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I would go for the latter structure myself. You need to explain why this is the best school for your child. The second structure you suggest makes it easy for the appeal panel to join the dots.

/\ P.S. Not ICS.

If you have a long appeals letter with lots of points to make, would you structure it as:
1) Describing my child (all points)
2) Arguing my the aimed school is best for him (all points)
3) What could happen if he had to go to another school (all points)
although this will inevitably involve some repetition.

OR would you structure it so that it has each point separately with everything:
1) POINT A (including the description of the problem/reason/characteristic followed directy by why this school is best for THIS point and no other school)
2) POINT B (description of point, connection to this school, no other school)

and so on.

Unfortunately we seem to be hearing more stories of LAs that seem to forget that parents are the customer. If they can't answer such a simple question it naturally raises questions as to whether or not the waiting list is being managed properly.

prh47bridge Wed 08-May-13 22:18:15 : No they cant ! My LA cannot tell me as it is too much work and I have to wait until the second allocation to be made aware of where I am in the list ! Very rich council but pathetic attitude - S.B.D.Council - So the correct statement would be: "the LA can tell you but they dictate when and is almost always too late !"

Thanks for the swift reply, will do that tomorrow, appeal a work in progress, not sure what to write. Offer letter does not state on what grounds she didn't get the places though, will LA tell me that too? Thanks

The LA can tell you where your daughter is on the waiting list. If the school is in a neighbouring LA you may need to contact them rather than your home LA.

Hello My daughter is due to start Reception in Sept, she is almost 5, we did not get first or second choice of schools but did get the 3rd. I have no wish to send her to the 3rd choice school as it is has had a very poor Ofsted report. We have submitted re-allocation forms and are in the process of appealing, in case reallocation is unsuccessful. My daughter is a bright little thing (I know we all say this) She can write well, spell out words and do simple sums. Looking at the previous posts has helped answer some questions but not all. How do you find out how far up a waiting list you are? Should I ring the LA and find get some advise? The school/s we would have like to send her to are in the neighbouring LA. All this is driving me mad! I never had any problems getting my older children into school. Please help! Thanks in advance

prh47bridge thank you so much!!! I'm sorry I'm afraid I don't know how to do that (to PM you)... Is it by clicking the "Message poster"? I will try this.

If you PM me the details I will advise.

Great advice on this thread many thanks to those advising.

Our younger son didn't get a place at the primary school his brother attends (Yr2). We are appealing on medical/social grounds and I was hoping for some advice about our chances and how to argue our case but don't want to put our family's personal stuff out in the public, can anyone advise on whom I could ask privately? I realise I may have to pay for this but I need to get started somewhere. Thank you so much!!!

The LA should put your son on the waiting list for your preferred schools but it doesn't always happen. I would call them and check.

I have messaged before but have another quick question.

My son was not allocated any Local Authority school but did get an offer at a free school with first intake this September (separate application). We have now accepted the free school offer as we have no other option. But we would still prefer the local authority school which is closer and, had the free school been on our list, it would have been a lower choice.

Will our son automatically be placed on the waiting lists of the schools we listed on the LA form or do I have to call to have him added to each waiting list?

Thanks again for all your expert advice!

If you are in England everything you have been told is wrong I'm afraid. You had to apply for places by 15th January. And the receptionist was quite wrong to say that children in the nursery would automatically be registered. You always have to apply for a place.

The problem you have is that it is up to you to apply on time. It is not up to the school or the LA to make sure you do so. The appeal panel may be sympathetic but equally they may feel that other parents from the nursery managed to apply on time despite any misinformation from the receptionist so there is no reason why you could not have done so.

The big question as always with a Reception appeal is whether or not this is an infant class size case. If the school has any classes with 30 children in Reception, Y1 or Y2 it will be an infant class size case. That means there are only limited grounds on which you can win. Those grounds have been repeated several times on this thread and elsewhere but basically you would need to show that a mistake has been made. Your best chance in that case would be to argue that you were misled by the receptionist and that you would have got a place if you had been given correct information. Personally I think that is a long shot but it is worth a try.

If it is not infant class size you need to show how your son will be disadvantaged through not attending this school so your third and fourth points come into play.

Hi, Just wanted a little advice on my situation
My son is 4 and has been attending a very good school nursery, he is my 2nd child (my daughter is 19)
In Oct I noticed a poster about registering your child for places and promptly went into the school office and spoke to the receptionist asking her how to register my son for a place at the school. I was informed that I didn't have to do anything as all children that were in nursery would automatically be registered.
Obviously this is not the case and my son went completely unregistered until allocation day, when i started seeing people's status's on f/b about schools. I phoned the school-who told me to speak to the local council and was told that i should have registered him before 31st Jan.
I registered him that day and have since been offered a place at a school that would have been my 2nd choice as the school we wanted was full. I do intend to appeal on the grounds that
1. I was given the wrong information (being 45 I had no reason to think that the information was wrong or that the system had changed since my daughter (19) went to school)
2, I live well within the catchment area of said school
3 My son has suffered with a lac of confidence and has only just started to communicate with the teachers,this has been an ongoing problem since play school and both the teachers and I have worked hard to build up this relationship.
4. I feel it would be detrimental for his development to change schools at this time and question why he should have to do so when a misstake was made by the school's office staff .... (I have notified head teacher who was very unhappy and said she would speak to the staff member in question and also change the policy for letting people know about the registration proses....
No letter or information about registering for places at schools was ever presented.
I would be very grateful for any advice or your thoughts!
Sometimes it sucks to be an older mum! :0/

The other point to make is that they don't have to get to the maximum class size before stopping admissions. They only have to get to the admission number - 16 in this case. With that admission number they could, for example, run two mixed classes of 24. That would be enough places for all three years in Infants. That would mean the school is full but it is not an infant class size case.

hinky - the class size rules apply to mixed classes too so they cannot exceed a total of 30 children made up of YR-Y2 age groups. A class of 16 YR mixed with 14 Y1 children is classed as being full.

