Applying for Infant, Primary and Junior School Places
The admission to Reception Class 2026 and Infant to Junior transfer 2026 admissions rounds are now closed.
If your child requires either a Reception class place or a Year 3 place within a junior school for a September 2026 start, please follow the link to In-year admissions to submit an in-year application.
This page will shortly be updated for September 2027 entry.
Applying for your child's September 2027 place
For applications for the Reception class of an infant or primary school, or your child’s Year 3 place in a junior school.
For the current admissions round, families with children in the following age ranges will need to submit applications:
- Children born between 1 September 2022 and 31 August 2023 should apply for their September 2027 Reception class place in an infant or primary school.
- Children who are currently in an infant-only school and wish to transfer to Year 3 of a junior school in September 2027.
Applications are managed to a national timetable. The admission process is coordinated between local authorities across England.
Important information: Changes to school admission numbers
Parents and carers should be aware that some schools in Reading have recently reviewed their published admission number (PAN), which is the number of children that can be admitted into Reception each year.
From September 2027, the following school has reduced their published admission number (PAN);
Thameside Primary School’s PAN will reduce from 60 places to 30 places.
The Admissions Guide
Please read our guide Admissions to Infant, Junior & Primary Schools Guide 2027-2028 (orange button) before submitting your child’s application. The guide provides details on the application process and explains how each school will prioritise your child’s application using oversubscription criteria.
Applying
Which local authority should you apply to?
Parents and carers must apply through the school admissions team of the local authority where they live with their child. This is known as your home authority. This applies even if the school you want your child to attend is in a different local authority area, such as West Berkshire, Wokingham or Oxfordshire.
If you live in Reading:
Please apply online through our Parent Portal, using your My Reading Account. The portal link will be available from 3 November. For guidance on setting up and accessing your My Reading account, please visit My Reading – Reading Borough Council.
Before applying you should:
- read the Infant, Junior & Primary Admissions Guide for the new school year.
- attend school open days/evenings to help inform your decision making. Details of open days/evenings are posted on school’s websites.
- check whether you need to provide a supplementary information form (SIF) to meet certain oversubscription criteria for a preferred school. SIFs are not essential but will assist the school in ranking your child correctly. You should post completed forms directly to the schools. Reading schools with SIFs include:
-
- Christ the King Catholic Primary School Supplementary Information Form
- English Martyrs Catholic Primary School Supplementary Information Form
- St Anne’s Catholic Primary School Supplementary Information Form
- St John’s CE Primary School Supplementary Form
- St Martin’s Catholic Primary School Supplementary Form
- Community School Early Years Pupil Premium /Pupil Premium Supplementary Form
- read the relevant guide if you are applying for schools outside of Reading.
- consider how your child will get to school.
You may apply from 3 November 2026 using our online application form.
We recommend applying online via our Parents’ Portal. Online applicants receive an email confirming their application has been successfully submitted with a record of their preferred school(s). In addition, they learn which school their child has been offered on offer day (instead of waiting for a postal notification).
For those unable to apply online, paper forms are available direct from the admissions team schooladmissions@reading.gov.uk.
The deadline to submit ‘on time’ applications is 15 January.
Applications received after this deadline are considered ‘late’ and processed after national offer day (16 April)
Who should apply?
Children may start full-time at school from the September following their fourth birthday. However, they are not legally required to start full-time until the beginning of the term following their fifth birthday (i.e. statutory/compulsory school age).
If you do not want your child to start school in September 2027 the following options are available:
- Defer their place up to (but not beyond) the point at which they reach statutory/compulsory school age.
- Request that your child be “offset” to start Reception Class in September 2028, rather than September 2027 (i.e. educated outside the year group suggested by their date of birth).
You may also request that your child start school on a part-time basis. However, this cannot continue beyond the point at which your child reaches compulsory school age.
In each of the above cases, you must still submit your child’s application to start school in September 2027 (as the deferral or offset will be agreed later in the process).
Further details on deferring and offsetting may be found in the Guide for parents on deferring, offsetting and summer born children. If you are a Reading resident and wish to request an offset for your summer-born child to start in September 2028, please read the guidance for parents document here. You must complete an application form as normal, together with the Reading Offset Request form and return it to the School Admissions Team, who will coordinate the request with your preferred schools.
You must apply for a school place even if your child already attends the nursery of your preferred school.
When are school places offered?
Emails containing school offers are sent on 16 April (national Primary/Infant and Junior offer day) and should be received by 5pm.
You may also log into your Parents’ Portal account to view the outcome of your application. From 16 April, we provide allocation tables showing how places were offered at each of our schools. Allocation tables for previous years are available in the Infant, Junior and Primary Admissions Guide.
What happens after school places are offered?
School waiting lists
In Reading, a child’s name is added to the waiting list of any school listed as a higher preference to the school offered. Waiting lists are always ranked using the school’s oversubscription criteria and not the date the application was received.
If your child has been refused a place in a school outside Reading, you need to check with the admission team of the relevant local authority to see if your child has been placed on a waiting list.
Making a late application
If you have missed the closing date or would like to apply for a different school (or schools) after the closing date, you can submit a late application. The timetable for processing late applications is explained in the admissions guide.
Making an appeal for a school place
If your child is refused a place, you may decide to appeal against an admission decision for a school place.
Oversubscription criteria
Oversubscription criteria are used where a school receives more applications than there are places available. The criteria help to decide which applicants are offered places by giving each application a priority. The priorities are based on criteria such as catchment area, home-to-school distance or whether a child is a ‘child in care’ (or had previously been in care until adoption or a child arrangement order/special guardianship order).
The oversubscription criteria for each school are outlined in the Primary School Admissions guide.
It’s important to make sensible and realistic decisions when choosing which schools to apply for. While we understand preference is a major factor in choosing your child’s school, we do advise that one of your choices is for a school at which you have a reasonable chance of being offered a place.