Secondary school appeal help!

In our small rooms, students already feel very cramped and an additional student will only make the learning atmosphere more difficult. Many of our classes will have two adults present who also need to move freely around the room to support the work of our students; an additional student would hamper this. Any flexibility that the teacher has to use the limited space available for learning purposes would be reduced, teacher contact time with each student would also be reduced and movement time from lesson to lesson would be increased. Increasing the number of children will only serve to add extra workload for teachers, to their marking and individual support.
We also ask the panel to be mindful of school finances that continue to be under severe strain. We have been compelled to move away from our normal 8 forms of entry to admit 9 forms. Admitting more than 270 students requires us to move to 10 forms of entry and anything less than 300 students for 10 forms is simply unviable. However, as explained in this document, our entire infrastructure is unable to accommodate 10 forms.
We also ask the panel to be mindful of the impact of lagged funding, where we are funded for student numbers the year after they arrive. We recently moved from 8 forms of entry to 9 over a five year period, and for four of these years we had to fund the additional teacher costs ourselves. This expansion required us to find approximately £100,000 of additional teacher costs per year for four years on top of an already very stretched budget. Moving to ten forms of entry is financially impossible for us because of this lagged funding impact.
Summary
The School is a high performing school with an excellent reputation. As such, we are heavily over-subscribed and have already admitted more students than our school site can accommodate, in order to respond to this popularity and local demographics. To admit more students will only serve to place an intolerable strain on the school, physically as well as financially, which would severely prejudice the quality of education we can provide for the students already admitted. Ultimately, this only serves to undermine the school’s reputation and will lead to our eventual demise.
Furthermore, to admit additional students into any year group is likely to bring about a serious health and safety concern, particularly within design and technology.

,Over-capacity of classrooms
Given our over-subscription, we have severe restrictions on the availability of rooms for scheduling purposes. By way of example, we have an occupancy rate of 95% for our normal classrooms and a 93% occupancy rate for our Post-16 rooms. This is far higher than one would normally expect in a secondary school (typically 85%) which makes the scheduling of lessons extremely difficult in the timetable. The net result of this difficulty often puts teachers in non-specialist areas or vice versa e.g. a science teacher may have to teach a lesson in a standard classroom or a geography teacher may have to teach in a science laboratory.
This over-capacity of rooms also means that many teachers do not have their own dedicated teaching room and are nomadic between lessons. This presents logistical and educational difficulties for the teacher as their resources are not often near the classroom they are required to teach in.
Additional students in PE would also present a further difficulty for us, due to the size of our changing facilities. Presently, half a year group have to change at any one time because of our scheduling restrictions. For the new Year 7 this will require 143 children to change in areas designed for 108 which does present us with an overcrowding situation.
Design and technology class sizes
Due to our rooming difficulties, we are unable to maintain the guidance to keep design and technology class sizes to no more than 20. According to the British Code of Practice BS4163 2007 Health and Safety for Design and Technology in Schools and Similar Establishments. In England and Wales, the recommended number of students in any one work area is 20 students with one, competent, qualified teacher. We create 12 DT classes per year group which, for this year, means we will have an average class size of 23 in Year 7.
The Health and Safety Executive has indicated that it will not hesitate to prosecute an employer (which for us means the governors and myself) should an accident happen which was found to be due to excessive class size. Whilst not having the full force of law, a code of practice is a powerful guidance document and failure to follow it would almost undoubtedly result in a successful prosecution in the event of an injury arising from such failure.
It is also worth mentioning that in addition to a successful criminal prosecution, there would almost certainly be a civil claim for compensation for personal injury. There is also the risk that if health and safety codes of practice are not followed, the public liability insurers might take a hard line in respect of indemnifying the claim.
Presently, all of our class sizes in technology exceed 20. To admit an additional child would therefore only further increase the risk of an accident in these classes, which could result in a successful prosecution against the school.
General school facilities
To admit further students would have an impact on our other resources. Our present catering facilities are inadequate for the number of students we have and consequently we have to split both our break and lunch time arrangements. Our corridor space is limited and student movement in between lessons can be dangerous, with bottlenecks at entrance/exit doors and staircases. We lack both external and 2

internal social areas for our students and have to use tennis court/netball areas in bad weather. Given our split lunch arrangements, this means that the PE department cannot use this facility during this time.
In year fair access protocol
We are part of a local agreement between schools in which we admit students who are ‘hard to place’. Past experience shows that we are likely to receive 3 or 4 students per year group during the year through this process and the panel need to be mindful of this future prejudicial impact.
Impact of admitting an additional student
This would have a detrimental impact on our existing students and staff.

I can see the pictures aren’t clear so I’ve attached the information below.
The School is a popular and over-subscribed 11-18 specialist technology school. School is an academy and, as such, the governors are the admissions authority and have responsibility for determining its admission arrangements. Enclosed is a copy of our admissions policy 2022-23 (Appendix 1).
Our pupil admission number (PAN) is 216 and we are full in all year groups.
Our indicative admission number is 216 (Appendix 2). This rose in September 2016 from 208, following new building works.
Our post 16 numbers have also increased over the last six years as the popularity of our academic provision has increased and more of our own students have met the entry requirements.
To admit an additional child would be incompatible with the admission arrangements as agreed with the local authority in consultation with parents and the local community.
We have consulted on and published lawful over-subscription criteria in accordance with the statutory requirements.
To admit would prejudice the school’s ability to provide ‘efficient education and use of resources’
The School exceeds its indicative admission number in all year groups. The net capacity assessment (Appendix 2) demonstrates that we can admit a maximum of 216 students. This equates to 1080 students in all in the main school. At the time of writing, the school expects to receive 270 students in September into Year 7 and currently has 265 students in year 7 (Year 8 in September), 273 students on roll in year 8 (Year 9 in September), 270 in year 9 (Year 10 in September) and 263 in year 10 (Year 11 in September). All of this means that we will have 1342 students in the main school for 1080 places; an over-subscription of 262 students.
In addition, there are currently 416 students on roll in Post-16 which equates to a total school population of 1758 students from September if the current Post-16 population remains at the same level, although early indications are that the number of students entering Year 12 may rise.
Our net capacity calculation affords us a maximum number of 1406 for the PAN of 216 students, which we will exceed by at least 325 students.
Standard classroom size
The recommended class size of 30 students for a secondary school is 56m2 (from building bulletin data) and 87% of our standard classrooms are below this (see Appendix 3). However, our present small classrooms become even smaller whenever we have the presence of children in wheelchairs. Typically, a child in a wheelchair needs 1.5m2 to turn through 360 degrees and needs the same space as four children to carry out a simple manoeuvre.
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We may also face, at any time, other students who have temporary physical injuries and have difficulties accessing some classrooms. As a result, we have to ensure that these children are able to enter all of our classrooms (despite this actually being physically impossible) which has the net effect of reducing down the amount of seating, thus reducing down our class size still further. Admitting another child would create additional hazards such as putting desks in front of fire escapes or blocking the movement of the teachers and impact learning.