Secondary School Transition
Starting secondary school September 2025
National offer day - Monday 3 March
You must accept your offer by Monday 17 March to secure your child's school place.
If you applied online:
- you will receive an email on the evening of Monday 3 March advising you to log back into your eAdmissions account to view and accept your offer
- you will not receive an offer letter in the post
- all relevant information will be available on the eAdmissions website.
If you have changed your email address and do not receive an email, you can still log into your account on the evening of offer day.
Please note: If you applied online after Thursday 31 October 2024, you will not be able to view your outcome online. An offer letter will be sent via email or post in accordance with our late application timetable.
https://www.eadmissions.org.uk/
If you submitted a paper application, your offer letter will be emailed or posted to you on Monday 3 March, with full instructions on how to accept your school offer.
For data protection reasons, our school placement and admissions team cannot advise parents/guardians of the outcome of their application over the telephone.
Please note: If you did not submit an application before Thursday 31 October 2024, you will not receive an outcome until the end of March.
https://www.hillingdon.gov.uk/article/9161/Acceptdecline-school-offer
Once you have accepted the offer, we will advise the school, who will contact you directly between April and July, with all the relevant admission information. If you have accepted an offer from a school in another local authority, then we will still notify them on your behalf.
If you do not respond to the offer by Monday 17 March, you will be contacted again for a response. At that time if you do not reply, we will withdraw the offer we have made, and offer it to another child.
Declining your offer
If you applied online, you can decline the offer online. Please ensure you state the reason(s) for the decline, for example if you have moved out of the area. If you are unhappy with the school offer, you are strongly advised to accept it. This will not affect any of your higher preferences and your child will be placed on the waiting list for all schools you named as a higher preference.
Waiting lists
All Hillingdon secondary schools hold their own waiting lists. If the school is outside of the Hillingdon borough, please contact the borough in which the school is located, to query whether the waiting list is provided by the school or the local authority. Please do not contact schools in Hillingdon any sooner than 4 weeks from national offer day, as waiting lists will not be available.
Please note: Any child who is not offered a place at their preferred school in Hillingdon, will automatically be added onto the waiting list.
Appeals
You have the right of appeal under the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, against the refusal of a place at any of the schools for which you have applied.
You must contact the school directly to obtain all relevant information. If the school is outside of Hillingdon, please contact the school's borough to obtain the procedure and the date by which an appeal must be received by.
Appeals are heard by an independent panel and have no connection with the school concerned. Please contact the school directly for all appeal information, the process and any deadlines.
If your appeal is submitted before the appeals deadline then your appeal will be heard before the end of term.
Late rounds of allocation
For further information regarding when late rounds of allocation will be, please read our
Parental responsibility and disputes
Our School Placement and Admissions team has seen a significant increase in the numbers of disputes between parents, relating to where their children should go to school. We understand that, when trying to come to a mutual agreement on child arrangements, parental disputes can be extremely upsetting for all involved (including the children).
The above has been published to help parents understand the council's protocol for dealing with situations where parents disagree. This is general guidance intended to help parents understand their rights and responsibilities in line with the law.