Primary School PAN Number Change Downwards

[BarrytheFishwithFingers]

Hi, all.

Second try, think I posted the last message in the wrong area, apologies.

So I've just found out the primary school local to me and 1st choice has not offered us a place.

This year is the first year the school is operating on a reduced PAN of 45 (down from 60).

Am I correct in assuming that some consultation with parents in the area with children two years and above should have taken place before implementing a change like this? If so, what form typically should this consultation take?

As parents we and others received no formal consultation, despite residing in the catchment area, and our son attending the pre school of the primary.

Also the PAN appears to have been set below this years demand. Figures we've obtained indicated that 55 pupils applied to this school as first choice, leaving 10 without places. This sounds to me like a fundamental error in capacity planning, and as I understand the whole reason for adjusting the PAN is something to do with receiving significant extra funding for each pupil accepting as a 'bulge'. Can anyone shed any light on this?

We are left with the option to appeal. Strangely, we are getting the impression from the school, that we are being actively encouraged to do this. Could this be because the school will receive extra funding if they accept a pupil via appeal. If so, this cannot be ethically correct, can it?

Thanks.

I think there should have been some sort of "consultation". Usually an LA looks at PANs of all the schools together and makes adjustments based on housing developments etc. The consultation may just have been writing to parish councils etc rather than individuals - but presumably the school would have been part of the consulations too?

There would have been a consultation which would have been between January and April 2011, so that the correct figure of 45 would appear in the admission booklet that has to be available from September 2011. The consultation is for all changes across the LA, but I would have expected it to have been mentioned at the school.
The PAN is based on the net capacity of the school and this is a figure derived from nationally agreed ways of measuring the school area, especially in terms of where teaching is carried out. There are all sorts of reasons why the PAN may have come down, the two most obvious being it was completely wrong before that or for one reason or another a significant number of classrooms have been taken out of commission. So has there been 3 or 4 classrooms taken out of use for other things like SEN or childrens centre or nursery?
The funding for schools is quite complicated but the majority of the funding is based on pupil numbers, so any reduction from 60 PAN to 45 PAN would potentially reduce the funding by up to 20% but my guess would be that the school had plenty of spare places, so the loss of funding will not be that much. Funding is also currently based on the number of pupils in the school on a set date in January, though it is proposed to change that to a date in October 2012 for next years funding from April 2013 to April 2014. So I can see no advantage to the school in reducing the PAN and leaving pupils without places or wanting them to go to appeal (other than the extra funding that comes with each pupil).
When this comes to appeal, it is going to be messy. Firstly there is the question of why the reduction in PAN and whether this is justified based on the net capacity of the school (some LAs have a tendency to alter the PAN to suit their capacity calculations rather than doing it properly). Secondly is what classrooms are available and what staffing is available. A lot will depend on the number of classes at present, numbers of teaching staff and how the school is proposing to organise the classes from September. I would ask the LA / school for details of the numbers in each year group and the current class organisation so that you can see what it looks like at present.
The other thing to say is that depending on how the school sees the future class organisation this could be an infant class size regs case, which would mean that you would have to prove a mistake has been made in the admission process. If the school runs with a 45 PAN the normal structure is to have two small reception classes of 22/ 23 and then three classes of 30 across years 1 and 2. The three full classes in years 1 and 2 would make the appeal an infant class size appeal based on future prejudice.
I would suggest that you try and get the 10 parents together and then try and push the LA to accept the pupils over the PAN, by in effect having two full classes in reception, using the argument that the capacity locally is not appropriate for a PAN of 45. Your problem is that the appeal panel cannot take the PAN change into consideration, they have to accept the PAN unless you can prove that the PAN does not reflect actual capacity in the school. Then if it is an infant class regs case, your chances of success are low because mistakes will probably not have been made. Which is why this needs to be pushed before the appeal hearings rather than after.

Thanks for the response Admission and Riverside Mum.

