Applicaa- 6th form ranking

[Whatisagoodname]

Just wondering, is it right that Applicaa is asking that applicants rank school choices in their sixth form applications. They then make the ranking known to the schools/colleges. They even say on there, if you rank a school 7th, they may not make you an offer.

Considering primary, secondary schools and universities don't know how applicants rank them. This feels wrong and unfair.

Has anyone ranked a school low but got a place. Mine likes 3 schools and can't decide ranking.

Sorry ps DC got a place at third ranked school. Impression was no one looked at ranking

Did she accept it? Maybe ask them yeah. I think one of my DC’s stayed as pending throughout

Thank you very much@Bufftailed
She did accept the place so I will drop them a line to ask, it can’t hurt just a polite email. Good to know that one of your DC’s stayed pending throughout, and all was well!!

Read the admissions policy and offer letter carefully. It is likely to be a conditional offer, not a firm offer. It won't be firm until GCSE results day when she will hopefully get the grades she needs. Even then, if it's a very over-subscribed sixth form then they may need to prioritise enrollments using their oversubscription criteria e.g. by inviting offer holders to enroll in order of distance (or by whatever other criteria they use). They will close the enrollments when courses are full, so make sure she has a back up plan.

She will stay at her current school - that is the back-up plan. I don’t think she’ll need it though 😊

Interesting that you think you can’t rank as per admissions code because where my dc lived we used ucas progress for 6th form and every state school in the city and neighbouring county used it, was very similar to ucas for university in that you could apply for up to 5 places and you got offers you then selected a preferred school/college with an insurance offer. This was a few years ago but it worked well. Dd1 got her preferred college and dd2 got a scholarship for private so n/a

Being able to name multiple sixth forms and then selecting the one you want from the offers you get is very different from being asked to place schools in order of preference and only getting a single offer. But the real problem with Aplicaa is not that they want you to put schools in order. It is that they tell schools the ranking given by applicants and some schools use that information to decide whether to make an offer. That is clearly contrary to the Admissions Code. Given what Aplicaa are trying to do, they should not ask applicants to put schools in order of preference as that information cannot play any part in the process.

@hahagogomomo , What year did your DC apply, and did your Local Authority coordinate Sixth Form admissions? Most local authorities don't because, unlike for Reception and Year 7, they are not obliged to by law. Applicaa are trying to mimic the LA coordination process with their software.

As per Prh47bridge's post, clause 2.4 of the Admissions Code means that, at application stage, the schools should not have any information other than what is needed to make a decision on the application. When Local Authorities coordinate admissions for Reception and Year 7 they withhold the ranking info from schools. Each school only has the limited information that is provided on the LA application form and any Supplementary Information Form (SIF) they use. Their SIFs have to be published and consulted on as part of their admissions arrangements.

For uncoordinated Sixth Form admissions the school's own application form is the SIF. Yet most schools now use online forms which aren't published for consultation, but should be. Schools which use the Applicaa application process get preference ranking information for any applicants who apply for multiple schools, plus any other information included on the form (which schools can configure to include a range of common questions or their own questions). As well as the ranking issue, the Applicaa process is fundamentally flawed because it's designed to capture registration information at the same time as application information. Most forms I've seen therefore ask for things like ethnicity, SEN details, medical info and language info - none of which should be in an application form. Schools should only get that info after they have made offers, not before.

Most schools will hopefully administer their sixth form admissions in an ethical way, but as they're not being overseen by the LA, and are often not closely watched by their Governing body, there is plenty of evidence that illegal processes creep in, as shown in that Camden judgement.

The proprietors of the Applicaa software used to be teachers at Greenford High School, an LA-maintained foundation school in Ealing. Greenford's sixth form admissions policy is one of the worst I've seen, with multiple code breaches!

... It's also worth adding that the national Admissions Code only applies to school sixth forms, not sixth form colleges.

One school in my area used Aplicaa and I complained to the school that it breached their Data Protection policy as they asked for enormous amounts of information (eg medical details etc) pre offer, which clearly weren’t relevant to the application decision. Other schools in the area that didn’t use it confined themselves to the relevant info (address, siblings etc).

The school confirmed I was right and it would change the process.

Tbh I think Applica is the least of the borough of Camden’s issues when it comes to sixth form places. But maybe that is for another thread!

They're currently running a consultation on their admissions arrangements for 2027, with no proposed changes for sixth forms. Hopefully they'll rethink that in the light of the adjudicator's decision: https://www.camden.gov.uk/school-admissions-general#rrno

The issue’s I’ve seen are where the admissions arrangements are “overlooked” for a variety of (nepotistic style) reasons. But also one school made a huge communication and admin error this year which resulted in the appeals process being hugely compromised. Is that the sort of thing I can mention in the consultation?

No, the consultation is just for the draft admissions arrangements, because they need to be firmally determined by Feb 25th.

If the schools are not following their determined arrangements then that is a maladministration issue. Complaints that exhausted the school's own Complaints Policy/Process would need to go to the Local Government Ombudsman.