Introduction

The majority of children across North Lanarkshire attend their catchment school, however there are times where parents may request a place at another school for their child. This is known as a placing request.

There are good educational reasons for trying to ensure that the transfer or admission of a school takes place at the start of a school session. Other than those who are moving home to a new area, parents should time any placing requests so that they take effect from the beginning of the new school session.

This application is for mainstream schools only. If you require a placing request form for an ASN school, this can be accessed on our Inclusion Services webpages.

Timescales

For placing requests beginning in the new session in August 2025:

• The deadline for submission is 15 March 2025.  All applications received by 15 March 2025 will be notified of the outcome by 30 April 2025.

• Placing requests received after 15 March 2025 deadline will be considered once all applications received by 15 March have been processed. Our response time will be two months.

Placing requests required during the current school session can be made at any time and our response time will be two months.

Before you apply

• You only require to submit a placing request application if you wish your child to attend a school that is not the catchment school for your home address. Please check your catchment school before submitting a placing request application.

• If your child is starting P1 in August and you wish to make a placing request to another school, you are still required to register your child at their local catchment school.

• If you have recently moved home and wish your child to attend the catchment school, you do not require a placing request. Instead, you can arrange this directly with the school.

• You need to fill out a separate placing request application form for each child.

• You can only apply for one school at a time.

• Inform the head teacher of the school that your child attends of your intention to make a placing request.

• If your placing request is granted, any place your child currently holds in a North Lanarkshire school is released and may be allocated to another child immediately.

Placing request decisions

You can view the criteria used for considering a placing request. This information can also be found on the front page of the request application.

You will be notified of the outcome of your placing request application by letter as per timescales stated. Every effort will be made to try and meet the wishes of parents, but it is not always possible to grant every placing request to a particular school. If your application is unsuccessful we will contact you and provide further information on what to do next and the appeals process.