Run the Catchments and Distances Processes

The Catchments & Distances processes calculate catchment school and home-preference distance based on a student’s admissions or current address. These processes can be used to create system generated preferences (as opposed to parental preferences) for each student, based on that student's proximity to a particular school.

The catchment school process can be used:

• Before any applications have been recorded for a transfer group (in order to help with planning):
  • To give an indication of the schools that students are likely to apply to.
  • To inform applicants of catchment schools before they make their application.
• After applications have been recorded, to verify that the students' addresses fall within the catchment area of their preference school.

There are four Catchments & Distances processes:

• GIS Catchment:
  Creates preferences for students based on their geocoded address.
• Postcode Catchment:
  Creates preferences based on student postcode.
• GIS Routes & Distances:
  Bulk-calculates the routes and distances from home to school for students, based on their geocoded address.
• Direct Distances:
  Creates preferences based on the direct distance (i.e. the distance "as the crow files", rather than the Safe Walking Distance) between the student's address and the base.

These options can be run for a whole transfer group or for one or more sub groups at a time. The processes ignore any closed applications within the selected groups.

These processes can be used before applications have been recorded for a transfer group, in order to give an indication of the schools that students are likely to apply to and to enable the LA to inform applicants of catchment schools before they make their application.

The Catchments & Distances processes can also be run after applications have been recorded, in order to verify that student addresses fall within the catchment area of their preference school.

All Catchments & Distances processes maintain an error log. To view this log in a pop-up window, click the View Error / Status Log hyperlink. You can also export the error log to a spreadsheet file by clicking the Export hyperlink.

Postcode catchments must first be defined via the Bases | All Bases | Catchment tab.

The postcodes used by the processes (either the admissions address or correspondence address postcodes) are determined by whether the Use Admission Address check box has been selected for the transfer group. However, if you run a process before applications have been added then the current correspondence address is always used, as an admissions address has not yet been added. Applications that have neither an admission nor a current address are not processed.

Automatically Generate System Preferences

If the Automatically Generate System Preferences check box is selected when you run a process then System Generated Preferences are created for each school where the student's address is within catchment.

If Automatically Generate System Preferences is not selected, then the Catchment processes can be used to validate whether or not a student's address lies within the catchment area of their preferences.