Children with education health and care plans (EHCP)
If your child has an education health and care plan (EHCP) your child's school place will be arranged by the local authority's SEND assessment service (SENDAS). You should not complete the online admissions form.
If you have any queries, speak to your special educational needs co-ordinator at school, or view school admissions for children with special educational needs.
Non-Derbyshire residents should contact their home council.
Normal area / local area school
We advise you to include your child's normal area school / local area school as one of your preferences, but it does not have to be your first choice.
If you do not include the normal area school as one of your preferences, then a place may not be available there if your other requests cannot be agreed.
You can find your:
Applying for your child's primary, infant and junior school place
If you want to apply for your child to move from one primary, infant or junior school to another you can find out how to change schools.
If your child was born between 1 September 2021 and 31 August 2022 you should apply for a primary or infant school place between the 10 of November 2025 and the 15 January 2026. You can still apply after this date, but your application will be treated as late.
If your child was born between 1 September 2018 and 31 August 2019 and is in their last year of infant school you should also apply for their junior school place between the 10 November 2025 and the 15 January 2026. You can still apply after this date, but your application will be treated as late.
This also applies to children attending a school outside of Derbyshire which operates a different pattern of education and they're due to transfer to a primary school phase next September, for example, transfer to middle school.
You should only apply to us if you pay your Council Tax to:
- High Peak Borough Council
- Derbyshire Dales District
- Chesterfield Borough Council
- North East Derbyshire District Council
- Bolsover District Council
- Amber Valley Borough Council
- Erewash Borough Council
- South Derbyshire District Council
Do not apply to us if you pay your Council Tax to Derby City Council, or any other council not listed. We do not forward applications made to us in error to your home authority.
If you don't live in Derbyshire you can find your local council.
Apply for a primary, infant or junior school place.
Some Derbyshire schools have supplementary information forms which you can use to support your application.
Making changes to your application
If you've already applied to us, you can still make changes to your application.
Whilst a change in your preference order will be accepted by us, depending on the point it's received in the allocation process, it may not be possible to make the change until after the offer date.
Changes are less likely to be fully implemented once information has been exchanged with schools and other local authorities, which is usually from the start of March.
Any new preferences added after 15 January will be treated as late preferences.
Getting your offer
From midnight on 16 April 2026, you can log into your account to see your allocated school place.
If you applied online, we'll also email you on 16 April 2026 with the decision. If you didn't apply online a decision letter will be posted to you. For applications made on and after this date your decision will be emailed to you once we've processed your application.
If you're unhappy with the decision you can make a school admission appeal.
If your child has an education, health and care plan (EHCP) your allocated school place is part of your EHCP plan. You'll not receive details from us on 16 April 2026.
Home to school transport
Consider how your child will travel to school.
If none of your preferences can be agreed, you'll be offered a place at the nearest Derbyshire school with places available. This could involve you paying transport costs to a distant school.
View our school transport policy.