When more children live inside it than there are places, they are ranked too, usually by distance, and the last of them sets a cutoff inside the area.