Urgent advice needed, appeal in Harrow

The kind of things you can do to weaken the case are: measure the classrooms, to show they have capacity for more students or as was done at my son's school, show that there was historically more children at the school. The other thing to do is to get a copy of the admission guidance and make sure you know whether they do have such a thing as feeder schools in your borough.

You can also get yourself put on the waiting list of any other State school which you prefer to the school you have been offered (including the one you are appealing for).

I wouldn't mention private schools or your son needing to be academically challenged. But do mention any special interests of your son that can be met by the chosen school, including extra-curricula clubs etc.

I would not bother getting a professional. You have expressed yourself very clearly so I am sure you will have no problem with an appeal panel. You will get plenty of free advice on here from people who know the admissions and appeals processes and the relevant codes inside out. I therefore doubt that a professional will help and they could do more harm than good. Our advice may even be better than the book you are getting!

The main question at the appeal will be, as janeyjampot says, whether the damage to your son's education from not attending this school outweighs the damage to the school from being forced to admit an additional pupil. The term used is prejudice - the authority will argue that admitting your son to the school will prejudice the school, you will argue that not admitting him will prejudice his education.

Saying all his friends are going to the preferred school is not usually a compelling case. You need to explain why this is more important for your son than for other children. As Janey says, look at things that the preferred school has which are missing from the allocated school and which will be beneficial for your son. Concentrate your case on what is good about this school, not on how awful the allocated school is. It may be the worst school in the country but I'm afraid that doesn't help you at appeal.

The other thing you will need to do is weaken the LA's case that admitting your son will cause prejudice. There probably isn't much you can do on that right now but you will receive the LA's case before the appeal. If you post an outline of it on here you will get help to find the weaknesses in their case and come up with awkward questions to ask.

I didn't want to leave your post unanswered as I was in the same position as you this time last year and can remember the desperation!

There are some very knowledgeable people on here who will be able to give you great advice. However, in the meantime, I think the general advice is first to check that there hasn't been a mistake - was your son in the right admissions category, have they got your address right, has the distance been measured correctly?

If all that seems right then your appeal will only succeed if the panel concludes that your son will suffer more than the school will if they admit him. You can't be negative about the school you've been allocated in your appeal. Look at the prospectus for the school you want and draw up a list of reasons why it's the right school for your son (specialist status, any special services/clubs/languages/sports they offer that are things your son could particularly excel at).

I hope that helps as a stop-gap. I'm sure someone with more specialist knowledge will be along soon .