Explanation of the Resolve Offers Routine (In Year)

The In Year Resolve Offers routine processes each student who has at least one preference with an offer status of O (Offer).

Applications which meet any of the following criteria are not included in the In Year Resolve Offers routine:

• Any applications that have an Application Status linked to an external code of CLOS (Closed/completed).
• Any applications that have a Place Required date that is after the Offer date of the process period that is being processed (i.e. the process period with the most recently passed Process Period Application Closing date).

Furthermore, the Resolve Offers routine only updates a student's offer status to either Y (Allocated) or P (Provisional) if the application was received before or on the process period's closing date/ time.

When you run the Resolve Offers routine for a Normal Phased transfer group that does not have banding set up, One takes the following actions:

1. One stores the vacancy information of all home Local Authority receiver bases in the transfer group that are not linked to a sub group with Do not include in offer processing selected.
2. In the first run-through of the Resolve Offers routine only, One checks for students who have multiple offers for Home Local Authority receivers and then updates all preferences in these applications other than the first offered place to Q (No Longer Required).
3. One converts all offered places for the students to either P (Provisional), Y (Allocated) or Q (No Longer Required). The routine used at this point differs depending whether the students first preference is offered.
   If the first preference is offered:
   • One changes the status of the first preference from O (Offered) to Y (Allocated).
   • One changes the status of any lower preferences to Q (No Longer Required).
   • One checks the No Offer base and changes the status of O (Offer) to Q (No Longer Required), if applicable (e.g. if a late application is processed for which an offer can be made or if the LA has allocated a place at a nearby school that wasn’t an originally recorded parental preference).

   Preference Number	Original Offer Status	New Offer Status
   1	Offered	Allocated
   2	Offered	No Longer Required

   
   If the first preference is not offered:
   • One sets the status of the highest offered preference to P (Provisional).
   • One changes the status of any lower preferences to Q (No Longer Required).
   • If no offer can be made to a parental preference then One assigns a status of O (Offered) to the No Offer base, followed by Q (No Longer Required) if applicable (e.g. if a late application is processed for which an offer can be made or if the LA has allocated a place at a nearby school that wasn’t an originally recorded parental preference).

   Preference Number	Original Offer Status	New Offer Status
   1	Not Offered	Not Offered
   2	Offered	Provisional
   3	Offered	No Longer Required

4. One checks base vacancies to see if the current base has been filled with students who have an offer status of O (Offer).
   • If the base vacancy number has been reached then One begins to resolve provisional offers (detailed in step 5).
   • If the base vacancy number has not been reached:
     1. One retrieves the base vacancies and subtracts the allocations count (the total of the P, Y and A allocations). If there are any places remaining then One lists the base as having vacancies. If the school has no children with a preference that has a status other than P, Y or A then the school is not listed.
     2. One lists any schools where there are children waiting to be offered a place and vacancies exist.
     3. One checks other home LA bases to see if any students have a provisional place that is of a lower preference number to the current preference. If any such places are found, the student is given a place at the higher preference. This preference is changed to Y (Allocated) if it is the student’s first preference. Preferences that are not the first preference are set to P (Provisional).
        Example 1 - A space becomes available at Base 1 for the student:

        Base	Preference	Status Before Processing	Status After Processing
        1	1	No Offer	Allocated
        2	2	Provisional	No Longer Required

        
        Example 2 - A space becomes available at Base 2 for the student:

        Base	Preference	Status Before Processing	Status After Processing
        1	1	No Offer	No Offer
        2	2	No Offer	Provisional
        3	3	Provisional	No Longer Required

        
        If the student has an offer status of Y (Allocated) at a lower preference base and a place becomes available at a higher preference base, the student is ignored.
        Example 3 - A space for the student becomes available at Base 2, but the student already has an allocated place at Base 3:

        Base	Preference	Status Before Processing	Status After Processing
        1	1	No Offer	No Offer
        2	2	No Offer	No Offer
        3	3	Allocated	Allocated

        
        This process of freeing up places has cascade effects. For example, a place freed up for student A means that their current provisional offer can be freed up for student B, and so on. Freeing up places in this way ensures that vacancy numbers are updated to offer the maximum number of places possible before the processing has finished.
5. One sets each home or coordinating LA student's highest ranked provisional preference to Y (Allocated). All subsequent preferences are set to Q (No Longer Required).
6. One determines the highest ranked allocated preference for each student and sets any remaining lower preferences to Q (No Longer Required).

If the sub group has been set as Maintain Waiting List (on the Sub Groups | Details tab) any preferences ranked higher than the Allocated preference are recorded as W (Waiting List) It is assumed that, since an applicant puts their preferences in choice order, the lower ranked preferences would not be wanted.

The Application Status is not updated by the Resolve Offers routine, because some processed applications may have a status of Waiting for Information from Other Admission Authority. It would not be appropriate to update the status of these applications.

Imported Offers

The first time it is run, Resolve Offers only makes offers for the home Local Authority. This is because ALT files won’t yet have been exchanged with other coordinating LAs.

The Import / Resolve Offers / Export routines are re-run until the import files are empty and the export files no longer contain any changed records. Once this steady state has been achieved the Final Allocations process can be run.