Riverside Mum and Admission - I guess I'm after how the consultation should take place. So would it be push based (ie. letter from LA to all potentially affected parents), or would it be pull based (ie. published on a website that not all affected parties may read, or likewise newspaper). If the latter, how can the LA be confident that all potential parties have been consulted? A number of preschool parents had no idea of this intended change, and the obvious way to have this communicated to them would have been a letter drop all parents at the preschool.

I know a lack of consultation can be a grounds for appeal according to School Admission Code, but what it doesn't appear to explain is precisely what format this consultation should take.

Admission - we are attempting to get the information about any physical and personnel changes to the school post and pre PAN change from the LA. Informally, we believe no changes have been made to the staffing structure or the school infrastructure.

Intake figures for 2011 were near the capacity of 60. Again awaiting clarification from the LA on this, so not sure how this PAN change can be pushed through based on this and the reduction in funding you highlight also seems at odds. The PAN appears to be completely wrong to me. We also have significant evidence to suggest the reason for changing the PAN is take a advantage of 'bulge' pupils taken over the PAN. Is the amount received per pupil via a 'bulge' significantly greater than those accepted as part of the PAN intake? And am I also correct in understanding that a school has to provide justification to the Secretary of State for Education if there are a significant number of pupils accepted over the PAN?

Demand for schooling in the area is also likely to increase. A number of new builds have come on stream and more are to come, so again another anomaly.

In recent years a number of primary schools in nearby locations have done the same, declined local pupils, number of parents disgruntled, and in one case where 12 pupils were rejected, the parents appealed and got the decision overturned.

In terms of the appeal, I'm trying to focus on the 3 points that matter, but cannot help but feel there has been a massive disconnect with the needs of the local community and common sense here.

In terms of a class appeal, this may be something we have to consider once we have pooled our knowledge.

The consultation is definitely on the basis of a pull basis. The LA will say the school and parents / pupils had the opportunity to argue for the PAN to stay at 60 and to be honest I would not know how they could realistically consult potential pupils. I don't believe you will get anywhere challenging the consultation process, as the PAN of 45 was presumably in the admission booklet of the LA.
I would agree with you that if the admission number were near the 60 in 2011 it seems wrong to be cutting the PAN to 45. There must be a logical reasoning behind this and you need to get that in writing from the LA.
There is no difference in funding for bulge pupils, the school will get exactly the same level of funding for day to day operation but obviously may receive capital funding for new classrooms / equipment etc.
As far as I am aware any decision to take pupils over the PAN is, under the 2010 admission regs which are those that are appropriate for this year's admissions, is down to an agreement between the school and the LA, the SoS has no say in the matter unless the school is an academy.
The decision to previously over turn a decision to reject 12 pupils can be quoted in your appeal as a precedence that the LA have done it once and can do it again. They will undoubtedly say that the situation is different but it is another nudge to any appeal panel that this can be done.

I have been a parent at 2 schools which have increased the PAN and to my knowledge it did so by sending a letter to existing parents at the school. Both schools have also had new buildings and letters were sent to parents who had a chance to meet the developers and it was mentioned in the local paper.

I think that it would be discriminatory to only send PAN information to the pre-school (as children at other childcare settings would be discriminated against) and it's not possible to leaflet drop the local area because children out of catchment may apply. Saying that, when the PAN was increased in time for ds2's application to Reception, the nursery teachers did tell us informally.

The PAN might have been reduced because the school had surplus places, and so the PAN went down so as to reduce the surplus capacity;(some schools did that in Islington) however if that was the reason then of course, there has been an unexpected increase in demand. Would be worth asking your local councillor about this.

Thanks again everyone.

This information has lead me to remove the consultation aspect from our appeal doc since it is not possible to prove effective consultation took place, even though the 2010 Admin Regs (1.28) indicate good practice is to consult with preschool.

The LA did some research in projected numbers for the school and despite a number of housing developments proposed or built, this appears to be falling. The projections do not appear to match the reality so far as there is a mismatch.

