1. An Education, Health, and Care Plan is a plan made by the local authority under section 37 of the Children and Families Act 2014, specifying the special educational provision required for a child.
2. A ‘looked after child’ has the same meaning as in section 22(1) of the Children Act 1989, and means any child who is (a) in the care of a local authority or (b) being provided with accommodation by them in the exercise of their social services functions (e.g. children with foster parents) at the time of making application to the school.

“A ‘previously looked after child’ is a child who was looked after, but ceased to be so because he or she was adopted, or became subject to a child arrangements order or special guardianship order.  Previously looked after children also includes those children who appear (to the governing body) to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted”.

3. ‘Catholic’ means a member of a Church in full communion with the See of Rome. This includes the Eastern Catholic Churches. This will normally be evidenced by a certificate of baptism in a Catholic Church or a certificate of reception into the full communion of the Catholic Church. For the purposes of this policy, it includes a looked after child who is part of a Catholic family where a letter from a priest demonstrates that the child would have been baptised or received if it were not for their status as a looked after child (e.g. a looked after child in the process of adoption by a Catholic family).

For a child to be treated as Catholic, evidence of baptism or reception into the Church will be required. Those who have difficulty obtaining written evidence of baptism should contact their Parish Priest who, after consulting with the Diocese, will decide how the question of baptism is to be resolved and how written evidence is to be produced in accordance with the laws of the Church.

4. ‘Catechumen’ means a member of the catechumenate of a Catholic Church. This will normally be evidenced by a certificate of reception into the order of catechumens.
5. ‘Eastern Christian Church’ includes Orthodox Churches, and is normally evidenced by a certificate of baptism or reception from the authorities of that Church.
6. “children of other Christian denominations” means children who belong to other churches and ecclesial communities which, acknowledge God’s revelation in Christ, confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the Scriptures, and, in obedience to God’s will and in the power of the Holy Spirit commit themselves: to seek a deepening of their communion with Christ and with one another in the Church, which is his body; and to fulfil their mission to proclaim the Gospel by common witness and service in the world to the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. An ecclesial community which on principle has no creedal statements in its tradition, is included if it manifests faith in Christ as witnessed to in the Scriptures and is committed to working in the spirit of the above.

All members of Churches Together in England and CYTÛN are deemed to be included in the above definition, as are all other churches and ecclesial communities that are in membership of any local Churches Together Group (by whatever title) on the above basis.

7. “children of other faiths” means children who are members of a religious community that does not fall within the definition of ‘other Christian denominations’ at 8 above and which falls within the definition of a religion for the purposes of charity law. The Charities Act 2011 defines religion to include:

• A religion which involves belief in more than one God, and
• A religion which does not involve belief in a God.

Case law has identified certain characteristics which describe the meaning of religion for the purposes of charity law, which are characterised by a belief in a supreme being and an expression of belief in that supreme being through worship.

8. ‘Sibling’ includes:

• all natural brothers or sisters, half brothers or sisters, adopted brothers or sisters, stepbrothers or sisters, foster brothers or sisters; and
• the child of a parent’s partner where that child lives for at least part of the week in the same family unit at the same address as the applicant.

In all these cases, the child and their sibling will both be living at the same address in a single family unit. This means that children from different family units, where those are living together at the same address, are not considered siblings under this criterion.

9. A ‘parent’ means all natural parents, any person who is not a parent but has parental responsibility for a child, and any person who has care of a child.
10. For the purposes of this policy, feeder schools are:-
    • St Thomas More Primary School, Peterborough,
    • Sacred Heart Primary School, Peterborough,
    • John Henry Newman Catholic Primary School, Peterborough.
    • All Saints inter-Church Academy, March,
    • St Augustine’s Primary School, Stamford.

Distances are measured on a straight line “crow fly” basis, using Ordnance Survey data. In the event of distances being the same for two or more children where this would determine the last place to be allocated, random allocation will be carried out and supervised by a person independent of the school. Under random allocation, all the names will be entered into a ‘hat’ and the required number of names will be drawn out. 

11. The following churches are recognised as being in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church: Albanian Byzantine Catholic Church, Armenian Catholic Church, Belarusian Greek Catholic Church, Bulgarian Greek Catholic Church, Chaldean Catholic Church, Coptic Catholic Church, Eritrean Catholic Church, Ethiopian Catholic Church, Byzantine Church of Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, Greek Byzantine Catholic Church, Hungarian Greek Catholic Church, Italo-Albanian Byzantine Catholic Church, Macedonian Greek Catholic Church, Maronite Church, Melkite Greek Catholic Church, Romanian Church United with Rome, Greek-Catholic, Russian Greek Catholic Church, Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church, Slovak Byzantine Catholic Church, Syriac Catholic Church, Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.