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• 08 Jul 2026

Yes

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Simple

I'll assume the child has SEN support but without an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP).

Yes, you can put only one school. The council will then process your application on that basis.

If the secondary school is a Catholic school and

• you are a practicing Catholic and
• the child has older siblings already at the school and
• the child attends a feeder primary and
• the child was adopted from the care system and
• you live 100m away

Then this is probably an OK thing to do. With those characteristics, you're almost 100% certain to get a place.

Each school publishes their admission criteria. Google (name of school) admission policy. You can then see which steps of the criteria your child meets.

However, if you only put one school and you don't get in, then the council can give you any school. That can be the other side of the borough / city. Given that you've not expressed any other preference, the council might look at where there are spaces and not where you live.

Therefore, parents typically use up all their options. Think of it as

• Option 1: “Where I most want my child to go.”
• Option 2: “If they don't get in to option 1, then this would be the least imperfect alternative.”
• Option 3: “If they don't get in to option 1 or 2, then this would be the least imperfect alternative.”

I guess it comes down to whether you want to take the risk of a place miles away if your first choice doesn't happen.

 

If your child has an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP)

You should have an annual review in early Y6 (typically around October). This meeting is usually organised by the primary school SENCo.

At the meeting, you should say which school you want your child to attend.

After the meeting, there's a formal SEND admission process for your local authority to undertake. During that process, they will send your child's EHCP to the school that you requested and ask if the school can meet your child's needs.

If the secondary school say yes, the EHCP will be updated and will name your child's secondary school from September.

You aren't legally required to fill in a general school admission form (i.e. the form where parents of non-SEND children apply for their school). But some local authorities ask you to. You can find out if your local authority asks for this by Googling (for example) "Sheffield School admissions team phone," giving them a call and asking. From your point of view, having submitted the form is only likely to make a difference if:

1. Your annual review is late (e.g. in February of Y6) and you want special school but all the places are full.
2. The local authority SEND team make a real hash of the EHCP admission process (e.g. staff sickness means that actions that should have been taken in November are missed and still not done in March).

In which case it might give you some form of back up placement - however fallible that placement might be.

Note: At the Y6 annual review, some parents of children with EHCPs ask for more than one school to be consulted with. That's allowed. I answered above using school rather than school(s) because of the way the question was posed.

 



Aaron King

08 Jul 2026

This is helpful

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