School catchment areas: check your postcode

A catchment area is the patch of streets a council or a school draws around itself. It is not a legal boundary and it is not the same as the area you can get a place from: it is one of the rules used to decide who gets in when more children apply than there are places.

Not every school has one. In Scotland every address has a catchment primary and a catchment secondary, and living there gives your child the right to a place. In England most councils do not draw catchment lines at all: they give out places by straight-line distance from home to school, so the "catchment" is really just however far away the last child to get a place lived that year, and it moves every year. Wales and Northern Ireland sit in between, with some councils using catchments and some using distance.

Not on its own, unless you are in Scotland. In England and Wales the catchment moves you up the queue; it does not hold a place for you. Children in care go first, then in most schools brothers and sisters of pupils already there, then children with an education, health and care plan naming the school, then faith or feeder-school rules where they apply, and only then catchment and distance.

In a popular school the siblings alone can fill most of the year group, and families inside the catchment still miss out. The other way round, plenty of schools are not full, and children from outside the catchment get in every year. The figure that actually tells you your chances is how far away the last child to get a place lived, which many councils publish each year. Where we hold it, it is on the school's own page under Getting a place, with a postcode check.

Most councils measure a straight line from a point in your home to a point in the school: council records call it "as the crow flies". Some measure the shortest safe walking route instead, which can be much longer than the straight line. A few measure from the school gate, others from the middle of the building. The distances we show are straight-line, from the middle of your postcode, so treat them as a guide rather than the council's own figure.

Two homes on the same street can fall either side of the line, and a block of flats can count as one address with many applicants. If a place turns on a few metres, ask the council in writing how it measures and from which point.

You can still apply. Councils ask for several preferences and you should use all of them: naming only one school does not improve your chances at that school, and it leaves you with nothing if you miss out, in which case the council allocates whatever place is left, often much further away.

If you are refused a place you can appeal to an independent panel, and you can ask to go on the waiting list, which is normally reordered by the same rules every time somebody leaves, not by how long you have waited. Moving house into a catchment can work, but councils check the address you apply from and some ask for proof you live there for the whole of the year the child starts.

Catchment boundaries are drawn by councils, not by the government, and only some publish them as open data: we hold the maps for 17 councils. Distance is the better guide almost everywhere else, so we also load each council's figures for how far away the last child to get a place lived: 99 councils so far. Postcode locations come from the ONS Postcode Directory. If your council is missing, send us a link to its admissions booklet.