New ‘easy-to-use’ web pages to help families apply for school place

Improvements have been made to the Buckinghamshire County Council website to make it easier for families to apply for a secondary school place.

The Council’s ‘Find My Child a School Place‘ online service went live from 3.00pm today [September 6]. Officials say they are confident it will make it much simpler for people to apply online.

Cabinet Member for Education and Skills at Buckinghamshire County Council, Zahir Mohammed, explained: ‘In Buckinghamshire, more than 20,000 people apply for a school place each year. Our digital team has worked long and hard to improve the service and make it more user friendly, so as to lead people through the processes and options as simply as possible.

We want our website to be first port-of-call for everybody applying for a school place.‘

Families can also ask for further explanation using a web chat feature if the information they require is not on the website.

The new service has been designed to be mobile first in response to the significant growth in mobile use of the main Council site.

Matthew Cain, Head of Digital at the County Council, said: ‘These improvements are the result of more than 50 hours we have spent talking to residents and testing different ideas to make sure the experience is as trustworthy and reassuring as possible.‘

The new online service is available to view at www.buckscc.gov.uk/findaschoolplace.