If there is a class with just 16 YR children (not mixed with others), future prejudice may apply i.e. those children will be mixed next year with 14 current Year 1 children to form a class of 30 so again the maximum will apply even if it doesn't right now. This means it is still an ICS case.

Or if the class size is genuinely 16 and won't exceed this before Year 3 then this isn't an ICS appeal and is the kind that is easier to win i.e. you do not need to prove an admissions error.

Hi we've just submitted an appeal and we are (or were last week) number 1 on the waiting list. But reading all this I'm rather confused at the reason we've been turned down. We had to put in a late application as we've just moved into the area but our first choice was refused just with n/a under infant class size. The school takes 16 children in reception as they have mixed year classes. I thought it was because the max class size had been reached but that wouldn't seem right with an admission number of 16.

uneedme - The letter you got telling you that you did not get in should state the reasons. If it was a question of distance it should include the distance they used for you and the distance for the last child admitted. If you are unclear tell us what the letter says and you will get an explanation. With the children that live further there could be several reasons why they got in ahead of you but it depends on the school's admission criteria. Without knowing which school we are talking about it is impossible to list the reasons in detail. One obvious point is the way distances are measured. For example, they may have further to walk to school than you but if they use straight line distance for admissions purposes these other children may be closer to the school than you.

Thank you, I had a feeling I was clutching at straws. I don't want to waste my time and the appeal panel's and go through the stress if we're not likely to have a chance.

We've already told our son where he's likely to be going, and the school we've been given does have up sides. It is close, so hopefully his friends will live nearby and our next door neighbour is a TA there in reception.

I'm hoping that school has taken it's Ofsted report seriously (it was pretty ropey!) and that we can give him any extra support he needs at home if the teaching standards haven't improved. I guess I'll just have to get used to the religious element.

Thanks again for your help!

From what I can make out the only grounds I didnt get into was distance. I had all my papers signed by the priest. I know the other children quiet well (we live in a smallish town) they have no siblings or SEN's

It can indicate a mistake.
And a mistake is the only real grounds for a successful YR appeal with 30 per class so yes it does open up that possibility

BUT you need to look at the admissions criteria carefully first.
People living further away can beat you to a place quite fairly if they are in a higher admissions category than you eg they have a sibling at the school, have an adopted child, have a child with a statement or medical need, have attended church longer (this is an admission criteria at some faith schools eg 2 years beats 1 year), if they live inside the parish but you live outside (despite you being closer to the school), if the measurements are taken from the church not the school and they live closer to the church.....

You should be able to find the admission criteria online.
If after looking at these, you are fairly sure that the people given a place aren't in a higher category but got a place when you didn't then you need to ask some questions to see what has happened eg did the school know you meet the faith criteria, have they lost the form your vicar signed and put you in the wrong category by accident.
Once you found out which category you were placed in, you should be able to see if a mistake has been made. If it has, you can win an appeal on those grounds.

Sorry to jump on the thread. looking for some advice. My dc didnt get into the faith school I wanted. I met the church criteria but didnt get in on distance. They sent me a letter stating the maximum distance they accepted to and im a few meters above this. However there are a couple of children in his nursery class that live further than this distance. I have spoken about this to them as I am friendly with them. They say they are as confused as I am.

Is this grounds for appeal?

Have to agree with Tiggytape that your grounds fro appeal are unlikely to be successful. Unreasonable to you is not unreasonable in a strict definition of the law, which is a completely perverse decision, which allocation of a faith school rather than a community school is not.
You do not say what you have done but if possible I would accept the school offered, it is the local school. I would then establish exactly what level of faith commitment there is - in some faith schools it is very very low key and as Tiggytape says you can opt out of the daily religious service which by law all schools have to have.

Fleebabes - religious convictions (or lack of) aren't grounds to win an Infant Class Size appeal. So if the schools you want have classes of 30 in YR - Y2, then you would not win on these grounds.

You can though opt your child out of religious education and worship if you wish though and this is your right even at a faith school.

It also applies to community schools since, even though they aren't tied to churches, all community schools in England have to have broadly Christian worship everyday so aren't as non-religious as you may assume. In fact some of them make amore of the worship aspects than church schools. Again though, you can ask for yoru child not to take part in this.

The unreasonable section you refer to deals with extreme cases where, although the admissions criteria was correctly applied, the outcome is so unreasonable as to be irrational eg cases involving witness protection and child protection issues where the LAs decision is against all reason and cannot be allowed to stand.

If there are less than 30 per class in any of the schools you want, you may have more grounds to make a case but you cannot appeal against faith schools, you'd have to appeal for the school you want. If you could make a strong case, and if class size was below 30, you could appeal on those grounds.