Explanation of the Make Offers Process (Phased)

When you run the Make Offers routine for a Normal Phased transfer group that does not have banding set up, the following actions are taken:

1. The following checks are carried out:
   • The system checks that all Home LA receivers in the transfer group have a PAN defined for the transfer group's intake NCY. If any such bases are found, a dialog listing the receivers that do not have a PAN defined displays:
     • To continue with the routine, click Continue.
       The system treats any bases without a PAN as though there were no places available at that school.
     • To close the dialog and cancel the routine, click the Cancel hyperlink.
       Cancelling the routine gives you the opportunity to set a PAN for any bases that require one.
   • The system checks for any existing preferences that are for non-OAA receivers in the transfer group and have a status of Allocated, Accepted or Provisional.
     If any such preferences are found, the process cancels and displays an error message reading: “Allocations already exist in Transfer Group, cannot run Make Offers”. Click the OK button to close the dialog.
     You must change the status of any Allocated, Accepted or Provisional preferences before you can run Make Offers for a transfer group.
   • The system checks for any receivers that are in sub groups marked as Do Not Include In Offer Processing. Receivers in these sub groups are not included in either the Make Offers or Resolve Offers routines.
2. The system clears any existing offer statuses that are not either R (refused by LA) or X (refused by parent).
3. The system deletes any existing preferences for the transfer group's No Application and No Offer bases.
4. The system checks to see whether any of the parental preferences are flagged as late. If any late applications are found, a dialog is displayed:
   • To include late applications in the Make Offers process, click the Yes button. The way in which the system treats late applications depends on whether Late is selected as an oversubscription criterion:
     • If Late is selected as an oversubscription criterion, then those records with a Late flag set to False are sorted before those records with a Late flag set to True. Each group is then sorted according to the oversubscription criteria set up in Process | Transfer Groups | Subgroups | Oversubscription Criteria.
     • If Late is not selected as an oversubscription criterion, then the records are sorted by the existing oversubscription criteria only. The Late flag is not taken into account.
   • To include late applications from the Make Offers process altogether, click the No button.
5. The system adds any applications with no parental preferences to the No Application base, with a status of O (Offer).
6. The system offers places to the students, up to the maximum number allowed by the PAN. Once this process is complete, you are left with a ranked list of students within each sub group. Students within the PAN have a status of O (Offer), while students outside of the PAN have a status of N (No Current Offer). The process of offering places runs as follows:
   1. Students are associated to receivers, based on the preference reasons shown on the Application Details screen.
   2. The students are sorted by the oversubscription criteria.
      The system first sorts all students on the first criterion. Within each set of that first criterion, students are then sorted on the second criterion. Within each set of the second criterion, the students are then sorted on the third criterion, and so on until the students have been sorted by all the criteria defined for the group. Students are then sorted in sets of the last criterion by surname.
      During sorting, a rank is recorded for each processed preference at each Home LA school that is not an OAA receiver. This information is stored in the CHOICES.OFFER_RANK table.
   3. A gender check for each student is carried out.
      If the student's gender does not match that of the receiver, and the receiver is not an OAA school, then the student is given a status of R (Rejected) against that receiver. This does not apply to OAA schools, as OAA schools make their own decisions regarding student rankings. As such, the system does not refuse places at OAA schools based on gender.
   4. The system sorts the students applying to Edit Rank schools by rank.

      The system sets the allocation status of any students in the unranked group (i.e. those students who are not in a priority group and are therefore unlikely to be offered a place) who have a preference for an Edit Rank school to R (Refused by Local Authority). These students do not have a rank added on import, so there is no rank against the preference. Consequently, a place is not allocated.
      
      If the student is subsequently exported in an ALT file, then their allocation status is mapped to N (No current offer).

   5. A status of O (Offer) is assigned to those students within the PAN, and a status of N (No Current Offer) to those students who are not within the PAN.
7. The system identifies any students who do not yet have an offer and assigns them to the No Offer base.
8. The system updates the status of any withdrawn applications that have preferences that are not for the Withdrawn base to Q (No Longer Required).
9. The system displays a message indicating the number of students that were processed.