advice on a LGO complaint

[moonbeam99]

Could anyone please give me a bit of advice?

We took a complaint to the LGO about a primary school appeal for a number reasons that I rather not go into.

But, the LGO have pushed back claiming that our appeal was a clear case of infant class size prejudice. However, at the time of our appeal the school had a PAN of 28 and they had admitted 28 children. There were 10 appeals and 2 were successful. Taking the one class intake up to the infant class size limit. As far as I can see the rejection letter for our appeal made no reference to infant class size prejudice and stated the following:

"The panel has accepted that if all of those appeals were granted it would prejudice the provision of efficient education or the efficient use of resources. It was, therefore necessary to decide whether your appeal should be granted having regard to the degree of prejudice to the school by admitting one or more pupils, to the competing claims for places at the school and the particular grounds for your appeal.

The panel has decided not to grant your appeal because it accepted that it would be detrimental to the education provision for the children already allocated places for all the children for whom appeals had been received to be admitted. The panel did not accept that your case was sufficiently compelling to outweigh the likely problems that could be caused by the admission of more children to the school."

Isn't this a case of prejudice to the school and not infant class size limit prejudice? Any advice would really help.

Many thanks

[prh47bridge]

As the PAN is 28, this starts out as an ordinary prejudice case. However, since the panel admitted two children it is now an infant class size case. If the LGO ordered a second appeal it would be heard under infant class size rules, which means you would be unlikely to win unless you could show that the LA made a mistake. Without knowing the details of your case it is difficult to comment further.

[moonbeam99]

Thanks for this. Just to clarify when we failed the original appeal - did we fail on infant class size prejudice grounds? i.e. is the description above in our rejection letter giving by the council - on infant class size prejudice grounds? Thanks

[admission]

Moonbeam,
The rejection was on the basis of an "ordinary" appeal rather than an infant class size appeal, based on the wording. However the panel would have been aware of the ICS Regs restriction and it could have been that the panel were initially minded to admit more than 2 of the appeals, as meeting the threshold for admission. That is the prejudice to the pupil was greater than the prejudice to the school.

Under those circumstances the panel would then have had review all those cases and decide which were the 2 that could have been admitted. That may explain the LGO's comments that it was an ICS case, because if your appeal was not one of the two agreed appeals it would then have become an ICS case.

AS PRH says any further appeals would now be ICS as the class has 30 in it.

[moonbeam99]

Thank you both for you advice.