Understanding admission numbers

[Maximoo26]

Hi all,
Im new here and looking for advice please.

We have my child's appeal hearing tomorrow. He was refused a place in any of our 3 chosen high schools.

We are looking at the information the school has sent us and we are struggling to understand how the school have worked out that they are over subscribed.

According to this image the actual NOR number on roll, is less than the PAN overall.

Am I reading this wrong? Im lost in all this.
Any help would be amazing

You are appealing against the refusal of a place in a specific year group and the admissions for that year group already being at PAN (let alone above) is the basic point at which a school starts turning down further applicants. You are not appealing for a random place in the school, so the fact that in September the projection is that there will be a total of 1354 pupils on roll against a a total of the PANs of all year groups of 1370 is much less relevant that 270 places have already been allocated against a PAN of 270 for the year group you have applied for.

Obviously, the total number on roll being lower than the total number the school is set up for overall is a counter against e.g. overcrowding in common areas being caused by the admission of a single further pupil in any year group, but the dinner queue not being prolonged by another few minutes is less pertinent than e.g. the practical subject room allocation having to be redone because they now have to find rooms that can safely take a larger group of pupils.

The number on roll in yr8, will be yr9 when your ds starts are 12 under PAN and likewise a few under PAN in older years. This will help you in respect of people moving around the school and pupils needing school lunches etc.

However most of the time they do things in their year group, so the fact that there are fewer children two years above your ds won't help the food tech teacher who has 15 ovens between 30 children with two per oven. It also won't help the science teacher who has 15 gas outlets and 15 bunsen burners between 30 children and having 31 children in the class will mean there are too many around each station. It won't help the English teacher who has 15 tables, 30 chairs and can't fit another child in. These are the sort of arguments they might use. In reality in some schools they barely do any science experiments until GCSE at the earliest. You can also use the argument that yr9 and yr10 cope with 280 pupils, although they might turn that around and say that those two year groups are occupying the larger classrooms.

Ultimately the main thing to focus on is why that school is the best fit for your ds (unless you have evidence that the admission criteria were wrongly applied and then lead with that).

There were 270 places and they've offered those - with a significantly higher number of students with SEND than in any other year.

Yes agree with @MarchingFrogs the PAN for year 7 is the key figure here. Although the school is below numbers overall, it is at PAN for the year you seek admission to. Adding an extra student (the school may argue) will make it impossible to seat the class of 31 in classrooms or give them the space they need in science labs or tech lessons.

What are your arguments for the school to admit over PAN?

Do you know why the PAN was reduced by 10 a couple of years ago?

Looking at the values it looks like it was a temporary uplift for just two years because the current yr11 had a PAN of 270.

@TheNightingalesStarling The PAN for Yr. 11 is 270 so it appears they just look an extra 10 in two cohorts, probably to address the peak of primary transfers to secondary. As others have mentioned, the PAN only applies currently to the year of entry, in this case Yr. 7. OP did you use all your preferences in the original application?

But the two years with extra could potentially undermine the schools argument that the classrooms cannot fit an extra pupil.