Year 7 Starters – when to enroll on to the Admissions Register

The guidance states:

1. All Year 7 children who arrive at their allocated secondary school in September should be admitted onto the Admissions and Attendance Rolls automatically.
2. All Year 7 children who fail to arrive, but whose parents have informed the school that they wish to accept the offer of a place should be placed on roll automatically – poor attendance procedures should then be followed, and their non-attendance escalated via the Staged Intervention Approach to Poor Attendance if necessary.
3. Year 7 children who do not arrive at their allocated secondary school, AND have not notified the school that they wish to accept a place, should not be placed on roll until either…
   1. The school conducts reasonable enquiries (such as home visits, contacting previous school, family members, emergency contacts etc) and the child finally arrives at the school and can then be placed on the school roll from the first date of attendance OR
   2. The school conducts reasonable enquiries, and the school ascertains that the family are refusing to send their child to the allocated school, in which case the LA Prosecution Team must be informed via attlegal@bradford.gov.uk , and a place must be held by the school for the child whilst enquiries are ongoing and a School Attendance Order considered, OR
   3. The school conducts reasonable enquiries, and the family cannot be found, at which point a CME Referral is made. The CME team will undertake their enquiries and once the school and LA can agree that joint reasonable enquiries have failed to ascertain where the pupil is, it will be agreed that the place is no longer needed.

Guidance on Reasonable Checks and how to make a CME Referral can found on Bradford Schools Online here: https://bso.bradford.gov.uk/content/education-safeguarding/educationaccess/children-missing-education .  Reasonable checks should be completed within 10 days of the child failing to arrive at the school, in line with the CME guidance.  Referrals will be returned if a school has failed to complete the necessary reasonable checks.

Schools are primarily responsible for notifying the council of any children who fail to arrive and completing reasonable checks. A failure to do this may result in a child being placed at risk of significant risk of harm and is a failure of a school’s duties to safeguard children.