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 please speak to your SENDCO in school, or view school admissions for children with special educational needs.
Non-Derbyshire residents should contact their home council.
Normal area / local area school
It is advisable to include your child's normal area school / local area school as one of your preferences, although it does not have to be your first preference. 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.
Find your normal area school
Demand on our secondary school places applicationsystem is currently extremely high. If you are experiencing difficultiesaccessing the system, please try again later. We apologise for anyinconvenience this may cause.
If you applied online for your child to start secondary school inSeptember 2025 decisions will be emailed on 3 March 2025. From midnight,you can also log into your account to see your allocated school place.
Please note that at peak times on 3 March it may take some time to openthe decision e-mail and we are working hard to rectify this.
Find your normal area school
Applying for your child’s secondary school place
If you want to apply for your child to move from one secondary school to another you can find out how to change schools.
If your child was born between 1 September 2014 and 31 August 2015 and is in their last year of primary school, you should apply for a secondary school place between the 8 of September and the 31 October. 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 secondary school phase next September, for example, transfer from middle school.
You should only apply to us if you pay your Council Tax to one of the following councils:
- 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
You should 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 secondary school place
Some Derbyshire schools have supplementary information forms which you can use to support your application.
Apply for your child's secondary school place
Change to your application or apply online
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, dependent on the point it is 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 January. Any new preferences added after the 31 October will be treated as late preferences.
Getting your offer
From midnight on 2 March 2026, you can log into your account to see your allocated school place.
If you applied online, we'll also email you on 2 March 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 e-mailed to you once we have 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 on 2 March from us.
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.
Transfer to out of county high schools and university technical colleges
If you want to apply for a school place for your child to attend a university technical college you'll need to apply directly to the academy.