Appeal

Good news!!!

Let's hope there is some movement then if you are 6th on the list, although if anyone moves in to the area closer you'll move down not up.

When I appealed, the school's PAN was lower than yours and we were between 50 and 60 on the waiting list. I knew the chances were not good!

Hold your nerve @Nikkipez then. You might find you get a place before Sept, or soon after. Is the school you have been offered ok? Are there others you'd prefer (get on their waiting lists too if so)

What difference was your and your friends appeal? Is she closer? Did she win the appeal or just get offered on the waiting list? If you missed by 5 inches surely you must be 1st on the waiting list. There must be some hope.

Do you know where you are on the waiting list OP?
FWIW DD started in Sept at one school but got offered another - AMAZING school from the waiting list in Jan, which she now attends. She'd been 17th on the list. They rang us to offer the school that had been her number one choice two weeks later. People move and change a lot.

I think it is very wrong to give some people the result of their appeal before the rest of the appellants. Occasionally, when there have been mixed or in-year appeals, we have asked the clerk to ring a successful appellant, especially if they have another another appeal in the pipeline, but that doesn't happen very often.

Sorry it didn't go the way you'd hoped OP As I said, I found it all pretty stressful too and I didn't have high hopes of success.

Put your child on the waiting list as well.

Sorry to hear that :( what was the difference in the appeal between you and your friend? X

What was your friends reason for appealing? Was it the same points as you? X

We got a letter, within 2 days. But we knew our case was flimsy and we were unlikely to be successful.

Were your friend's grounds for appeal similar to yours?

Do you know where you are on the waiting list?

We got a letter (successful btw) and it was 13 calendar days / 9 School days later. There was a whole week of appeals for this particular school. I have never heard of phone call re outcome.
Didn't they inform you of how you would be informed at the individual hearing?

I had an email that I had to reply to, to confirm that it had been received (we were unsuccessful).

I did find the whole thing stressful as well although the actual panel members were lovely. Hope you are doing OK, OP.

My LEA doesn't call, too much scope for confusions and upset. They send a quick letter immediately saying yes or no, and a follow up a few days later with a full explanation of how the decision was reached.

Just calling the successful ones sounds an odd approach. Are you sure the story is correct?

Appeals are all well and good but larger classes do disadvantage all pupils. My ds primary class ended up way too large cos the class above was small. Horrendous in Y5 and 6 especially

Each appeal is a different appeal and the appeal panel is asked to decide an outcome on what evidence is presented at the appeal and in the written papers. As such the simple fact that the school admitted 108 on a PAN of 90 should not be given any weight into consideration by the panel. However the panel needs to understand the background to the admission of 108 pupils. If that was because an appeal panel admitted the 18 extra pupils then the panel should not give any weight to that decision other than wondering why they did that. An example would be the previous panel having discovered a serious failure in the admission process and the 18 were admitted because they should have been offered a place. The panel would definitely not in those circumstances give any weight to the numbers admitted.
However if the school made a decision themselves to admit the extra 18 then the panel needs to establish why the school did that and the obvious assumption must be that the school appears to believe that if they can run with 108 in the previous year group, why not 108 in the year group the appeals are for. The strength of the school's argument not to take above PAN this year will decide how much weight the panel will give to the numbers in the previous cohort.
As well as the simple numbers argument the panel needs to balance other aspects such as the size of classrooms, the narrowness or otherwise of corridors, the number of reportable accidents. To take up a previous comment about whether the presence of a TA working as a 1 to 1 is given consideration in the net capacity, the answer given by PRH is correct, it is not taken into consideration. However if the panel was given information that there were 30 in the class but there were 3 pupils each with 1 to 1 support in the class then that is evidence that has to be considered in deciding whether another pupil can be supported in that particular class, given how much space the 3 TAs will be taking up.

shouldwestayorshouldwego
I agree. The idea of 'but you want over PAN last year so this year you should take my child' always confuses me as an argument given that nobody but the school knows why the school went over.

Some year groups I've known have gone 3 or 4 over PAN but that was due to children in care moving care placements and having the entitlement to attend a strong school. It would make no sense for Mrs Blogs two years later to say 'yes but 2 years ago you were 3 over and managed' because 'managed' meant sitting 33 students in a room only big enough for 30 comfortably, limits on access to tools in practical lessons etc. We got by, but it's not a precedent to set. Say we took Mrs Blogs' child, does someone the year after then argue we should be 5 or 6 over using the same flawed logic?

If a school has children with SEN with 1-1 support in the class, does the physical space of the extra adult feature in classroom size calculations

Not for the purposes of calculating the school's capacity, no.