Applying for Transfer places

Quick links

• National Offer Day
• Making an application
• How Transfer places were allocated in 2025

National Offer Day

National Offer Day: 03 March 2025

If you have made an on-time application and have applied online, you will be able to view and respond to your offer of a school place by logging into the Citizens Portal.

https://www.newcastlelea.org/CitizenPortal_LIVE/en

If you made an on-time paper application, you will receive a letter with your offer of a school place. Where we have a valid email address for you, we will also send you an email with your school offer.

Frequently asked questions

General advice

• Accept the school place you have been offered, even if it isn't your preferred school.
• You can request to remain on waiting lists for any Newcastle school that we have been unable to offer.
• Only refuse a school place if you have already secured a place at another school. If you refuse the school place offered, you are in a position where your child doesn't have a secured school place for September 2025.

Waiting list advice

• You can request to be placed on the waiting list for any higher preference schools which you have not been offered. (If you haven't been offered a place at a school in another local authority, you will need to contact that local authority to check that you have been added to a waiting list)
• Between National Offer Day and the end of August 2025, if a place becomes available at a school you are on the waiting list for, we will automatically remove your current offer and offer a place at this higher preference school.
• If you request to be placed on a waiting list for a higher preference school and then decide you are happy with your current school offer, you need to tell Newcastle School Admissions that you wish to be removed from the higher preference school's waiting list. If you don't do this and a place becomes available at a school you are on the waiting list for, we will automatically remove your current offer to offer the higher preference. You may not be able to re-secure your original offer.

For further advice and guidance on how to accept your offer or request to be added to a waiting list, please refer to our Waiting List Advice PDF_0.pdf

Making a late application

Deadline to make a late application or request to be placed on a waiting list: 10 March 2025

Date late applicants hear result of application: 29 April 2025

• If you wish to make a new application to include additional schools, and your child is already on a waiting list from your last application, these schools must be named on the new application form and in your preference order.

You can no longer apply for transfer 2025 places to be considered in time for national offer day. You can still make late applications until 31 August 2025, but this must be using the form below, you cannot do this on the Citizen's Portal.

Making the right choice

Once you have read the information below, apply here for your transfer place.  Late applications made before 10 March 2025 will be informed of their decision on 29 April 2025.

Read:

1. Important information about Transfer 2024
2. Legal information - School Admissions

Find and compare schools

Use this search tool to find schools. This search tool allows you to :

• search for schools by postcode
• check school Ofsted ratings
• filter schools by religion

Find and compare schools

Visit the school

Visiting a school helps you decide whether it's right for your child. You'll be able to speak to teacher and ask questions.

Schools may have open days or you contact them to arrange a time to view the school.

Are you likely to be offered a place?

Each school has their own set of rules that they use to decide which children to offer a place to. This is called the oversubscription criteria and can be found in the school's admissions policy.

You can see how places were offered in previous years in the below link: 

• How reception and transfer places were allocated

All applications are ranked using these rules. School preference order is only used if we can offer a place in more than one school, at which point we will offer the school which is your highest preference.

Oversubscription criteria example

• Read the oversubscription criteria for each school.
• Check which category your child comes under (see individual school's website)

Example

Ahmed applied to North East Secondary as their first preference. Ahmed's child is not offered a place there, even though they live close to the school.

There were more applications than places so the school used their oversubscription criteria to decide who to give places to. One hundred places were available:

• one place went to a child who had been adopted (category 1)
• sixty places went to children who attended a feeder school (category 2)
• twenty places went to children with a brother or sister at the school (category 3) 
• one place went to a child with an exceptional medical need meaning they could only go to that school (category 4)
• the remaining eighteen places went to children who lived closer to the school than Ahmed and his child (category 5)

Instead, Ahmed was offer a place at their second preference of North Academy which also had one hundred places available:

• seventy places went to children who attended a feeder school (category 2)
• ten places went to children who had a brother or sister at the school (category 3)
• twenty places when to children who lived near the school, including Ahmed's child (category 4)