Harris Crystal Palace appeals experience anyone?

Does anyone have any information on the new Harris Beckenham proposals, and has anyone actually won a Harris appeal in the past- seems like the odds are stacked against you with schools jargon etc..

Hi All.
I'm very interested indeed in this thread. ACADEMY!!!!! When looking into my options regarding my school placement I recieved many HORROR stories about the Law of the ACADEMY School. There is an Academy school about 6 miles away from us. We went on a parents evening there last year. It was amazing. They had re-invented!!!!! an old school that in my opinion was one of the worst schools in the area.

However I was shocked by the amount of mouthy undisirables who attended the parents evening. I am not snobbish but the kids were f*in and GE*fin, I was PUT OFF to say the least. It seemed that most were locals who lived in the area. SORRY!!!! but it's a fact.

However!!! I was amazed at the grades they achieved last year. 94% pass rate???????? WAS THIS CORRECT???????
I was informed "NOT". Can some one clarify this!!!!
Is it true that they only put through (Sitting GCSE test) the pupils they know will get good grades and don't put through the ones who they know won't, so it doesn't show on the Schools OFFICIAL Tables??????

Also I find this Pulling kids names out a hat a bit of a farce. I heard they look at what primary schools they come from too.
My friends daughter goes to a local primary school who's pupils learning fair average. fifteen pupils applied for this academy as first choice, NONE were excepted. My daughters school is a small Village school with excellent learning and great Ofsted report. Three pupils applied and they ALL got in.

Does anyone know if this is true.

Dear St Olaf,
I'm curious to know how you are getting on with your appeal for Harris CP academy. I'm a mum who also hoped her child would go there, and like you we were unsuccessful. I didn't appeal in the end, but her name did go on the waiting list (although it gets dropped off the list in August). I too thought the admissions process completely baffling and complex. The fact that it's a lottery makes it really really tricky.
I remember the madness and horror of the open evening (narrow corridors, hordes of eager parents, bad acoustics during the headteacher's speech) and testing days (so many children!too many at once). Yes it was organised, but it still seemed chaotic and you could see it was hard for the school, with the space it had, to cope with the sheer numbers.

Out of the schools I visited, it didnt score highly for me, compared to others, on good organisation / a welcoming atmosphere / good facilities/buildings etc, but I went on the OFSTED report and of course the exam results.

One of my daughter's classmates got in but has said she is not enjoying it and has experienced aggressive behaviour from some other pupils, though we don't know any other details or how the school dealt with it.
My daughter got into a school further away/harder to get to but it's a good school and was our 3rd choice.
I hope you are successful. Another thing to think about is that during the school year there are occasionally pupils who leave (I know that Harris CP permanently excluded a year ago, there may possibly be more exclusions than this but I don't know). This would presumably mean that a space then becomes available.
I don't of course know what other schools were on your list of 6, but I'd also try Kingsdale school's waiting list/appeal system. Also the other Harris in South Norwood has improved recently going by its OFSTED, and possibly the OASIS academy further away in Shirley/Woodside area.

Best of luck! :)

You may be interested to know that Kelsey Park School for Boys in Beckenham has just agreed to becoming a Harris co-ed academy from September this year. There should be spaces available as the school is usually undersubscribed. This might be an option for you?

I agree with PRH, the mumbo-jumbo is simply their way of handling the start up of the school with only having year 7 pupils. As the years have moved forward they have now got / getting to the point of having pupils in each year group.
The way it was done was to limit the number of pupils that could be admitted in any year group, given that the school could actually take a lot more pupils because of the absence of other year groups. I think that this was a sensible policy as it stopped massive numbers of pupils in some of the year groups.
Don't worry about doing an essay on the reasons for the appeal, these can be put in later, just state that you believe that your child would benefit from going to Harris because ....... and then say you will expand on this later when you have other relevant information.

The short answer is no. It simply indicates the process being used for admission to years other than the normal year of entry. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with it. As you are applying for the normal year of entry it is not relevant.

On your earlier question, on the appeal form you should concentrate on the reasons you believe this is the right school for your son - what are the features this school has which are not present in the allocated school and which will be of particular use to your son. The questions you've asked the school are more about finding holes in the case to refuse admission. You can bring that up at appeal when the school present their case. It doesn't have to be in your initial submission. You can also submit additional evidence (and, indeed, change your written case) at any time prior to the appeal, although you shouldn't leave it to the last minute. The one thing you should avoid doing is turning up to the hearing with significant documentary evidence that you haven't sent in previously as that may result in the appeal being adjourned to allow the panel and the school to read this new evidence.

Go for it. When the case to refuse admission arrives post an outline of it here and you will get plenty of help in coming up with awkward questions to ask. You will also get plenty of help in making your own case as good as possible.

What a nightmare of a system, my head hurts already just reading it.
The school does have to end up with a 90/10 ratio of zone a/ zone b because that is what the admission criteria says will happen, but they do seem to be making it awfully complicated. I don't understand how it can be an "intention" it says places wil be allocated in that ratio, so it is requirement.
What is not clear is how the 10% of places for pupils with aptitude for technology are chosen, other than this seems to be before the banding exercise. The admission number of 180 and with 9 bands, it does not take a genius to work out that this means that for each band the number of pupils is 20, that is you end up with 18 from zone a and 2 from zone b.

As you say, this seems ridiculously complex. However, the complexity of the system does not of itself give you a case for appeal. But it increases the scope for mistakes. And if they haven't followed exactly the system described in their admission arrangements the appeal panel should sit up and take note. That doesn't necessarily mean your appeal would succeed, of course, but every little helps.

The odds are better than you think. Some of the applicants will have received offers from schools they wanted more than this one. Most of the failed applicants will not appeal. And the appeal panel only has to consider those that do appeal.

The process stated seems unnecessarily convoluted and still doesn't say anything about how they handle the waiting list. Admission's other questions are still valid - how exactly are lots drawn and how can they prove that your child was included.

They had better answer the question about the waiting list. They have to publish their admission arrangements. That includes how they will administer the waiting list.

For your information, Admission regularly sits on and chairs appeal panels. You may also hear from Panelmember who also sits on appeal panels. I don't sit on appeal panels but I do know the admissions and appeal processes pretty well for my sins.

If you want to really start asking awkward questions then the two to ask are firstly what is the process undertaken to choose the successful pupils in each band and how do they prove that process was undertaken. Second question how can they prove that your child's name was in the velvet bag (or whatever process that they have) because you think that they missed it out!
I would suggest that you keep those for the appeal or at least until a bit further down the process and you can see how things are going. One thing I would ask now is how if you are on the waiting list are places allocated as and when they become available. I will be very interested to see what they say as this is a bit of a grey area.

Agree, make sure you are on Harris CP waiting list. You might get in that way - my DS did, 3 years ago.

St Marys is one of the council's fallbacks because it is undersubscribed. There are plenty of non-Catholic kids there - both the ones I know are Muslim. It is a crappy but improving school and it might be worth talking to the school to find out how Catholic it is in practice and whether you would really find it impossible. I have to say I wouldn't send my kids there but any level of faithiness is a dealbreaker for me. The dealbreaker for a lot of the middleclass Catholic parents is that it is not at all a middleclass school.

You could also see if you could get into one of the other Harris schools in the borough or Harris Merton. They are not in anything like the same league as Crystal Palace but they are likely to improve over the coming years.