Our school’s admissions officer has suddenly had to return to her home country at very short notice, and I’ve been given the job of somehow holding down the fort for a few months, and we’re not sure she’ll be able to return…
We’re working to find a permanent replacement soon, but in the meantime what things do I need to be doing right now to make sure I’m doing the job right? I don’t want to miss any deadlines / get anything wrong…
Any advice, other than perhaps to suddenly take a leave of absence myself?
The biggest thing to get your head around at the moment in admissions Natalie is National Offer Day which is March for secondary and April for Primary.
Your LA will confirm which students will be joining your school in the new academic year (Sept 2023) on National Offer Day. However the data you’ll get is very top line. It will be downloadable in a CSV ATF or CTF file - mine came via a secure portal called SAM
Worth me flagging, the data was often out of date and it’s only top line information eg: pupil name, DOB and parents communication info… but we as a school need to know so much more - any SEN, medical, photo permissions, FSM etc which I’m sure you’ll need to know too… happy to share what we used.
Think now about how you are going to contact those new families and collect data - paper or digital - I moved to digital so much more efficient and much quicker. Looks far more professional and you can communicate the day you receive the data if you’re all set up which makes you look really efficient!
Hope this helps - my advice is to plan ahead - National Offer Day will be here before you know it and you need to be ready!
