New Reception Starters 2025

Welcome to Lionel Walden Primary School!

We are so happy that you have chosen to enrol your child with us and are excited to welcome them to our Reception Year group in September 2025! Later in the Summer term we will host a Reception Open Evening where you can come and listen to a short talk about life at Lionel Walden, meets some of the staff and taste some of out delicious food from our wonderful cooks. We will also be having a 'jump up' day where children move up to their new year group to spend some time in their new classes and meet their new teachers. For our Pre-School children, this will happen automatically. All children with confirmed places in Reception are also welcome to attend. More details will be provided nearer the time. You can also find out more about the school by downloading our Prospectus (below) or just looking around our website!

In the meantime, here is some important next steps to ensure that your child's Reception place is confirmed.

The following is information from Cambridgeshire LA regarding accepting a place.

Offers were sent out to parents by the LA Admissions Team on April 16th 2025. It is important that you confirm your acceptance of the place offered by 30th April 2025.

Accepting a school offer

It is important that you accept your child’s place. If you do not, we reserve the right to withdraw that place in order to offer it to another child. If you submitted your application online, you can accept your place via the Citizen Portal between 16 April 2025 and 30 April 2025. If you did not make your application online or are accepting your place after 30 April 2025 you will need to contact the school offered directly.

Accepting a place at the school offered will not lessen your chances of being offered a place at your preferred school either through the school’s waiting list or through the appeals process.

Declining a school offer

If you do not wish to accept the school place offered, for example if you have moved out of Cambridgeshire, or have decided to educate your child privately, you must ensure you inform the Local Authority. This can be done by completing the refusal slip attached to the offer letter and returning it
to the Admissions Team. Parents who submitted their application online can also decline the offer via the Citizen Portal between 16 April 2025 and 30 April 2025.

When considering declining the offer of a place that has been made to you, please consider the
following:
• If you are appealing a decision not to offer your child a place at a higher preference school, you must wait until your case has been heard and upheld before you can decline the place currently offered to you;
• If you have submitted a new application with different preferences, or are planning to do so, you must wait until your application has been processed and a new offer issued by the Admissions Team before you can decline your original offer;
• If you are hoping to gain a place at a preferred school through that school’s waiting list, your current offer cannot be withdrawn until you are offered a place at your preferred school by the Admissions Team.
• If you are moving out of Cambridgeshire, we will not remove an allocation until we have been advised of an alternative provision that has been secured.

By completing the refusal slip you accept that you are withdrawing your current application and by doing so invalidating any offer of a place that has been made to you.

Offer after refusal

In some cases, the Admissions Team will initially be unable to offer a place at your preferred school, but a place may become available that we can offer to you at a later date. When this occurs we will inform you in writing, by emailing a copy of the letter to the contact email where one was given on
your application, and by posting to the address held where there is no email address. You will then need to decide if you wish to take up the newly offered higher preference school or retain the originally offered place. You must inform us of your decision, in writing, within ten working days of the
offer being made; you can confirm by letter or by emailing AdmissionsApplications@cambridgeshire.gov.uk

If you do not respond within ten working days, a reminder will be sent by post and email; if you do not respond within five working days of the reminder, we will assume you wish to retain your original offer, the new offer will be withdrawn, and you child’s name will be removed from the school’s waiting list.
Please note, exceptions cannot be made for letters you do not receive due to providing insufficient details for written communication.

We also suggest adding the addresses to your safe-senders list, as deadlines cannot be extended for emails that have been filtered into junk or spam folders:
admissions@cambridgeshire.gov.uk

spos.admissions@cambridgeshire.gov.uk

AdmissionsApplications@cambridgeshire.gov.uk

If a place cannot be offered at any of my preferred schools

If you are a Cambridgeshire resident, you will be allocated a place at either your catchment school, if there are places remaining, or the nearest alternative school to your home address with a place available. Your child’s name will be placed on the waiting list for every school where they are refused a place.

What is a Waiting list?

Children are placed on the list according to the schools over-subscription criteria rather than by the date the application was made. Your child will remain on a waiting list until 31 December 2025, unless one of the following occurs:
• you are offered a place at by an independent appeal panel;
• a place becomes available;
• you are offered a place at a school you have ranked as a higher preference but were previously
refused due to oversubscription; or
• you submit a new application that does not name the school as a preference or ranks it as a lower
preference than a school we are able to offer you a place at.