Schools and education
Advice and help for finding a school for your children.
If you've served in the Armed Forces and need some help finding a school for your family, Essex Schools Admission may help you.
Service Pupil Premium
The Service Pupil Premium (SPP) was set up in April 2011 by the Department for Education, acknowledging the specfifc challenges children from service families face as part of the promise to delivering the armed forces covenant.
State schools, academies and free schools in England, which have children of service families in school years reception to year 11, can receive the SPP funding to help the school provide additional support these children may need.
Find out more
School Admissions
The Covenant recognises that frequent moves can cause problems with access to schools.
The School Admissions Code in England and Wales has been changed to support Service families, who can apply and be allocated a place before they move into the area. Children can be accepted mid-term, and class sizes may be increased beyond the norm to accommodate them.
An example of this locally is that in the Colchester area (adjacent to the Garrison), there is a shared common catchment area for the most local schools. This means that those Armed Forces families living nearby applying for a place at any of those schools have priority for admission under the catchment area criterion. Similarly, as the law requires, where families are not yet resident in the area, but are able to evidence proof of posting, we treat them as living within catchment for the schools.
Other links that may be of interest
Page last reviewed: 29 September 2022