School has a very strong case

As a slight aside from the appeal 28 seems like a pretty large number on pupils to have in any one classroom, I'm not surprised that a good school doesn't want to have more.
The school my dc goes to has a maximum of 15 which is normal for private schools where we live. On that basis 28 seems more than enough.

It's a bit like the maths threads, only with a more serious consequence for the OP with following incorrect advice.

Normally with maths threads, the correct answer is posted within the first few posts, and then 10 pages later you still have people who don't know order of operations / BODMAS confidently asserting they are right and the maths teacher / maths degree people are wrong.

Oh yes, I wasn’t having a dig at you, more thinking aloud about how MN’s usual model of open contribution doesn’t work very well for appeal threads (and also wondering, frankly, about the agenda of those people who pitch up and confidently offer terrible ‘advice’ that would cost people their appeal if they followed it).

I’m not sure what would help. Any sort of gate-keeping (“you can only join this thread if you know what you’re talking about”) would be difficult to enforce and, again, not in the usual spirit of MN.

@Hye000 I would ask now. If you ask at the appeal, they are unlikely to have it to hand, and getting may well cause an adjournment whilst they call the school and have someone find it.

Apologies, I don’t think I was quite clear. Of course it would be better - across mn quite widely, imo - if threads were a dialogue between those seeking help and those with the best expertise to advise them, but that isn’t the underlying MN model, which is one of open contribution.

Legal matters is a section on its own, a but like medical matters, iirc? I think it’s easier there for mn to out a disclaimer about expertise and for posters to realise that expertise is expected.

Appeals / admissions are within general education boards, where anything goes, in terms of posts from parents, teachers, those with agendas of different sorts, as well as experts in different niches.

Would a separate ‘admissions and appeals’ board help, I wonder?

And what I was trying to say is that appeal threads are like legal matters threads in that they ought to be a Q&A between people asking questions and people with the real, informed knowledge to answer them. The reality, though, is that both (and especially the appeal threads) get hijacked by people confidently spouting uninformed nonsense.

Oh yes, I’ve seen that, but it doesn’t seem quite as prevalent as it is, alas, on the appeals threads. Perhaps it’s that trope that “people are tired of experts”; everyone’s an (untrained) lawyer now.

They’re more like the legal matters threads, in that respect.

Unfortunately, those aren't always about real, informed knowledge either. We regularly get people pitching in with legal "advice" that is wildly incorrect.

Panel members have mandatory training every two years. We comb though every paragraph of the appeals code, looking at any changes and case law. Our LEA’s training is open to headteachers but there’s only one who regularly attends.

That’s kind of you to say so, but when threads about admission appeals get bogged down it’s very often because people are offering opinion or anecdote without any knowledge behind it. Appeal threads aren’t (or, I would argue, shouldn’t be) like other MN threads where everyone pitches in with opinion. They are (or should be) about real, informed knowledge. They’re more like the legal matters threads, in that respect.

Over the years, I’ve seen countless examples of terrible advice along the lines of “if you say you really, really want a place at this school, they’ll understand and will allow your appeal” (no they won’t, unless you demonstrate prejudice), “you’ll only win if you show a mistake has been made” (not necessarily, as that’s only true for infant class size appeals) and so on. Then there’s the well-intentioned advice from people who’ve won their appeals, but seem to have misunderstood why they won, so they offer things like “I did/said [something completely irrelevant], so if you do/say [something completely irrelevant], you’ll win too”.

And that now seems to include Headteachers...

As a teacher, I have often been shocked at how little other staff know / understand about admissions, especially if they have not been through the system as a parent. So, while I would expect better of a Head, I am not overly surprised.

Yes, that's good at least, and I hope they are happy there!

I'm honestly not trying to be rude. But I sit on, and chair, appeals panels, and have done for 7+ years. We have to go through regular training in order to do so. It's very frustrating - as you can see from others here who do the same as I do - when people who either genuinely misunderstand, or simply don't know, how appeals work, give out information that is just incorrect -and could cost someone else their appeal. And that now seems to include Headteachers...

Appellants should absolutely look at weakening the schools case - it is often the key to winning - and they do not have to prove this is the only school that can meet the child's needs.

Ime, School Admissions and Appeals are very lucky within the MN community in having a group of widely-experienced experts who between them have helped in or sat on many, many appeals and advised on many others, and whose expertise has genuinely been tested and found good over the years.

They work tirelessly each year with little acknowledgment, and the boards would be poorer without them.

Agree.

On MN, everyone posts from their own personal opinion and knowledge, usually based on a fairly limited number of experiences of eg a particular school; own and friends’ relationships; their own property purchase etc. So I can completely understand why individuals post about their one or two personal experiences of appeals or how they think they work - that’s the MN norm.

