Admissions

The Admission arrangements of the West London Free School fully comply with the School Admissions Code and Admissions Law. The school is open to anyone and is nonselective.

There will be 120 places in each year group, starting with Year 7s in 2011 and then filling up year group by year group.

We want to ensure that the school serves local families and for that reason 45% of places will be allocated on the basis of proximity.

The remaining places will be awarded by lottery, with a majority being allocated to those who live within a three-mile radius of the site, and a smaller number to those within a five-mile radius. In this way, we anticipate that over half the places will be taken up by residents of Hammersmith and Fulham. Ten per cent of children will be admitted based on their aptitude for Music and, in accordance with the School Admissions Code, priority will be given to children with SEN statements and children in care. We will also have a sibling policy. You can see our Admissions Policy in full here. (For the Admissions Policy we used to admit our first cohort of Year 7s, see here.)

The school is now closed for admissions in 2012. However, if you're the parent of a child in Year 5 – or a younger child – you can register your interest in applying for a place by clicking here. We will then notify you when the time comes to apply.

We're currently consulting about our admissions arrangements for 2013/14. To see a copy of the proposed arrangements, click here. To tell us what you think, email newfreeschool@gmail.com

How your application will be processed 

The Governing Body of the West London Free School is the Admissions Authority for the West London Free School. For its current Year 7 admissions, the Governing Body agreed with the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham that the Local Authority would process all applications to the West London Free School. For admissions in 2012 and later, i.e. anyone applying from now on, the process will be overseen by the local authority and the Pan-London Admissions Board. 

If the West London Free School is oversubscribed, its published admissions criteria are used to decide the order in which applicants will be offered places.

Musical Aptitude 

The West London Free School is a music specialist school and sets aside 12 places each year for children with a particular aptitude for music. There is no geographical limit on who can apply for a musical aptitude place, but all applicants will have to take a musical aptitude test at the school at the beginning of next year. No prior musical experience is necessary – you don't need to be able to play an instrument or read music – and the test is designed not to discriminate in favour of those who've already had instrumental lessons. While some music scholars will already be proficient musicians, we recognise that there are many pupils who have excellent musical potential but who haven't yet had the chance to learn an instrument. So long as your child has a love of music, we would encourage you to apply. If you have any questions you should contact our Director of Music Mr Watkins on e.watkins@wlfs.org.

Music scholars will benefit from free tuition in one instrument, but they in turn are expected to make a commitment to their musical education, arriving at the school early on some days, giving up their lunch break on others, etc. These extra lessons are used to develop the practical abilities of the music scholars as well as deepen their understanding of how music works. Keyboard skills, ensemble playing, pitch perception and music theory will be at the centre of these lessons, along with learning to use notation and sequencing software.

The deadline for applying for musical aptitude places in 2012 has now passed.

See below for more detail on how musical places are allocated by the Pan-London Admissions Board.

Forms

To register with us if you're the parent of a child in Year 5 or below, click here.

If you've been turned down for a place and you feel you have been dealt with unfairly, you can download an appeal form here.

Filling in the Common Application Form 

Some parents who think they'll only be eligible for a lottery place at our school, not a proximity place or a musical place, have asked whether they should place us first on the Common Application Form. After all, if their chances of getting in are quite small, won't they be "wasting" their first preference by ranking us first? Wouldn't they be better off ranking a school they have a higher chance of getting in to first?

This is based on a misunderstanding of how the pan-London admissions process works. The Pan-London Admissions Board does not vary the amount of weight it gives to a parent's application to a particular school depending on where that parent has ranked the school on the Form. Rather, it takes all the schools you've named on your Form, regardless of where you've ranked them, and applies the over-subscription criteria of those schools. Once it has worked out which of the schools on your Form you qualify for a place at, then (and only then) does it look at your order of preferences. You'll then be offered a place at the school you've ranked highest amongst the schools you qualify for a place at.

Suppose you place the West London Free School first and St Custard's second. If your child doesn't qualify for a place at our school – because he or she is unsuccessful in the lottery, for instance – but does qualify for a place at St Custard's, you'll be offered a place at St Custard's. Your child won't be discriminated against in the admissions process because you've placed St Custard's second rather than first. Some people imagine the way the admissions process works is that the Board initially applies a school's over-subscription criteria to just those applicants who've placed that school first on the Form and only after the successful applicants have turned down their offers do they then apply the school's oversubscription criteria to those who've ranked it second. But that isn't how it works. The Board applies each school's over-subscription criteria to all those who've named that school on their Forms, regardless of its ordinal position on the Forms.

In the above scenario, the only risk you're taking by placing us first and St Custard's second is that if you qualify for a place at both of our schools you'll only be offered a place at our school and not St Custard's. As explained, the Board takes all those schools on your Form you qualify for a place at and then offers you a place at whichever one of those schools you've ranked highest on the Form. You'll only be offered one place – you won't be informed of all those schools you've qualified for a place at and be asked to choose between them.

The bottom line is that if the West London Free School is your first preference you should put us first. If another school is your first preference, put that school first. You shouldn't base your decision of where to rank us on your assessment of your chances of qualifying for a place at our school since that consideration is irrelevant.

Allocation of Musical Places

Some applicants have asked how the allocation of musical places works within the pan-London admissions process. What happens is that the school will place all the applicants who take the test in rank order according to how they performed and pass that list on to the Pan-London Admissions Board. The Board will then see which of those we've placed in the top 12 have ranked the West London Free School either first on the Common Application Form or above any of the other schools they're eligible for places at. If only six of the top 12 have ranked our school above the other schools they're eligible for places at, the Board will work its way down the list until it's able to offer places to 12 applicants in total. It will then offer the musical places on 1st March, 2012 – National Offer Day.

Again, the bottom line is that if the West London Free School is your first choice you should rank it first on the Common Application Form regardless of how you rate your child's chances of being offered a musical aptitude place. If you don't, it's possible that your child could be eligible for a musical place and you'll never know about it.