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 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. This shows that demand in Camberwell schools has been increasing and the LA has been securing more places.

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 ;