Admissions question - out of curiosity

[Spindelina]

This doesn't affect me, so don't go out of your way to reply! Just read it in the criteria for my local school.

For multiple birth / siblings in the same school year, there are different policies for R/1/2 and 3/4/5/6. In R/1/2, they will increase PAN/admission limit. But in 3/4/5/6, the parent has to decide which child gets the place.

Is this normal? It seems odd to me. Is there just the assumption that the other sibling(s) will get in on appeal in years 3+?

Infant class size restrictions apply to R/1/2 but no longer apply in the juniors, so that is likely to be the difference IMHO.

Multiple births count as excepted children so if one of them gets in under the infant class size limit the others can be admitted even if that then takes the school over the infant class size limit. I wonder if they've thought through what happens if the last child admitted normally is one of sextuplets!

I think this may be about the school running mixed classes in Y3+, in which case they may end up with overly large classes if they admit multiple births. But yes, it does seem odd.

It's PAN of 60, no mixed classes. CoE VA. I thought it was odd precisely because it's 'harder' to get an extra child into R/1/2, but these rules seem to make it the other way round. I wondered why they don't increase the admission limit in 3+ in a similar way.

It is slightly bizarre.

The regs about admitting siblings over the 30 in an infant class are in the school admission code under paragraph 2.15. When you read it carefully it refers to infant classes, not the normal year of admission to the school. So taking that literally if the school was not full in year 2 with 59 in the year group then if twins came along requesting a place, then one would be admitted as the 60th pupil and one as the 61st pupil as an excepted pupil.

However I think that given what the school is saying most appeal panels would find it quite difficult to accept that what is a legal requirement in year 2 is not then accorded the same process in year 3.

The other point to make is that now schools can admit over PAN if it does not cause problems for the school and so in this situation the school could easily argue for a year 3 to 6 pupil that it would be madness to accept one twin but turn down the other, so admit both.

I think the school is taking a very narrow view of the regs and may need to reconsider that decision.

Well, there you go. We shall see.

As I said, won't affect me directly. I keep an eye on admissions for this school because (at about 400m) we are usually just on the cusp of the last admitted distance for our category ('other', essentially - we go to the wrong church).