The Published Admission Number (PAN)
Every school has a legal Published Admission Number (PAN) applicable to the year of entry, which indicates the maximum number of places available in the year group concerned.
Please see the Somerset School and Academy information and statistics document to find out the PAN for each school.
The PAN is set to maximise parental preference within the resources and accommodation available.
If there are fewer applications than the PAN every child will be allocated a place. But if a school receives more applications than the PAN (over-subscribed) the published over-subscription criteria will be applied to determine which children should be offered the available places.
Places will be allocated using the ‘Equal Preference with Ranking’ method. This requires the admissions authority to consider all preferences received for a particular school (first, second and third) equally, and where the school is over-subscribed apply the over-subscription criteria. Where more than one of your preferences can be met the local authority will offer you a place at your highest-ranked preference.
Unfortunately, at some schools, there will not be enough places for all the children whose parents would like them to go there. When all places have been allocated up to the PAN , the admission authority may refuse any further requests.
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What you should do if your child has not been offered a place at one or more of your preferred schools
It may not be possible for the admission authority to offer your child a place at your highest preference school, however, you may still be offered a place at your second or third preference school. On some occasions, it may not be possible for an admissions authority to offer your child a place at any of your preferred schools. If this is the case, we would normally offer the catchment school if there are places available. If this is not the case, we would try to offer a place at the nearest alternative school with places available within statutory walking distance of the child’s home address (3 miles for children aged 8 years and over).
Admission arrangements and over-subscription criteria
For Voluntary Aided (VA) and Foundation (F) schools, the governing body is the admissions authority and for Free Schools (FS) and Academies (A), the Academy Trust are the admissions authority. For VC and C schools the local authority is the admission authority.
The admission arrangements for VC and C schools can be found on Our admission arrangements page. The best way to find the admission arrangements for own admission authority schools and academies is to look on the school website but we also have links to the admission policies for each school on our Find a school page. Just search for the school you are interested in and click on the admissions policy link.
All admission decisions will be made in accordance with the published admission arrangements for the school or academy in question. Parents are encouraged to read the criteria for the schools they are considering.
Schools and Academies in Somerset
Here is a full list of all secondary phase schools in Somerset and the Published Admission Number for each school. The different types are:
- Secondary Schools – age 11 to 16 or 18 years
- Upper Schools – age 13 to 16 or 18 years
- All through schools – age 4 to 16
Allocation summaries for September 2024
You can find a summary of how the places were allocated at schools for September 2024 on our School allocation summaries page.
Abbreviations
A – Academy
C – Community School
F – Foundation School
FS – Free School
VA – Voluntary Aided School
VC – Voluntary Controlled School
PAN – Published Admission Number
For a full explanation, see our School admission terms and meanings page.