Dr challoners headteacher

Tbh if you only had tenants from December 2016 the LA may well use that date regardless of whether your family was resident elsewhere beforehand. If you accepted RGS you should have withdrawn your application for other schools at the same time.

The Head can be on the admissions committee. It just can't be left solely for the Head to decide.

The crux is that you should have provided all the correct information and evidence when they requested it. You did not do this.

Trying to then provide it later after the horse has bolted seems futile.

What I am trying to say is that it is your mistake that has led to this, not a problem with the head or the admissions code. You must admit it looks terribly suspicious that you are trying to change a date that you submitted to one that conveniently matches the admissions criteria. The school has not made any error.

Based on the information you provided you owned another property within 20 miles of the school but did not meet the 4 year cut off based on the date you provided. How is that the fault of anyone other than yourself, and on what grounds are you appealing, other than you made a mistake?

An admissions panel will also wonder why all of a sudden you miraculously remembered that you didn’t move in December but actually in August - exactly one month before you needed to.

Dr Challoners is one of the most oversubscribed schools in the county. Why would they offer your son a place when they are already full to the seams and have followed the admissions code correctly? Saying that you made a mistake, decided to not fill in the SIF despite being emailed to remind you do to it and are now changing your dates to fit the admissions code really doesn’t look great for your case.

As an aside, we were also offered our third choice grammar. I wasn’t very happy initially but it’s outside my control and we were given a grammar place. Trying to fight something just on the basis of personal preference was not going to be good for either us as parents or my child.

Apologies if I have made an error regarding the boarding place and timings at RGS. Our local state boarding schools make their offers on the same day as non boarding schools.

You own another property within 20 miles of the school. That is the address that Challoners will use and this is very clearly stated in their admissions policy. It makes no difference whether or not it is tenanted and again this is clearly stated in their admissions policy.

It is clear the admissions policy has been followed correctly and you have not been offered a place accordingly.

Your new address is therefore wholly irrelevant and you would not win an appeal based on that alone. The only way you could win would be to prove that the benefit to your son in going there outweighs the downsides to the school in accepting him.

he's saying I have to go to appeals

Well, that's good then. The appeals process is designed to sort out errors.

I have also read your other post. For September 2020 admissions you state that you were offered boarding places in December 2019? That would be an impossibility as no places were offered prior to 1st / 2nd March 2020.

You also say they used your old Uxbridge address but based on last admitted distances this year, Uxbridge is over 12 miles away from both RGS and Chesham (which is where you say you have been allocated). You would not have been given a place at either based on an Uxbridge address. You have probably been very lucky to have got any grammar place at all given your late submission of your new address.

Given you then seem to miraculously want to change the dates you moved to fit the admissions criteria of DC as you “made an error” and if you still own the marital home regardless of whether or not you live there, your application has probably been flagged as fraudulent as you own another property within 20 miles of the school (although you haven’t said one way or the other if you still own the property).

So many aspects of this just don’t stack up.

And here is the link to the form we ALL had to fill in regardless of whether or not we were applying for a grammar school.

account.buckscc.gov.uk/en/AchieveForms/?form_uri=sandbox-publish:AF-Form-ef8a47f5-3db4-431d-8596-63644ab5830a/definition.json&redirectlink=%2FService%2FServiceRating%3Fserviceid%3DAF-Form-ef8a47f5-3db4-431d-8596-63644ab5830a%26service%3DR4%26postRatingRedirectUrl%3D%2Fmodule%2Fservices&cancelRedirectLink=%2F&category=AF-Category-da0c5c3e-0dcf-43c5-946e-991009e252ab&noLoginPrompt=1

Not being funny but everybody in Bucks is required to upload proof of residency via their website as part of the admissions process. It very clearly states this and you’ll probably find everybody else pretty much managed to do this.

You made a mistake. You failed to submit the information on time when everybody else managed to do it. This is not a problem with the head or the admissions process. It is YOUR error and unfortunately the only way you can deal with it is via appeal and have your fingers crossed.

