I'm hoping to get some advice on a secondary school appeal. There's a longer backstory as to the reasons why, but my husband and I took our kids out of school last year and homeschooled them whilst we travelled abroad. We told the council and the school of our intentions and we didn't leave the country until after we had made the school application.
We provided all the correct information, my son sat the banding exam and we only applied for the one school because it's the school we want my son to go to and it's literally across the street. It's a 180 pupil intake and because we are so close we knew we would get in on distance (and I checked with the school before the application went in).
We had a call from the council in December when they were processing the application and wanted our address overseas which we were unable to give. We don't have an overseas address - our home is still our home. We still live in it, we're on the electoral roll there etc - we're travelling, we haven't moved abroad.
Initially the council threatened to pull the application altogether. They then said they they would use our home address for the application because he doesn't have a fixed one, but that they would not allow it to be used in the distance criteria. So because of this period of time spent out of the country, the council are saying my son is not resident there and so we have lost our place. We've been offered a school that my son would have to get a bus to, in an area of London which is constantly in the news at the moment for knife crime (I know we can't use that in the appeal).
We are appealing, on the basis that the council have not fairly applied their criteria but I haven't written the appeal yet and wondered if anyone could offer me any advice? I'm finding this really confusing and I don't know how we can define our "residency" other than the usual bills/Drs letter/council tax etc, all of which I submitted with the original application. There's nothing in the application that says we must physically have been in the country for a certain amount of days prior to the 2019 start of term. We told the council 6 months before we left and had no idea this would be an issue. The school we applied to has no problem with it but has no jurisdiction.
I know there are a lot of people on Mumsnet who have lots of experience with the appeals process - I'm really anxious about what to say and would really appreciate any advice. We are still abroad, due to come back at the beginning of July but I plan to fly back for the appeal.
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Secondary school appeal advice - time spent out of the country has lost us a place
71 replies
MrsZuko · 10/03/2019 23:34
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