We have received the following update from Ousedale regarding next year’s admissions.
Consultation on Proposed Changes to Ousedale School’s Admissions Policy for School Entry in September 2025
After approval by the Governing Board, Ousedale is consulting on proposals to change its admissions policy and specifically the order of its oversubscription criteria. The proposal is to place ‘Children of staff’ as criterion 2 (after Looked After Children/Previously Looked After) with ‘Children who live in the area served by the school’ moving to number 3. In essence the proposal is to swap the order of 2 and 3 from their current order of priority.
The reasons for this are as follows:
• There is less pressure for in-area places and projections from the LA indicate the school will not fill-up from in-area applications until 2030 at the earliest;
• There is a national recruitment crisis in teaching. Ousedale is currently at a recruitment disadvantage compared to other schools who place ‘Children of staff’ as a higher over-subscription criteria than Ousedale currently does. The school needs to do everything it possibly can to recruit and retain high quality staff to ensure high standards of teaching and learning are maintained.
We are obliged to consult for a 6-week period which will start on 6th November 2023 and finish at the end of day 17th December 2023. Any comments should be sent by email to admin@ousedale.org.uk clearly marked in the subject line as ‘Admissions consultation’. We are only seeking comments about the change in order of the over-subscription criteria detailed above. The PAN for the school will remain unchanged at 360 pupil places.
Following consultation, the final admissions arrangements will be published on the school website by 28th February 2024.
The information can be found on our website here.
Regards
Andy Burton
Headteacher
Tracy Lutt | Admissions & Attendance Manager | PA to Claire Penny, Senior Assistant Headteacher
Ousedale School | Newport Pagnell Campus 01908 210203 | Olney Campus 01234 717480