What a pompous OP (and what a great response from PRH)

It is clear on the admissions page that the SIF was due by end of November 2019 and address at September 2016 would be important. You moved closer in 2016 but Christmas was past the cut off so previous address (do you still have an interest in that property) was used. This seems to be your error, not school's. Lots of schools use a SIF in their admissions process, particularly faith and selective schools.

Why did you put your moving date as Christmas Day when you knew it was 4 months earlier? Why change that date at all? I don't understand.

Perhaps the school think that you were trying to pull a stunt (I'm not suggesting you were, I'm just considering it from their point of view) because it's such a weird mistake to make. So on that basis they might not admit your DS as they think you were trying to be dishonest?

I'm not sure you'd win an appeal, the information they worked with was what you had given them. I'm guessing the changes were made after the deadline? They're under no obligation to change anything if you submit changes after the deadline, otherwise people could start applying after the deadline because they 'forgot' and then expect a place because they meet the criteria above people who submitted applications on time. There has to be a cut off point somewhere.

With that in mind though, do you really want your child to go to a school which is being so dismissive before your DC has even got there? There must be an alternative? I hope you get it sorted out.

As PatriciaHolm says, decisions about admissions will not have been taken by the head on his own. The head may sign the letters but decisions will have been made by the governors or a committee appointed by the governors.

Whilst it is not obligatory for you to complete an SIF in that a school must still consider your application, failing to supply one can affect your chances of getting a place. So, for example, if you apply to a faith school you will not get priority on faith grounds unless you submit an SIF. In this school's case, failure to submit an SIF means you will not get priority for living in catchment. I would imagine the email only went to those parents claiming to live in catchment. For those parents the form was, to all intents and purposes, mandatory. Failure to complete it would result in their child being placed in a lower admissions category.

If you submit an SIF with inaccurate information the school is not obliged to accept any corrections after the closing date for applications. There has to be a line somewhere otherwise parents could submit corrections the day before offers go out and expect the school to rerun the admissions process, which is simply not realistic. As is clear from the SIF, that deadline was 30th November. Any new information submitted after that should be taken into account for the waiting list but not for admissions.

You submitted your correction in February, which was far too late. By that time allocations would have been pretty much final. The school would have returned its list to the LA weeks before you submitted your correction. Given that offers had to go out on 2nd March, there was no way either the school or the LA could rerun the admissions process at that stage. Even if you had submitted the information earlier, if the school had taken it into account they would have been entitled to treat you as a late applicant which means you would only have got a place if they were undersubscribed.

It is true that, if a mistake has been made, the school is supposed to put it right without needing an appeal. However, this rarely happens. Even when there is a clear mistake the admission authority will almost always insist on an appeal. And I'm afraid I don't think the school has made a mistake in your case.

Looking at the SIF, you completed it saying that you still own your previous home and that you moved after 1st September 2016. The school is clear that they will use your previous address in this situation. This is also set out on the SIF itself at the head of the form. So, on the information you submitted, the school was correct to regard you as not living in catchment. And, as you didn't tell them the correct information until February, they were quite right to ignore it for admissions purposes.

You may get lucky at appeal but my view is that you will lose. You made the mistake, not the school. And all the things you complain about show the school acting correctly. Sorry.

Choose another school and unclench a bit? Bigger things going on atm in case you hadn't realised 👍

You think by fighting the school like this that your child will be happy there IF the allocate him a space?
This all sounds far too ridiculous...it’s a school. It’s not even the top school in the country! Ffs just get him into another school and be thankful he’s getting an education!

Just to be on the safe side, I had an educational solicitor take a look at my case and the MP, both of whom said, this does not seem right.

Your solicitor says it “does not seem right”?

Don’t you pay them to give you definitive answers? Your next-door neighbour could tell you something “does not seem right”.

4 high court cases AND a Government tribunal??
I really dont think you are going to win this, you admit you gave a wrong date but this is probably an excuse (I'm not saying you are lying but others may) that is rolled out all the time.

Essentially you fucked up/lied and are now blaming everyone else.

Not sure what the 'equality law' has to do with it either.

The appeals process is meant to make it fair. If the process hasn't been followed, it will be sorted on appeal; if there are other grounds, it will be considered through the appeal process for everyone in the same boat.
If the head starts changing admissions decisions outside the appeals process, that wouldn't be fair.