The rule comes first, because everything else in school admissions follows from it: on-time applications are considered together, and late applications are usually only looked at after them. That single rule decides more outcomes than any preference, any catchment map, any appeal. At a popular school, it can mean the places are simply gone before a late application is even read. Families who understand that rule, and build their year around it, rarely come unstuck. Families who discover it afterwards usually discover it on offer day.
So the year runs in order, and it is worth walking through it in that order. Each stage has its own deadline, and each deadline, missed, narrows what is left. The dates below are the national dates for England, published by GOV.UK. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own admissions systems with different dates, so this article covers England.
Autumn: the application
For a child starting school in September 2027, the deadlines are fixed. Applications for a secondary school place — Year 7 — must be made by 31 October 2026. Applications for a primary school place — Reception — must be made by 15 January 2027. Applications usually open on 1 September, and your application goes to your home council, the council for the area where your child lives, not to the school itself.
GOV.UK is blunt about what happens if you miss the date: your child is less likely to be offered a place at your chosen schools. Late applications are normally considered only after all the on-time ones, which at an oversubscribed school can mean no place is left to offer. Find your council's deadline, put it in your phone, and apply well before it.
What you list matters as much as when you list it. When a school has more applicants than places, it applies its published admission rules, in order, until the places run out. The common factors are well known: children in care and those with special arrangements usually come first; siblings count in a family's favour at many schools; catchment and distance decide places for large numbers of families; and faith schools may give priority based on faith criteria set out in their own admissions policy. The practical lesson is to be realistic as well as hopeful: listing only oversubscribed schools, none of them your local one, risks ending up with none of your choices. Most councils advise including at least one school you have a strong chance of getting and would genuinely accept.
Offer day: the news, and what follows
Councils send out offers of school places on national offer days: 1 March for secondary schools and 16 April for primary schools. For September 2027 entry, that means secondary offers on 1 March 2027 and primary offers on 16 April 2027. If either date falls on a weekend or a bank holiday, offers are sent on the next working day. You must accept the offer by the deadline given in the offer letter.
Offer day brings delight to many families and genuine distress to others. If your child is not offered one of your preferred schools, you will be offered a place somewhere — no child is left without one — and you normally join the waiting list for the schools you ranked higher. Waiting lists do move: families decline places, move away, or win appeals, sometimes right up to the start of term and beyond.
You also have the right to appeal. Appeals are heard by an independent panel, and they are not a rerun of the application — you need to explain why this school is right for your child and why the balance of reasons favours admitting them despite the school being full. Appeals for infant classes are harder to win because class sizes in the early years are strictly limited by law. Free advice on how appeals work is available from your council and from national parent advice services, and it is worth reading before you write a word.
Through the year: term dates and the holiday question
Once a place is settled, the year's next set of dates takes over. Term dates are set locally — by councils for most state schools, and by academy trusts for their own schools — so they can differ between neighbouring areas and even between schools in the same town. Always check the dates for your child's actual school before booking anything, and beware of out-of-date lists passed around in group chats.
The rules on term-time holidays are the subject of endless playground debate, so here is the plain position, with the actual amounts. Children are expected to attend school during term time, absence must be authorised by the headteacher, and holidays are generally only authorised in exceptional circumstances. Since 19 August 2024, England has had one national framework for penalty notices, replacing the patchwork of different local rules.
The fine is £80 per parent, per child, if paid within 21 days, rising to £160 if paid between day 22 and day 28. A second penalty notice for the same parent and child within three years is charged at a flat £160, with no early-payment reduction. No more than two penalty notices can be issued to the same parent for the same child within three years; a third offence goes straight to the magistrates' court, where the maximum fine is £2,500.
The trigger is specific: a penalty notice must be considered once a pupil records 10 sessions of unauthorised absence within a rolling 10 school weeks. A school day counts as two sessions, so five days of unauthorised absence is enough. The scale is large: Department for Education statistics published on 29 January 2026 show that 492,800 penalty notices were issued for unauthorised absence during the 2024/25 academic year, and around 459,300 of them — 93% — were for unauthorised family holidays.
The costs along the way: uniform and getting there
School costs creep up quietly through the year, and uniform is the sharpest edge of it. Many schools now accept plain supermarket uniform for most of the outfit, and second-hand uniform sales and swap schemes, often run by parent groups, have become a fixture. If money is tight, ask the school office what help exists; many schools hold uniform grants or funds and would far rather be asked than see a child start term without what they need. Transport is the final piece: councils have duties to provide free transport for eligible children — generally based on distance and whether the route is safe to walk — and the rules are published by each council.
The one step to take first
Plenty of children flourish at schools that were not first choice, and the year described above is survivable even when offer day disappoints. But only one step protects you against the rule this article opened with, and it has to happen before anything else: for September 2027 entry, get the secondary application in by 31 October 2026, or the primary application in by 15 January 2027.