Primary place planning
How does the process work?
Introduction
• The council has a duty to secure
places for it’s residents.
• This can be done through expansions
or the opening of new schools.
• These can be temporary or
permanent, depending on the
projected nature of the demand.
Complicating factors
• The population in Southwark, and
across all of London, is highly dynamic
due to regeneration, migration and
increasing birth rates.
• The volume and location of provision is
not controlled entirely by the council
due to the free schools initiative.
• Many teams are involved in the
process.
Who is involved?
• Place Planning Officer holds the
central position and must liaise with;
o School heads
o Regeneration team
o Legal advisors
o School placement officers
o School Improvement team
o Directors
o Councillors
How are decisions made?
• Recently the population in Southwark
has been expanding therefore most
decisions centre around;
A) Assessing whether this will continue and
which areas of the borough will be most
affected.
B) If so, then how to best secure effective
extra places in the relevant areas of the
borough.
A) Assessing whether this rise will continue
• In order to do this Southwark commissions
roll number projections from the GLA,
along with many other boroughs.
• These take into account births, migration
and development.
• These are assessed within the council to
ensure that local knowledge is used to
check/adjust the projections and to asses
the impact of any differences to the
previous projections provided by the
GLA.
A) Example graphic used to assess data
This shows that demand in
Camberwell schools has been
increasing and the LA has
been securing more places.
The current
projection is for
this to flatten
off but extra
provision is
planned to
cover for all
scenarios and
to help aid first
preferences.
B) Securing extra places in the
relevant areas
• This requires collaboration between
council departments and schools in
the borough.
• Work is ongoing throughout the year to
communicate with schools to assess
who is best placed to take extra
children and how they can be assisted
in this process.
B) Securing places – Example Graphic
• This map shows first preference applications for a
particular school and whether or not they were
offered a place and is one example of how
appropriate provision can be chosen. This is
explored in the next section.
Primary Preferences Analysis
What can we learn?
Note: Data still in draft phase. See final page for further clarification.
Background
• Preferences data can be used to get
an early estimate of any provision
issues.
• It can also be used retrospectively to
assess any points of interest that may
help steer future decisions on places.
A) Example - Preferences Map
• This map shows first preference applications for a
particular school and whether or not they were
offered a place. Green = Yes, Red = No
A) Example - Preferences Map (continued)
• Filled circles represent people with a sibling. This
shows the effect of sibling preference as some
people from further away got a place. There are
even a couple of postcodes where one person
from the building would have got a place and the
other wouldn’t.
A) Example - Preferences Map (continued)
• We can see one red circle on the far left who we
would ideally not include in analysis as they should
not be applying to this school and this is interesting
context.
A) Example - Preferences Map (continued)
• However we see that several red circles are within
1km of this school so we may mark this down as a
potential expansion to allow people to get their first
preference if other factors were suitable such as the
size of the site.
B) Other interesting statistics – First Pref
• One basic assessment is to look at how many first
preference places schools receive. This data can
be used to look for expansion opportunities or for
cases where educating parents on the benefits of
less popular schools in the area may help more
people put down a first preference they are likely to
obtain.
B) Other interesting statistics - Siblings
• The amount of places offered to siblings varies a lot
between schools (see below for examples). This
data can be used to assess the likely actual places
that will be available to parents with a first child or
who have just moved in to the area.
B) Other interesting statistics – Preference Profile
• Due to the number of first preference applications
and other factors, different schools end up with a
different profile of children in terms of what
preference the school was for the child offered the
place (See below for examples). This can be used
to assess areas that may require focus.
B) Other interesting statistics – Secondary Pref
• Secondary applications are also relevant to primary
schools. The below data shows that year 6s from
different primary schools have varying success in
securing their first preference secondary school for
multiple different factors that can be explored
further.
B) Other interesting statistics – Secondary Pref (cont.)
• The tables below drill into the above data for an
example school to assess why people may not be
getting their first preference secondary
• In this example the main issue is that the children were
not able to go to COLA. Harris Academy Peckham is
where the most children went in the end.
Notes
• Please note that all statistics in this pack should only
be used in context and have several caveats
surrounding the time point they were created for
and how they deal with unusual cases. If you are
interested in further information on data related
issues or feel this data would be valuable for your
school then please contact Ric at ;
• [email protected]