PAN increase in Y7 - does it apply to older year groups too?

[7yearsold]

If a school increases its Year 7 PAN, does it apply to the older year groups too, so that people on the waiting list can appeal to get in?

I'm pretty sure the answer is no, because it would be chaos otherwise, but is there a line in the Admissions Code which makes it clear? Or some case law? There is someone I need to convince, so I need the evidence to back it up.

@prh47bridge? @admission?

No. Applies to that year only. Sorry

That's the answer I'm expecting mumneedswine - but I need to prove it to someone else, so if you can point to where it's specified I'd be grateful.

Technically PAN only applies to the normal year of admission, i.e. Y7. If the school has a sixth form and accepts external applicants there will be a separate PAN for Y12.

There is nothing official that specifies what happens to other years if there is a change in PAN for Y7. However, an appeal panel will assume that the PAN that applied when that cohort was in Y7 will continue to apply.

The easiest way to approach this in the absence of anything official is to think what would happen if the school reduced PAN in Y7. They would immediately be over PAN in other years. Are they going to throw pupils out? Of course not. And if pupils leave they will be replaced otherwise the school could run into funding problems. So the school will continue to operate the other years to the old PAN.

A school can always admit beyond PAN. But if they increase PAN for all years they have to admit all applicants until all years are full to the new PAN. They may not have the funding for that. So, in general, a school will continue to operate Y8 and upwards to the old PAN.

What para 1.2 of the admission guidance says is that all admission authorities must (so legally required to) set an admission number for each relevant age group. The relevant age group is the age group at which pupils are or will normally be admitted to the school e.g. reception and year 7. So it is always assumed that once the PAN has been agreed in year 7 then it will continue as that number as progresses from year 7 to year 11.
However if you think about how the PAN is supposed to be derived from the net capacity of the school, there is a large gray area. The net capacity is a mathematically derived figure from measuring the area of the school building (or most of it). So if a school is year 7 to 11 and has a PAN of 120, then you might expect the net capacity from which the PAN was derived to be around 900 (120 X 5 year groups). The admission guidance says that a school can admit over PAN in any year group and it will not count as an increase in the PAN. However if the school has made a formal decision to increase the PAN then there is therefore an assumption that the PAN will be at this increased level in subsequent year groups joining the school. In other words after an increase in PAN it will take 5 years for the school to now be operating at the agreed increased PAN in each year group.

If there is a formal increase PAN then the question any appeal panel has to ask itself is what exactly has the school got in increased capacity. In days past when more funding was available, one could frequently see that the school had increased the capacity say from 120 to 150, which would as a minimum require 5 extra classrooms and these were all there. There could therefore be an argument at appeal that the facilities were there for each of the year groups 8 to 11 to take pupils in up to the new PAN. Now that is usually not the case and what happens is that one extra mobile appears on site, so actually the school has the capacity to take the increased PAN in year 7 but not in any other year group. As such there is nothing to stop you appealing for a place in say year 8 but the reality is that there is no extra capacity in year 8, only year 7. That does not stop you winning a case if your case carries more weigh than the school's case not to admit.