In-Year Admissions and Fair Access

In-Year Admission refers to any change of school which happens outside of the coordinated scheme, so applies from Reception (once they have been in school from the September following the offer), through to Year 11 and happen throughout the Academic Year.

In this current academic year so far we have processed 3944 applications including 784 requesting a new school place for September 2017.  Most of these are for children moving into the area.  Over the last 3 months the In Year Team has received 4082 calls and around 50 emails a day through the main Admissions line and email inbox, this does not included calls taken on direct lines and individual emails.

This academic year saw a change in our processes whereby we send across a cover sheet to schools which asks for a more detailed response including current numbers on roll in the year group requested, and if a school is refusing a place, whether it is because the year group is full or because they consider the application to fall under the Fair Access Protocol.  If the application is considered to be FAP then schools must detail which criteria the child falls under and then this is verified once the form is received back into the In-Year team.

We also introduced an escalation system whereby if schools do not respond within the 7 day timescale then a letter is sent to the Head Teacher for escalation, this is to ensure we stay within the 10 day turnaround for placing students who apply for an in-year transfer.  Some schools respond almost immediately and there is a good rapport and working relationship between the school and the admissions officer responsible for that area, however, some schools do need to be chased several times for a response and this obviously leads to applications going over this timeframe. 

We encourage schools to return the form as soon as possible either so that we can process it with the next preference listed on the application if the first school is full, or to start the process of placing through the Fair Access Protocol.

The In-Year Team also deals with placement of all permanently excluded children, with a dedicated officer for Primary Fair Access placements, including PEX students.  These obviously take longer to process as they involve meetings with the school and other agency involvement to ensure the right placement of a child back into mainstream school.  There have been around 150 Fair Access placements so far this year across all year groups.  We are working on more informative ways to report on in-year movement and also Fair Access placements so that schools will not only be aware of how many students they have taken, but also their neighbouring schools.