Location based Priority of Access Options

After first considering high priority children (as defined by the Department of Education), Service Providers can choose to apply locally agreed criteria to prioritise children and determine the order in which offers are made. Many service providers use location based rules such as residential proximity as one of these locally agreed criteria. These rules differ by council / kindergarten, this article outlines the various options that EnrolNow can support through our automated scoring rules. 

Closest Service

The Closest Service fields are  care period specific and are calculated separately for the current (TY) and next (NY) care periods.

For each care period, the child's address is compared against all services with an active program in the relevant program type for that child during that care period. The service located closest to the child's address is recorded in the corresponding TY/NY Closest Service to Address field.

This value is then compared to the child's first preferenced service for the same care period. Where the Closest Service to Address matches the first preferenced service, the corresponding TY/NY Closest Service field is automatically set to TRUE and can be used in scoring rule calculations.

Proximity (Residency within a defined zone)

Generally used for Local Government Areas (LGA) in situations where a child is given priority if their residential address falls within that residential area. A KML File must be provided by the customer which acts to define the boundaries of the area which should be classified as the priority area. 

When registrations are received the child's address is compared to the area defined by the KML file and where the address falls within the defined area the child is marked as Resident = TRUE

Postcodes

Used by independent kindergartens who may not have access to a KML file to define LGA boundaries. 

Rules can be defined in your system to define a specific list of postcodes where the child resides which should be provided with priority. Any child who's address is within one of the defined postcodes will be automatically updated to Proximity (Postcode) = TRUE.

Radius / Distance to Service

Used by LGA's or Independent Kindergartens to provide priority to children where the residential address is within a defined distance of the service

• LGA's / Groups: The "Distance to Service" is calculated as the distance between a child's address and the 1st preferenced service for next year. 
• Independent Kindergartens: The "Distance to Service" is calculated as the distance between the child's address and the Kindergarten

Rules can be defined in your system to define what distance should be provided with priority. For example, some customers define that any child within 2km of the service should be prioritised. In this case, any child where the Distance to Service is 2km or less will be automatically marked as Proximity (Radius) = TRUE.