Oversubscription Criteria
Oversubscription or admissions criteria are used to decide which children are allocated places when schools are oversubscribed. They can be different for each receiver and are held against receivers via the sub groups with which they are associated. They are added to sub groups and assigned their order of priority via Process | Transfer Groups | Sub Groups | View Details.
- Some oversubscription criteria can be explicitly chosen by parents (e.g. Religion, Siblings and Distance). These are known as applicant’s preference reasons.
- Some oversubscription criteria are used as preference reasons but cannot be explicitly chosen by applicants. They are implicit and are derived from information provided by the applicant (e.g. Named School and Public Care). These criteria are added automatically as preference reasons during the pre-offer processes.
- Some criteria are LA Only preference reasons, configured via Applications | Application Details | View Reasons (e.g. Late Application and Test Mark). These criteria are derived from imported data or manual input, rather than from information supplied by the applicants.
One A&T uses the following oversubscription criteria types:
| Criteria | Description |
| Catchment | Catchment can be selected as an applicant preference reason. It is automatically selected as an LA reason if Use GIS is selected for the transfer group and the student’s address is within the catchment of the receiver base. This applies to both GIS and postcode catchments. |
| Distance | Distance from Home can be selected as an applicant preference reason. If it is selected, the distance from the student’s correspondence or admission address to the receiver is displayed in the Applications | Application Details | View Reasons | LA Preference Reasons column. Distances are calculated via Process | Transfer Groups | Students | Pre-Offer Processing, or via Applications | Application Details | Calculate Catchments and Distances for individual applications.
The A&T processes can be run based on either correspondence address or admission address for each transfer group. This setting is specified by selecting the Use Admission Address check box on Process | Transfer Groups | Details. School places are allocated in ascending order of distance. In most cases the admission address is the same as the current correspondence address. However there are some exceptions, such as returning service personnel or Crown Servants who are applying for a school place because of a confirmed future posting. |
| Feeder Link | If a student’s registered base is linked to the preferred receiver, then the Feeder Link check box in the Application Details | LA Preference Reasons panel is selected automatically after the Feeder Receiver process has been run (via Process | Transfer Groups | Students | Pre-Offer Processing). Feeder Link can be de-selected if required. |
| Late Application | The treatment of late applications varies from authority to authority. Some LAs treat late applications as on time if they are late for a good reason (but are received before a specified date). Others exclude all late applications from the process. If Late is selected as an oversubscription criterion, then students whose applications were received on time are ranked higher than those whose applications were late.
If an application is submitted after the closing date for the transfer group or sub group, then the Late Application check box on the Application Details | View Reasons | LA Only panel should be selected . Selecting this check box means that the students in the application are included in a Late ADT file. When Make Offers is run, One offers you the opportunity to choose whether or not to include any late applications. |
| Medical Reasons | Applicants can indicate that they wish to apply to a school on medical grounds. Local Authorities might request supporting information from the applicants who select this criterion. |
| Named School | This criterion is applied automatically where an applicant has claimed that this is the school named on their statement of special needs. |
| Preference | This criterion takes into account the preference rank number chosen by an applicant. Preference ranks greater than 20 or the Process Start Number defined in Process | Transfer Group are Local Authority-generated preference ranks. |
| Public Care | This criterion indicates that an applicant has stated that the student is in public care. The applicant must also select the name of the Care Authority. This information is imported with the preference and can be edited. |
| Pupil Premium | This criterion takes into account whether or not the student attracts the Pupil Premium. This must be verified by the Local Authority. |
| Religion | This criterion can be selected by applicants (using the Faith School parental reason) to indicate that they are applying to a faith school on religious grounds. Use the lookup table to select the faith of the school. |
| Siblings | This criterion enables an applicant to indicate that the student has a sibling currently attending the receiver school or a linked or partner receiver. Partner schools are those schools that are linked for admissions purposes (e.g. a girls’ school that has a partner boys’ school). The details of the sibling and, if they attend a partner school, the school number, are entered by the applicant. |
| Social Reasons | Applicants can indicate that they wish to apply to a school for social reasons. Local Authorities might request supporting information from applicants who select this criterion. |
| Special Reasons | Local Authorities can define up to three special reasons, assigning them a position in the selection criteria priority order. Each special reason is made up of a group of codes with allocated weightings. These codes are used during the allocation process to rank the students.
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| Staff Child | This criterion takes into account whether or not the child is a child of a member of staff working at the preference school. This information must be verified by the Local Authority. |
| Test Mark | Test results (the Entrance Test parental reason) can be used as a selection criterion by Admission Authorities with selective schools, and by those using ability or fair banding. Tests are defined in the v4 Client via Tools | Administration | Lookups | Table ID 0421 and are associated with transfer groups and the results imported and processed on the Process | Transfer Groups | Tests tab. |