Ime, School Admissions and Appeals are very lucky within the MN community in having a group of widely-experienced experts who between them have helped in or sat on many, many appeals and advised on many others, and whose expertise has genuinely been tested and found good over the years.

They work tirelessly each year with little acknowledgment, and the boards would be poorer without them.

Not based on my experience but you’re free to say what you will. Thankfully my youngest is now in Y8 at the school we wanted so I never have to appeal again!

But unfortunately you are still giving out incorrect information. As are many others.

Ask the school. They are required to answer any reasonable question you ask to help you prepare for your appeal. So you just need to ask them the maximum and minimum capacity from their most recent capacity assessment. You should also ask them when that assessment took place. If they have added buildings since then, the assessment is out of date.

Lurea - I agree with you up to a point. It is exasperating that, on the very many appeal threads, we don’t just have to answer parents’ questions about the appeals they’re putting together, we also have to correct the misinformation and terrible ‘advice’ offered by people who have evidently never read or understood the appeals code and have no idea how the process works. Posters who claim to work in schools often seem to be the worst for this, rushing onto threads to say “don’t bother to appeal (even though you have a legal right to do so)” or “you’ll never win so give up now”.

Hi lurea, I can't say for your LA but for mine it was on Google under a document called admissions arrangements community and voluntary schools 23/24. May be try search that with your LA name at the end :) x

Tutor groups often have smaller pupil numbers than the actual classes. Many departments take the year group and have larger numbers in higher ability sets to allow for smaller numbers in lower ability sets. So you might have thirty two per class in top set English but twenty five in bottom set English. This is to try and meet the needs of groups which may have a number of students with additional needs. It gives schools some flexibility

I am sorry but I find an utterly waste of time for the experts to go through how the appeals work time after time. There is an appeal code and if people are interested should go and read it. This should be even more important for headteachers.

It is more important that experts use their time in helping people with their appeals

Hi cellardoor, where you find out the net capacity range? For the school I am appealing for I could only find the net capacity, but not a range, in the funding agreement

If this is how appeals work at your school, someone needs to retrain the appeal panel. It is entirely wrong. If an appeal panel refuses to hear arguments about PAN unless a mistake has been made, the parents can refer the case to the LGO or ESFA (depending on the type of school) and will automatically get a fresh hearing with a different appeal panel for such an egregious breach of the Appeals Code.

I suspect this isn't how appeals actually work and you are simply demonstrating that most head teachers don't fully understand the process.

Appeals are indeed in two stages, but they are not as you describe. In stage 1 the school argues that the correct process has been followed and the school cannot possibly accommodate any more pupils. This is where arguments about whether the school can go over PAN without prejudice are heard. Questions as to whether a mistake has been made may crop up at this stage, but they may crop up in stage 2. In some cases, stage 1 is heard as a grouped appeal, with all appellants present. In that situation, arguments about mistakes will almost always be deferred to stage 2 unless the mistake affects multiple appellants.

Stage 2 is where the parents put forward their arguments that a mistake has been made and/or their child will suffer prejudice if not admitted.

After stage 2 of the hearing, the panel follows a two-stage process to make its decision. First they decide if a mistake has been made. If they find that a mistake has been made, the child is admitted unless the mistake affects multiple children and the school couldn't cope if they were all admitted. In that situation, the appeal panel compare cases to decide which children to admit. If no mistake has been made, the panel decide if the school will be prejudiced by the admission of additional pupils. This is still part of stage one of the decision-making process. If they find there will be no prejudice to the school, the appeals all succeed. However, that is rare. Normally, the appeal panel find that there will be some prejudice, so they move on to the second stage of the decision-making process.

In the second stage, the panel decide if the prejudice to the child from not being admitted outweighs the prejudice to the school.

There are no circumstances in which the waiting list enters into the decision. If the appeal panel decide that the school can admit five pupils without prejudice, they will admit the five appellants with the strongest cases even if there are 100 people ahead of them on the waiting list.

The process is identical for primary and secondary schools unless infant class size rules apply (which, of course, can only happen at primary schools). The hearing still follows the same process, but the decision-making process is different. In this case, stage one of the decision-making process is about whether the admission authority is correct that infant class size rules apply and, if so, whether a mistake has been made that cost an appellant a place. If it is an infant class size case and a mistake has been made, they move on to stage two which involves comparing cases to decide which appeals to uphold.

What you have described is similar to the decision-making process for infant class size appeals, but it is not what happens in the hearing for any appeal. There are no circumstances whatever in which the appeal panel can refuse to hear the parents' arguments about whether the school can admit more children. Any refusal to hear part of the parents' case or to allow them to put all the questions they want automatically means the appeal is unfair and the parents are entitled to a fresh hearing if they lose.