Confused over PAN & Ranking lists….

[CanadaCalls]

Ive received back from my council the number at which my child was placed at on the ranking list for a secondary school.

The school, and the council state that the schools PAN is 180. It’s a new school that only opened in 2022. Both in 2022 and 2023 it took 180 children.

It will now apparently be moving to its new site in September 2024 (which nobody knew until the last month or so and is still speculation as our council have still not released anything) This year they have taken 240 students, their PAN of 180 has not changed on either websites.
The Council have said they increased the PAN to accommodate the need of spaces, so if they’ve had to increase it, does it make them oversubscribed?

A total of 627 parents applied this year. My child was placed 530th on the list. We were told had we have put it as first preference, he would have got a space. How???? We would only fit the very last criteria of Distance and there are a lot of areas around the school before it reaches us.

I wonder if he would have got a space within the 180, or within the extra 60? My point is, we’ve been refused free home to school transport as apparently we did not apply for our nearest suitable school. At the time of application, the school was still in its temporary site miles away from us and the council did not publicise its definite opening date (which would have changed the admission process in our area if it is now considered a closer school to our village) Everything has come about after National offer day.

Our LA expect parents to find out if our children had a good chance of getting in to the school before applications. I don’t understand how we are supposed to work that out when the PAN changed last minute and the numbers and location of the school have been different since it opened in 2022? There is no pattern?

Where did you rank this school on your CAF, relative to the one that you were offered?

How you rank schools on your CAF is your personal order of preference.

All applicants for a school are ranked against that school’s oversubscription criteria as if that is the only school being applied for. Where each applicant ranked the school is irrelevant to this process.

Your LA collates all the information about whether individual schools you applied for could offer you a place, and passes on to you the offer out of those from the school that you ranked highest on your CAF (or the only one, if only one could be made). If none of your preferences can be met, then the offer will be for the nearest school which has places remaining, once all the people who put that school as their highest preference that can be met have been offered a place.

So your DC could be ranked 500+ for a 180 PAN school and still get that school, if

• enough of those ranked above your DC had ranked other schools higher on theri CAF and one of those preferences could be met, and
• that school was the highest of your ranked preferences that could be met.

So if you named the school as an on time preference and you would have been offered a place there, had it been your highest (effective) preference, you must have named another school above this one on your CAF, and been offered it?

Changing the address point used for the school after the process has started does seem wrong and if that genuinely happened, I would think that parents whose DC were ranked against one when they were told they would be ranked against the other would have a reasonable chance at appeal. However, are you entirely sure that the admissions policy and the LA's composite prospectus for 2024 entry said nothing, before October 31st, about distances being measured from the school's permanent site, rather than the temporary one?

As for the extra 2 form intake, is this definitely 'PAN for 2024 was changed from 180 to 240', or 'as the school is now in a new building built for 5x180 but will open with only year 7, the LA has asked it to take, and will fund the resources required for, a bulge intake of 6 for this year'?

So is the issue is that this wasn't your closest school based on its old site, but will be once it moves in September? But, as you didn't know it was moving, you couldn't have based your school choices on that? If so, you may be able to use this as an argument for getting free transport (I have no idea how you appeal this decision, but hopefully others on the thread will be more help!).

If it was your closest school even before the move and you are saying you didn't put it down because you didn't think you would get in with a PAN of 180, I think the transport argument gets more nebulous.

Presumably your child got a place at one of the schools you placed as a higher preference. They’re saying that had you put it as your first preference then your child would have been within the top 240 pupils when ranked based on admissions criteria. Your lower placement on the list I assume it because they were able to place you in a school you placed as a higher ranking.
I assume if you asked to go on a wait list for this school you would be higher ranked.

I think what they are saying is that you were 530th, but higher applicants placed other schools higher, so you would have been in the top 240 after the shuffling.

Did the admissions criteria state that that the distance was measured from the permanent site or temporary site?

Schools can and do admit over PAN for various reasons, e.g. a new school moving into it’s permanent site ahead of schedule or the PAN being set lower because of real concerns a school would be stuck in temporary accommodation due to planning or site problems. What I am not clear about is whether the nearest school to your home is now the permanent site of the school which presumably opened in temporary accommodation in 2022 - is that the case? If so, look at the admissions policy for 2024 - what are the oversubscription criteria, including reference to any catchment or address, it should be detailed. You could also refer to the booklet / online resource published by the LA detailing all the secondary choices for 2024.

Thank you all for your replys.

it was our second preference and we got offered our first choice.

I agree that after all the shuffling he would have got a space there.

Where I feel they have been unfair with regards to applications and the free transport, was the lack of transparency. So when it was at its temporary site, it was over 7 miles from us and distance was measured to there because last year children received free transport to the school that has always been our school. This year they are measuring the distance to the new site, despite not informing anybody that it will definitely be there this September. At the time of application, we had not been told otherwise and as far as we knew, it was still based at the temporary site 7 miles away.

Our ward councillors, parish council, parents and all surrounding primary schools in the area had not been notified of the opening. The code clearly states that all relevant parties MUST be informed and they haven’t. Up until a few days ago their address on their website and the council site still has it as the temporary site. It has not been mentioned on their website or any of their social media accounts that the move is happening, so how were parents supposed to know??

