Does the PAN attached to a year group follow it through the school?

[Bramshott]

If that makes any sense?

The DDs school are in the process of reducing their PAN, due to class reorganisations, but because they need to consult, they can't officially change it until next year.

So DD2's class (Sep 11 entry) will be the last year with the higher PAN. Does this then follow them through the school? Or once the PAN has been reduced, does this apply to all year groups if people leave?

Strictly speaking the PAN only ever applies to the normal year of admission. The admission code says that there is an expectation that the same PAN will be applied as that year group goes through the school. However, whereas in the normal year of entry the school has to admit children up to PAN, in other years they can refuse admission even if they are below PAN for that year if circumstances have changed.

What that means is that your DD's year is expected to stick to the higher PAN but the school can apply the new, lower PAN if it wishes on the grounds that the new PAN means that circumstances have changed. Having said that, I suspect that they would find it difficult to convince appeal panels that they shouldn't admit a child to replace someone leaving in these circumstances, so they may well find that they are stuck with the higher PAN for your DD's year.

PRH has described the dilemma that this change brings up and it is difficult.
The LA if they have any sense will apply the new PAN religiously to all admissions in the year groups. Any deviation from it will simply end up in a free for all on admissions.
However say the PAN has gone from 30 to 25, the school in effect has 7 years when they will have a class that could take 30 and did take 30. The LA will under those circumstances find it incredibly difficult to argue that the school is full or that it will reduce effectiveness. Any panel is likely to admit upto the original PAN.
Obviously this arguement will not apply to reception next year.
The time that the LA could argue successfully not to admit on the lower PAN is if the school carries out a reorganisation of the classes. So if they go from 7 classes of 20 to 5 classes of 28 they could argue that this is a real change and I would suspect a panel in those circumstances will not admit unless there are really strong personal reasons to do so

Ah-ha, the very two people I was hoping would pop in! Thank you!

I was just wondering what will happen as they are reducing the PAN from 17 to 15 with all the Yr Rs and Yr 1s being taught in the same class. They were hoping to reduce the PAN for this year, but didn't get the consultation done in time, so DD's year will have a PAN of 17 and as it seems to be a big birth year, will undoubtedly admit up to 17. The current Yr R is small, so no problems for next year, but of course problems could arise down the line assuming the Sept 12 cohort is 15.

Just mulling it over really - I guess we just deal with any problems if/when they arise.

I suppose I am concerned that they are storing up a big problem, because the next class up is the Yr 2 / Yr 3 class so if in Sept 12 they end up having to put 2 Yr 1s into that class, to get the class size of the Yr R / Yr 1 class down to 30, I can't see it working. Yr 1 - Yr 3 is too wide a spread IMHO.

Interesting. Based on what you say, your daughter's year is likely to have 17 in it when they finish Reception. The PAN definitely applies all the way through the Reception year. There is no way round that. So if the 2012 cohort has 15 that will give them 32 in Reception and Y1 in September 2012.

From what you say they should be ok for 2011/2 and should be able to use infant class size regulations to stop Y1 (the current Reception) getting too large. However, they will either have to have separate classes for Reception and Y1 for 2012/3 or do something else to avoid breaching infant class size regulations.

The normal way around this for a PAN of 15 is that the school has a small reception class of 15 and then a mixed year 1/2 of 30, mixed 3/4 of 30 and a mixed 5/6 of 30.
Your school currently seems to be doing it a different way with reception / year 1 mixed and a mixed year 2/3. My guess would be that this is because the reception year is small and therefore combined with the current year 1 they are under the magical 30 figure. The year 2/3 class may or may not be subject to the ICS regs, it would need a majority of year 2 pupils in it (ie 16) to be counted as an infant class.
In the future no matter what class combination they use there is a likelyhood of there being a class with the 17 in and if the other year group below them is at 15 then they will break the ICS regs at some stage. Interestingly they must at reception year admit 15, they can't say we can only admit 13 to go with the 17, but they can do as soon as the school year has started. I am not sure that they can avoid the ICS regs in this case unless they run a separate class of 17.
My guess would be that the school and LA is hoping that a few pupils will leave to allow them to sneak into ICS regs or if the worst comes they will have to employ a second teacher or just be one of those schools that breaks the regs!

Thanks! They have just restructured the school from more or less the setup you describe (although with a few Yr 1s staying in the Yr R class) to a structure which has Yr 6 as the stand-alone class.

I guess in the scenario we have now they are just madly hoping that either (a) the Sept 12 cohort will be small; or (b) 2 kids fromt the Sept 11 cohort will leave during Reception! Which is why I wanted to be sure if option b really would take away the problem!

I wish they had pulled their fingers out and done the consultation in time to reduce the PAN for the Sept 11 intake!