Appeal hearing this week - help please!

[MUMMYAB]

Hi There!
I have my appeal hearing this week and have recieved the written statement of the local authority which states that it is based on infant class sizes. The PAN for the schools is 90 but then goes on to mention subsequently one additional place was offered to an on-time applicant whose child had a sibling already at the school but di not provide the full required details on the parental preference at the time of application. The number of places offered was therefore 91. It says that the admissions authority and the school anticipate that the numbers in the year group will fall back to PAN as offers made may not be taken up or people make alternative arrangements.

Does this have any relevance to my appeal?

I am appealing on the groups of having another child with a CF and relying upon my close friends who have children at the school to look after my sonn should my other daughter be admitted to hospital etc, but is it relevant that they have already gone above the PAN?

Thanks, any advice is really appreciated.

[prh47bridge]

It sounds a little bit naughty in that they should only admit without an appeal if the LA has made a mistake whereas it seems they have admitted on the basis of a mistake by the parents. Rather than admitting the child in the expectation that some offers were not taken up they should have jumped him or her to the head of the waiting list.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of what has happened, I'm afraid it isn't relevant to your appeal. If they are still over PAN in September they will count this child as an excepted child, which means this child doesn't count towards the infant class size limit. Your case is therefore still infant class size. That means you should only win your appeal if you can show that a mistake has been made and your child should have been admitted. You don't seem to be suggesting that there has been a mistake so I'm afraid I would expect your appeal to fail, although you may be lucky and get a sympathetic panel that is prepared to stick its neck out for you.

Good luck.

[PanelMember]

I agree with prh47bridge.

The LEA has not followed the admissions code and has given this extra child a place when it should (strictly speaking) have placed the child at the top of the waiting list (with any other siblings who didn't get a place in the initial allocation) and then filled any vacancy after it arose, not before. Be that as it may, you will only win your appeal if you can point to an error in handling your child's application. If anything, the LEA's error makes your appeal harder to win, because the panel will know that the school is already (potentially) one over the ICS limit.

[admission]

The LA have done something they should not have done, as explained by PRH and panelmember. It does not have any direct relevance to you appeal in terms of there now being 91 in the year group in theory. The 91st member will be treated as an excepted pupils for the school year and therefore no action needs to be taken by the school. The LA is probably right in that over the next 12 months there will be some movement in pupils to bring the numbers down to 90 again but there is no guarantee.

Possibly the comment to make to you is that if the LA is prepared to "bend" the rules over this pupil, what else have they also bent the rules on? So I would be very interested in how did they treat any other late applications against the rules laid down in their admission book. Also do they expect parents to confirm acceptance of places and have they done that in line with what it says in their book. All of these would constitute mistakes having been made in the admission arrangements which may potentially have disadvantaged your child from being offered a place, either in the original allocation or subsequently from the waiting list. This obviously presumes that you are high up on the waiting list, if however you are 201 on the waiting list it is not likely to apply.