Their distance criteria section doesn’t comply with the schools admission code as they do not state how distance is measured. They just say that it will be measured using the councils GIS system, this I know is against the code. They must state if it’s as the crow flies, walking route etc.

According to an insider who works for the trust, even up until a month or two ago they didn’t know if it would definitely open come september! So I’m wondering if they haven’t published on their website their intention to increase the PAN as they weren’t sure they would move and then the temporary site couldn’t take 240?

We’ve been refused free transport on our first stage appeal so now we’re moving on to our second stage appeal.

You have been offered a place at your first preference school so why are you appealing for a lower choice school? You must have known the distance to the first choice school and presumably it is not the nearest suitable therfore you have to pay for the transport. Just the same as when my parents put me in for 11+ and I got a place and passed two other schools on my way there each day.

I’m not appealing for our second choice school, we wanted our first choice and got it. Our first choice has always been our closest school. A new school is in the process of being built but is still a working progress. It failed to open in 2022 and 2023 as it was supposed to and the admission arrangements hadn’t changed in our area at the time of application in October 2023 and they still haven’t.
The public have not been told that the school will definitely be opening this year and the admission authority and the council have failed over and over again to follow the schools admission code.

The issue is, they’re saying that the school being built is our nearest school, which technically it is (it is still over 3 miles and the council have identified there is no safe walking route) but not until it’s open!

I’ve just sent my second stage appeal outlining all of their failings so I’ll just wait and see what the response is.

627 is the number who put the school on their form as any of their 3 preferences.

Theoretically in a town where there were 3 equally good schools each with a PAN of 200, and each of the 600 y6 kids in the town put those 3 schools on their form in any order they choose, each school would have recieved 600 applications.

If you are ranked 530 on the list but 360 out of the 529 ahead of you put a higher preference of a different school which they qualified for, you woulf then be ranked 170 and if that is the highest preference school you qualified for you would get the place.

If you indicated a stronger preference for a different school that you qualified for then you would get that other school and someone who was ranked 531+ at this school would get offered the place.

The council have since told me that his ‘final’ ranking was 189. The PAN is 180. Meaning that he wouldn’t have got a space? The only criteria we fit is distance which is the last on the list of their criteria’s

Was the new school in co-ordinated admissions? You will know because if it was, you would have named it as one of your preferences; if not, you would apply to the new school in a parallel process.

You're not making a great deal of sense OP and are throwing random facts in every time you post which would have been relevant to put in your first post.

Is it the case that :

You wanted your first choice school and got it.

But your first choice school is more than 3 miles from home so you want free school transport

But the council are saying you can't have free school transport because you didn't name your nearest school first on your preferences.

However your nearest school now wasn't actually your nearest at the time of applications and you didn't know it would be moving to its new site by September so you didn't apply to it.

You are appealing not for a different school but against the decision not to give you free school transport because you had no way to know that you would have been given a place at the new school.

Your final ranking number for the new school was 189 so you wouldn't have got a place if they had stuck to the normal 180 admissions. However they have put in a couple of bulge classes to admit 240 so you would have got a place there as part of the 60 extra if you had applied.

Is this right?

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So assuming I have understood correctly, a key factor is going to be what the location marker is for measuring distance to the newly-moved-nearby school was when applications were going in 9 months ago. It's quite normal for a school that is being housed temporarily in location B with a plan to move to location A once building is complete to have admissions criteria using the distance from the child's home to location A, with the expectation that all kids will be bussed to location B until the building work is finished. This would have been easy to find out when applications were going in.

In the normal course of events when there is no shifting of school location, if you apply to school X which is more than 3 miles away and get a place there, and school Y is closer to you but is oversubscribed, you get free school transport if you named school Y as one of your choices but didn't get a place. If school Y would have been able to accommodate you but you didn't put it as a choice, you don't get free transport because you chose to nominate a school further away.

So I don't think it's relevant to your appeal that you didn't know that this school was moving from site B to site A this September because either way it would have been defined as "your nearest school" according to admissions criteria (because these were using the eventual intended location not thr temporary location) so you would only be entitled to free school transport if you had named that school as a higher preference than the one you actually nominated and got.

Sorry, I realise it’s all been a bit ‘bitty’.

But yes, you’ve understood it correctly.

I have repeatedly asked the council where measurement locations were but they keep ignoring my question.

in 2023, all of the children in both villages applied to our original closest school, and all got free transport. If the newest nearest school was considered in the mix as they have this year then they too would have been refused transport on the same grounds. This leads us to believe that they were not enforcing the closest school rule because it was based far away.

So of this year it was going to be included and therefore affects our right to free school transport, more should have been done to tell us of the changes and that it was definitely going to be at the final location.

Ok that makes sense.
So your argument is basically that the precedent of the last 2 years while the new school site was being built led you to believe that the same would apply this year.

The other side will argue that it is obvious to any reasonable person that this situation would change sooner or later as the building project wouldn't last forever, so if it was that important to you then you should have found out what you needed to know before the application deadline.

The appeal panel will have to weigh up both these. I can't say which way they'll go.

Separate from the appeals process - the bigger question is:
If you had known that school transport to you first choice school would no longer be free because of the new site now beimg deemed as closer, would yoi have changed your mind and applied differently?

If "no" then personally I would be philosophical about accepting the need to pay if your appeal isn't successful.

If "yes" then get an application in to have your DC start at the other school instead.