Sixth form offers and results day

[PrincessOfPreschool]

DS has had a 'provisional offer' from a highly competitive sixth form. In his offer letter they make very clear it's provisional but there is no grade offer whatsoever so it's impossible to know what they're asking for.

Their process is that on results day you submit your results to them online and they will then let you know whether you actually got in to the sixth form and can enrol or not. One of the enrolment days is the day after results day.

Is this usual? How does this work? His current school enrol sixth form on results day so if he doesn't end up getting in to this other school, he'll have missed enrolment.

Are schools open for several days after results to sort everything out? (Current school is secondary with sixth form, competitive school is sixth form only). Is it unreasonable of this school to do it in this way so that even when we've got results we don't know what's happening? It's put me off a bit, to be honest but I only have experience of my older son who started at school and it was very straightforward.

Thanks {mention:plushi}@plushi,why would it be illegal? It certainly feels opaque but that's just a feeling.

Thanks. We definitely will. Love the current school but it has a few drawbacks.

I was so surprised to get this 'provisional offer' which wasn't actually an offer. And considering nearly a 1,000 offers are rejected/ not taken up. Brutal is the right word! It doesn't sit well with me, but in the end it's my son's decision.

@PrincessOfPreschool I meant it would be illegal because it breaches the national schools admissions code (which doesn't apply to sixth form colleges).

It isn't opaque. The full policy can be found here: https://www.lae.ac.uk/227/apply-to-lae-stratford
I haven't gone through all of it, but here are a couple of examples in their oversubscription criteria:

"5. applicants attending a state funded secondary school in Newham at the time the
application for admission is made;"

This would be a breach for a school sixth form because they are not allowed to use borough boundaries to define admissions priority areas. See footnote 24 of the code.

"7. applicants with the highest levels of predicted attainment, i.e. applicants will be
ranked by the mean average GCSE score of their best 8 GCSEs (predicted or
attained)."

This would be a breach of clause 14 of the code because it is unclear and not objective. It is unclear because the beginning of the sentence refers to "Predicted" grades, and the end of the sentence refers to "Predicted or Attained" grades. It is not objective because any use at all of predicted grades is subjective.

They then go on to say:
"These criteria shall be applied consistently at every stage of the application process
from initial application, to the making of provisional offers, the provision of all
guidance and final enrolment."

I can see what they are doing here. They are using predicted grades to make provisional offers, and attained grades to make final offers. The schools adjudicator rules against school sixth forms that do this because it disadvantages students who outperform their subjective predicted grades.

... it also disadvantages students from schools that don't do grade predictions for GCSEs. Many will give minimum target grades based on some criteria (often just SATs results, therefore very unreliable) but not predicted grades.

But it is legal because it’s a sixth form college rather than a school sixth form?

Like all academies, LAE have a funding agreement with the DfE (see https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/academy-and-free-school-funding-agreements). The agreements for 11-18 schools say they have to follow the national admissions code. However, the agreements for 16-19 provision say their policies should be "fair, objective and transparent, and formulated in accordance with the Academy Trust's legal powers and duties in relation to 16-19 provision".

LAE's policy is arguably unfair for the reasons mentioned in my pp. However, unlike with 11-18 schools, there is no process to refer it to the adjudicator to formally determine that is unfair. I think you would need to complain directly to the DfE.