Will admissions agree to increase capacity in reception class?

[Ivygarden]

DD didn’t get a place at the out of catchment school we put as our first choice. We added her to the continued interest list. The school currently offers 26 reception spaces but as they were so oversubscribed this year, the governors have agreed to increasing capacity to 30. This has now gone to admissions. If the class is expanded, my DD will get a space as she is number 2 on waiting list. My question is, will the Local authority automatically approve the spaces? Or do they have to at all? What things would be considered? I will find out in June when second round of allocations go out but I guess I’m second guessing the result. Feel optimistic but equally don’t want to set myself up for another fall.

If the school is an academy or VA school the LA doesn't have a say. If it is a community or VC school the LA is the admission authority so could ignore the governors but it is unlikely they would do so. In the circumstances, failure to do so would pretty much guarantee that 4 people will get in through appeals.

That’s good news. Thank you for your response

As an aside, I am never sure why schools have an admission number of 26 if they have space for 30. One would have thought in these cash strapped times, the extra money would be more than welcome now and in subsequent years. It makes me wonder whether schools really do have financial pressures if they have odd admission numbers that could be increased.

The question for me is whether this should go to appeal. Making a temporary increase of the PAN from 26 to 30 is quite usual and given the pressure for places in many areas would not be refused by the LA.
However as a temporary increase, they should in my opinion, be allocating the places based on the admission criteria order nothing to do with any admission appeal.
The second question that the admission authority need to resolve is at what date should be places allocated from. It could be the next four on the list on April 16th, the date of the original allocation, it could be the date of the second round allocations. My view would be that it should be the date when the gb agreed to extend from 26 to 30, not the date of the second round of allocations, but that seems to be what the admission authority are saying is the date.
That may or may not be to your advantage. Clearly you were 2nd on the waiting list immediately after the initial allocation but between then and the date of the second round allocations, there could have been a number of pupils entered onto the lists who have a higher admission criteria order than you do and therefore would be to your disadvantage.
You need to wait and see what happens but if you do not get a place at the second round allocation I would appeal on the basis that the GB having agreed to increase numbers, the places should then have been immediately allocated which was to your advantage rather than be disadvantaged by waiting to allocate on the day of the second round of allocations.

Thanks so much, admissions, for taking the time to reply to me- your advice is most welcome. So you also think that the LA will approve the extra spaces? I was thinking, what if that meant that they took four children from other small village schools and made those class sizes even smaller, for example? What does PAN stand for?
I was thinking that if we didn’t get a place at second round, I’d accept it -but you’ve made me realise that I might have a case for appeal based on the dates as you outlined above. I naively hadn’t really considered that more children may have been added to the list and bumped us off- do you think 3 children will have moved to the village or met the admissions criteria in some other way? I think that seems unlikely but I guess it’s plausible. Honestly, this is stressful. I’m constantly second guessing everything and I guess I need to just wait it out.

Any additional places must be allocated in accordance with their admission criteria. They cannot pick and choose who to admit.

If they take children from other small village schools, those schools will have to admit from their waiting list (if there is one). They cannot leave places empty.

PAN = Published Admission Number. It is the number of pupils the school will admit. The school must admit up to that number if there are enough applicants.

As you are number 2 on the waiting list it is unlikely you will miss out but, if the LA insist on delaying things, it is possible. Hopefully that won't happen.