When you first look at the Isle of Wight secondary school admission data released today – officially called the ‘DfE Preference Report, excluding lates and statemented’ – it’s quite confusing to grasp what’s going on. Not surprisingly as it’s attempting to put a lot of data over.
We’ve had a little time to look over it now and have gathered the following findings, which we thought you might find interesting.
Total number of pupils this year
The total number of pupils who applied for a first choice school place was 1,100 (IWC confirmed). Of those, 998 gained their first choice, that’s 91%.
Historically, there are a small number of people on the Island who do not apply at all (called ‘Lates’), so are allocated where places are available.
Individual school over-capacity
The largest gap between the number of places allocated and places available is at Sandown Bay Academy, where over-supply of places is at 58%.
Carisbrooke College will have the smallest year group at 107.
Second and third choices
602 pupils specified a second choice. The greatest number of these were at Medina College (188). Christ the King (CtK) had 117.
Medina also had the highest number of third choice applications, at 76. Across all schools, in total 181 people specified a third choice.
Excess places across IW
The total number of places available across all schools is 1,631.
That gives an extra 48% of places available over the 1,100 that applied – viewed alternatively, that’s a third of the available places that are unused and therefore over-capacity.
Christ The King
Given the level of applications to Christ The King, it’s worth looking at the details.
312 pupils selected CtK as their first choice. 247 of those were accepted.
Unravelling second choice at CtK
As mentioned previously, 117 people put CtK as their second choice – seemingly over-hopeful given the number of people who put it down at first choice, but for ten of them it paid off, as they were given places.
Looking just at the number, it’s not immediately obvious why there were any places available to those who put CtK as second choice.
OnTheWight chatted to CtK, who told us, it was down to people who had put the Free School as their first choice, but didn’t gain places there. These people has CtK as their second choice and scored very highly on the CtK admission criteria – eg regular church-going baptised Catholics.
Overviewing the numbers, through a process of elimination (270 capacity – 257 given places), there were 13 places left after the first and second choices were filled.
These will be filled by ten statemented children who will be going to CtK, the highest number on the IW. The three remaining places went to people on the waiting list.
Update 14:05 – Re-wrote the CtK section after extra detail received on the statemented numbers and second choicers.
Image: horiavarlan under CC BY 2.0