School net capacity is 373.

The forecast for pupil is 2011 = 56, 2012 = 43. Future years are projected to fall significantly below 45. Derived from census and health data.

The admission for 2011 was around 60 (still awaiting confirmation), and this year (as indicated) 45. There has been 55 first choice applications, leaving 10 not offered. Does anyone know what percentage of offered places are typically accepted, as of course some drop out or choose other schools, but projections currently do seem to be out.

Not losing focus on this one however, the basis of our appeal will be child centric, but now curious about this.

A school net capacity of 373, should give a PAN of around 53 (373 divided by 7) but it is not quite as simple as that.
In the net capacity calculation there are three figures. The first is the actual calculated net capacity, which is the maximum figure. The school then has to decide on a sensible figure somewhere between the maximum figure and 90% of that figure (the minimum) as the agreed net capacity.
373 is a very un-sensible agreed figure, so I suspect that 373 is the 90% figure and the maximum figure is 414, which is very close to the 420 that a 60PAN would require.
You need to ask some questions of the LA about exactly what the 373 figure is.
What also has to be said is that the figures are supposed to be derived from actual measurements of the school, not how much over capacity the LA see locally and want to fiddle so that it is at the acceptable level of below 10%.
There is also a major issue over how they derived their data, everybody knows that the birth rate generally has been going up since 2001, so a projected drop in primary numbers would tend to fly in the face of reality unless they have some very peculiar local situations which they can substantiate with data..

Admission - thanks again, you really seem to know your onions on this topic.

Got back to the LA, they told me the original figures they gave were incorrect and indeed the published capacity is 378 which is 10% below the 420 figure.

They have only provided me with census Oct 2010 figures for class breakdown, these are...

Reception 37, Year 1 49, Year 2 54, Year 3 37, Year 4 50, Year 5 43, Year 6 54
Total = 324

This indicates the intake figures seem to be slightly all over the place. Spoke to the headteacher and they again maintain the intention for doing this was to raise extra funding and to stop the spare capacity being taken up by children outside of the local area. What they didn't intend (nor never realised) was a side effect of this was to deny children from the local catchment area. None of this changes the situation however, or helps us.

As for projections, I feel they have fudged these to fit their agenda, since they don't match the rising intake (2010 - 55, 2011 - 67, 2012 - 73) at the local preschool where 98% of pupils go on to study at the primary. ONS data as you indicate is pointing to a rising population nationally and regionally.

Just one other thing to clarify, the PAN being 45, does this indicate this is an infant size class appeal? The LA indicates this as being yes, but I want to check this. Without any apparent changes to infrastructure or staffing (LA are being very cagey around confirming this), there appears to have a much higher capacity. Am I correct in thinking that the appeal should be based on prejudice to the school admitting my vs prejudice to my son of going to another school.

It depends how the classes are organised and what decisions have been made. With an admission number of 60 they would have had 2 classes in each year. With the admission number being reduced to 45 they can lose one of those classes and have, for example, two classes in Reception then three mixed classes covering Y1 and Y2. If that is what they are doing or have decided to do then this is an infant class size case.

On the other hand if they are currently operating with two classes in each year and have not made any decisions about changing this it is not an infant class size case. Note that the LA cannot make an ICS case on the basis of a decision that has not yet been taken but they may not understand this and may try to argue ICS on the grounds that the school will have to reduce the number of classes in infants now that PAN has been reduced.

prh47bridge - thanks for that, I'll get onto the Headteacher to find out if he has plans to alter/or has altered any of the class sizes. Apparently they do sometime merge classes as you describe above, but I do wonder how we'd be able to distinguish this from normal activity vs a result of reduced capacity at an appeal.

Update on this, HT has spoken to Governors and she and them are recommending to provide our son and other affected parties a place. LA have also been in touch to confirm this, so thankfully now no appeal. Thanks for the advice given, hopefully it may help others in a similar situation.