Glossary of Terms

Admission Arrangements

‘Admission arrangements’ means the overall procedure, practices, criteria and supplementary information to be used in deciding on the allocation of school places and refers to any device or means used to determine whether a school place is to be offered.

Admission Authority

The admission authority is the body responsible for setting and applying a school’s admission arrangements. The local authority is the admission authority for all its community or voluntary controlled schools whereas for academies, foundation, free schools or voluntary aided (church) schools, the governing body or trust of the school is the admission authority.

Co-ordinated Admission Scheme

Co-ordination schemes are intended to simplify the admission process for parents and carers whilst reducing the likelihood of any child being left without a school place.local authorities are required to co-ordinate all applications to ensure, as far as practicable, that every parent of a child living in a local authority area who has applied for a school place is sent a single offer of a school place by their 'home' local authority.

Co-ordinated schemes must be consulted upon across all relevant admission authorities. Although individual admission authorities rank all applicants in order of priority for admission, offers are sent out by the local authority on 1 March for secondary pupils and on the local authority's agreed date for primary pupils.

Oversubscription Criteria

This is the list of criteria an admission authority must adopt for its school(s) which are used only when the school is oversubscribed to assess which children will be offered a place. Once determined, admissions criteria, including the admission number, must be published by the school and in the local authority composite prospectus (information booklets) by 12 September in the offer year.

Published Admissions Numbers

This is the number of school places that the admission authority must offer in each relevant age group of a school for which it is admission authority. Admission numbers are part of a school’s admission arrangements and must be consulted upon with the rest of a school’s admission arrangements and be published with those arrangements in the local authority composite prospectus (information booklets).