Banding

Banding is the admissions and appeals record of a local authority's school admissions service — the file that decides which child gets which place, published in full. It holds the determined admission arrangements, the banding tests, the measured home-to-school distances, the allocation run on national offer day, the waiting lists as they re-rank, and every independent appeal panel determination with its reasons written out. The signature screen is the allocation plate. One oversubscribed school is opened out as a drawn catchment map: the school at the centre, applicant households marked at their measured straight-line distances, concentric distance rings at four-hundred-metre intervals, and the last distance offered drawn as an orange cut line with bearing ticks around it. The legend tells the reader to count the rings, and the rings are there to count. Beside the plate, the allocation ladder resolves every applicant in turn — criterion rank, ability band, distance in metres, and a verdict of OFFERED, WAITING LIST or REFUSED, each one naming the specific published criterion that produced it. The ladder's totals partition exactly: fifty-one offered, fifteen on the waiting list and two refused close against sixty-eight applicants, derived in a single pass so the parts sum to the whole by construction. Two genuinely contested cases, where the criteria conflict, are resolved in words beside the plate rather than left to the reader to infer. The surrounding modules make the system complete. Published admission arrangements set out each school's admission number and its criteria in strict priority order — looked-after children, exceptional medical or social need, sibling link, staff child, banding, distance — with the tie-breaker rule stated plainly. The banding module shows the ability-band distribution, how many applicants fell in each band and the per-band place quota. National offer day records offers made, first preferences satisfied, unplaced children and places remaining. Waiting lists re-rank on every withdrawal with the movement history preserved. The appeal panel lists hearings with their composition — lay member, education member, clerk — the two-stage test, the authority's case, the parent's case and the determination. Fair access protocol cases and in-year admissions sit alongside, and a login-gated parent portal shows one family their own application, offer and appeal. The design is Ordnance Survey cartographic plate engraving crossed with the mid-century British educational atlas: a parchment-ivory map stock, fine engraved contour and grid hairlines used as genuine layout rules, deep sepia-black engraving ink, a single Ordnance-orange reserved for criterion cut lines and a heath purple reserved for appeal determinations. Zilla Slab carries the display, Karla the interface, and Martian Mono every distance in metres. The landing page opens on the full catchment plate as its hero artefact with the verdict ladder already running beside it — a sticky-scroll document canvas, not a sidebar, not a top-rail app shell, and not a grid of equal cards. Remix Banding for any allocation that must be seen to be fair: social housing registers, clinical waiting lists, grant and bursary panels, selection and eligibility records, licensing ballots, or any process where a decision has to be traced back to a published rule and a measured distance.