Appologies in advance as I may ramble on a bit!
DD went into yr7 last year after having a fab time at her lovely primary school. It's been a complete disaster, she was being bullied by a group of girls within the first week & her friends from primary distanced themselves as they seemed more worried about fitting in than helping DD. School didn't seem to think there was a problem and did nothing to help.
DD became depressed, wasn't sleeping and was often too ill to go to school. I was suffering with anxiety over the situation and by christmas time, enough was enough and I decided to move her. We looked at 2 schools that had spaces, one was an outstanding comp, which seemed fab but would have meant quite a journey each day. The other was a new free school quite close to us which offered a small friendly environment, I knew it was a bit of a risk as it had no track record but was just desperate to get DD out of the bad situation.
Unfortunately I made the wrong decision, the school had a lot of children who had moved because of problems at other schools and there was a high percentage of children with behavioural problems and SEN. Because the school was so small, the classes were mixed ability and because DD is quite bright, she was repeating work she had done at primary and the work seemed like the level of the lowest sets at the comp. DD found the descipline at the school was very poorly managed and a lot of the children were running riot in the class and the teachers were just shouting with no effect. Because DD was still struggling with her issues from the previous school, she found it really distressing and was soon showing signs of illness again. In spring she began refusing to go to school and I had to seek help through our GP and CAMHS. The school couldn't offer any help and when the GP recommened they involve an ed psych they refused as it would come out of their budget. They complained that DD's absence was affecting their attendence record and said I should force her to come to school even though I explained she was ill (and I was also really strugggling by this stage) so I felt I had no option but to home educate her. I sent in an official letter to deregister her which I found through the Home Ed forum and sent it attached to an email as well as a paper copy through the post.
DD soon began to recover and although it's been difficult to manage with my work, our home ed experience has beeen really positive but DD has started to feel isolated as she only really gets to see friends occasionally and is missing some of the aspects of school you can't get so easily at home.
I made an application for her to go to the comp which initially seemed too far away (this doesn't seem so important now) and had to wait quite a while to hear that they didn't have a place but that I could apply under fair access protocol if DD fitted into their criteria of which she fitted 2 having had attendence problems and looking to return to school after a period of home ed. The counsellor from CAMHS wrote in to back up my application and I hoped it would all be straight forward but the admissions team say that they can't continue the application as the free school has never deregistered her from their roll, nor have they contacted education welfare about DD's attendence issues so their is no proof that she has missed any school. Admissions have tried to contact the school by post, email and phone to get an explaination but have not had any response. They say I cannot apply under fair access without this proof but they have offered a place at the HUGE comp wich is close to us but has a terrible reputation :( I just can't risk putting her into another bad situation after all that has happened.
Thanks If you've read this far, I hope someone can offer some insight and advice.
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Advice needed on admissions under fair access protocol please
6 replies
MaddestMother · 17/08/2013 16:01
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