Any school secondary school governors about? School admissions timeline

[Jbrown76]

So Oct 31st is the deadline for application and 1st of march is when places are offered.

So what happens when during that time period, I know looked after children evidence was being checked early November But when do secondary schools have to submit their final list of all children who are being offered a place ? And where does it get submitted? To the Local Authority Education office? Surely it's not just days before the 1st of March? What's the deadline/timescale/timetable?

I know it will vary if it's a faith school that requires church attendance because this needs to be checked and confirmed as being accurate. When is this done? Before Christmas?

What kind of school is it? It reads like the governors allocate places, is that right?

I think the governors are given the list of applications, and they look at who put the school as first preference and then compare the application against their admissions criteria and award the place on the basis of this. I was just wondering when does this happen, what are the timescales ect

Firstly, no-one will be checking who put the school first, as they are not allowed to prioritise in that way, and the schools shouldn't know. Schools will rank all applicants against admissions criteria and submit back to LA, who then has to cross reference lists and speak with neighbouring boroughs where children may have applied for schools in other boroughs to where they live, so they can offer one school place to each applicant.

I am not an expert so don't know timescales, but did read a previous year about how it is quite a lengthy process with lots of steps so does take a while.

You have to throw into the mix things like children with EHCPs who put a school down. The SEN team have a list of those children, there are panels for the special schools and then if any put a mainstream school down the particular schools are consulted to see if they can meet those children’s needs. In my LA, that process is happening this coming week. I have 4 children in our Y6 wanting special school!

Are you certain the governors are involved? I’d expect the Local Authority to do most of the work. The SIFs will have to be appended to the application form which the LA would check.

The governors don't get involved. The LA handle it.

Except the Governors are involved in faith schools. They rank applicants against the published over subscription criteria and submit back to the LA as @BendingSpoons said.

I don’t know about secondary but for primary in my LA the deadline for applications is 15th Jan, the list comes to school on 2nd March, the Governors have to return it by 22nd March and then offers are sent out by the LA on 15th April possibly 16th, can’t remember which off the top of my head does that help with a rough idea of timelines?

The reason it takes so long is that it's an iterative process - it can't be done in one step. The applicants to each school are arranged in order according to the admissions criteria for that school, with a cut-off at the point where the school is full. The first iteration allocates all applicants their first choice. Then the lists have to be re-done because someone who got their first choice at a different school disappears off the lists of all their other listed schools, so other children move up the list to take these places and spaces appear at the bottom of the list for those who didn't make the cut-off last time. The point is that the school doesn't know the order of the choices, so they can't do this step themselves - they have to wait to hear from the LA. The lists are submitted again. And repeat until there are no more changes to the lists. Then repeat for second choices. And so on. It's done by the admissions office not the governors. Hope that makes sense.

If you are in the uk and the school is a LA (maintained) school and non-selective / no entrance exams, then the local authority do all the admissions work. Schools are not involved at all, they just get a list of who is being offered a place. Usually (in primary anyway) only a week or so before the offers go to families and it’s confidential so schools cannot share that info or let people know.

Secondary school here, rankings submitted to LA by Monday 15th. They then look at EHCP bad they know which preference a family have placed and they then give us a list back of places that will be offered just before 1st March offer day

They don't/can't take into account preferences as it's illegal.

Staff have dealt with the applications from the start of the year, linked them with the data from the local authority and created provisional rankings.

Ranked lists get submitted after governor approval this coming week. This may be uploading a single file or by having to manually update each record.

The LA then locks them out of the system until National Offer Day whilst they perform their checks and procedures.

Oh, by the way, other than the occasional governor who is particularly interested, they won't have a clue about the LA deadlines, they just know if they have a ranking meeting to attend within the first full week of January.

What you wanted was somebody working in school admissions, a governance professional or a headteacher, as the deadlines actually matter to them.

The LA will publish their agreed admissions arrangements that spell out exactly what happens. Data (are addresses correct? Etc) are checked November, they have to send data to other LAs if they have applications from out of LA, and there’s a period for schools to check applications against their own criteria (such as SIFs) if they are faith schools.

For faith schools, they can either buy in the LA to apply their criteria, or do it themselves. If they do it themselves it has to be done by some point in January for secondary. In most cases, Faith schools don’t actually do the admissions, they just provide the rankings according to their admission criteria, and hand them back to the LA, who then sorts out where the applications sit with those made to other schools.

The actual ranking process doesn’t happen until late Jan/Feb IIRC, and round here primary schools get access to the offers on the 27th Feb, with parents knowing on 1st March.

EHCPs happen on a parallel timescale and their offers are known a few weeks earlier.

There is a lot of mis information on this thread. It depends who the admissions authority is. The local authority is not always an admissions authority, especially for academies and faith schools.

I don't know the detailed answer OP, but I know your question is correct and the answer is not necessarily "the LA does it all"

Monday the 15th of what month sorry?

Monday 15th January. 15th February is a Thursday.

Ah so the secondary schools have ranked applications by their criteria and submitted a list by Monday 15th of January to the LA of who they are offering places to?

I’m trying to work out why this information would matter. Unless you’re planning on turning up with a bundle of £20s……..

This month.

For schools where they are their own admissions authorities, the extra information comes in from September onwards (or earlier), then the LA sends through the actual applications in the first week or so of November. From then to the end of the Christmas holidays, the school will be assessing the information and evidence, asking for anything outstanding, dealing with enquiries (including those where the parents have forgotten to actually include the school in their preferences), adding late for good reason applications from the LA up to the last day of school, chasing those who haven't provided the additional information, correcting the information (you'd be surprised how many forget how their children's dates of birth or mistake their cousin's friend for a sibling), contacting religious leaders to query things, researching what faith group a particular denomination comes under, checking for exceptional circumstances, helping parents get the evidence needed, dealing with generalised queries, etc.

By the end of the first full week back in January, the Governors look at the applications and evidence to decide whether they wish to accept the recommendations the staff have made, it has to be officially recorded that they are approved, and the school staff have to get all this information into the LA portal by the cutoff date of around 15-17 January.

Then the LA iteration process starts.

Deputy Head here - you need to look on Admissions page on the website for your local authority. All the dates will be there. Process does differ across country and faith schools have additional processes in place. Agree with previous post that there is a lot of misinformation here - the only way to be sure is to refer directly to your LA Admissions Policy.

Further to pp, in my school, we do not have sight of the list until it is confirmed by LA, nor do governors. I'm curious as to why you might want to know the steps between application and allocation of a place? Not being rude or anything!

As someone who has seen the info that is sent from the LA, the school does know the numbers of who has put 1st,2nd,3rd4th place but not who. It isn't taken into consideration as there is a portal we use to then rank in admission criteria. That submits to the la once rankings are done and then the la send out offers after looking at everything.

An example of a timeline can be found here, for Cambridgeshire. There’s a table that lays out the complete timeline. And even if a school is its own admissions authority, it can still buy back services from the LA:

https://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/asset-library/2-ccc-co-ordinated-secondary-admissions-scheme-for-2024-5.docx

So you when applying you put your preferences in priority order...and if there's 2 or more possible schools that could be an option the first preference is offered

Just interested really... because there's a outstanding faith school that's oversubscribed and just wondering how and when they make a decision...even when they use the admissions criteria and when they have to submit that information. My DD isn't attending that school, but it's something I've wondered as people attend X amount of times at x church until sept 1st of application year,