Secondary School Third Choice Allocated - can we appeal?

I've also taken a look now, and completely agree with @prh47bridge and @Lougle . The relevant 24/25 policy is nowhere to be seen, and the 23/24 one that is there looks as if someone's got half way through amending it but didn't finish - but it's what they have to use.

The LA website shows for 23/24, the last applicant awarded a place was in the "nearest school" criterion - which shows that the policy on the website dates 23/24 is not the policy that was actually used for that year, as the "nearest criterion" isn't on it.

Which further suggests to me that the policy on the website is actually an early draft 24/25 that's been uploaded in error, and still saved as "23/24" - but that's their problem, not OPs.

So it would appear they have used a version that has the nearest criterion on it, but the published 23/24 does not allow them to do that.

(Also - if they wanted to change their admissions policy, they would have had to consult, and I can't find any evidence they did so. So it may be that they realised this too late, aborted their intention to change the policy, and intended to keep the policy as it was - but published the draft in error.)

Added to that, we have no way of knowing what the 2024/25 policy states because it isn't available on the school website.

Brilliant analysis here from @prh47bridge and @Lougle and @PatriciaHolm and others too!

What a mess-up indeed.

Best of luck with this @kdandml

Having taken a look at both the school's website and the LA's, this is a complete mess.

The LA publish oversubscription criteria which they say apply to all academies apart from faith academies. The school we are talking about here is a faith academy and is listed as one of those not covered by the LA's oversubscription criteria. The LA is required by the Admissions Code to publish a composite prospectus including detailed admission arrangements for all maintained schools and academies. They have simply ignored this requirement. Whilst that is bad, it is helpful in this case as we aren't in the situation where the school and LA have published different versions of the oversubscription criteria. If this gets to appeal and anyone tries to refer to the oversubscription criteria on the website, point out that they specifically say that they do not apply to this school.

The school's oversubscription criteria specify a tie breaker for category 5 (and also have a footnote specifying the same tie breaker again!), but then includes a separate tie breaker category. This specifies the same tie breaker yet again for categories 1, 2 and 5, and leaves category 3 without a tie breaker at all, despite the fact that it is more likely to need one than categories 1 and 2. For category 4, it specifies the same tie breaker again, but states that category 4 is for children applying to their nearest school, whereas it is actually children of permanent staff. There is no way of telling what they intended but that doesn't really matter. This is what they've got.

As per my earlier post, the school is required to follow its published oversubscription criteria, even if that isn't what they meant. In this case, it appears from the information you have received that they got it wrong and the LA's oversubscription criteria were used. As this is a clear mistake, they should put it right without any appeals being needed. However, they may insist on appeals, particularly if it affects a large number of applicants. It will then be up to the appeal panel to sort out this mess.

Your case for appeal is that the school has not followed its published admission arrangements. It has given priority to children for whom this is their nearest school, but this is not a category in their admission arrangements. You should also look for other arguments to strengthen your appeal. If the panel agree that a mistake has been made but decide the school can't accommodate all the pupils affected, they will admit those with the strongest cases. The stronger your case, the better.

I am reminded of a similar mess a few years ago. The LA in that case used formal catchment zones to give priority. They decided to change the catchment zone for two schools. The oversubscription criteria did not specify the zones, instead referring parents to a map on the LA's website. They did not specify which map. There were two. They updated one of them, but the other (which was the more obvious one for parents to find) continued to show the old catchment zones. A lot of parents appealed. Sadly, in that case, the appeal panel for the school concerned decided it was too difficult and didn't allow any of the appeals. If this ends up with an appeal panel, I hope they at least make an attempt to resolve the situation properly.

That's exactly the situation. Either the school has accidentally deleted the Category 4 "Children who have applied to their nearest school" when they added "Children of permanent staff", or they intended to remove the category 4 "Children who applied to their nearest school" and have left reference to it in their tie break information.

Either way, the LA has used the "children who have applied to their nearest school" criteria in their decision making.

This could affect so many children, though, so what will they do when it's raised?

Extract from the reply:
<FIRST CHOICE SCHOOL> was oversubscribed and we had to apply the oversubscription criteria in order to allocate places. The last person offered a place at this school lived 2.56 miles in the nearest school criterion and you live 1.55 miles from the school in the distance criterion.

<THIRD CHOICE SCHOOL> is your closest school, therefore your application was refused on distance. <SECOND CHOICE SCHOOL> was also over subscribed and the last person offered lived 1.82 miles in the distance criterion. You live 3.41 miles from this school and this application was also refused on distance.

—

What this email is trying to say - badly! - is that FIRST CHOICE SCHOOL allocations never made it down to “distance” criteria, because the last place offered was to a child under “nearest school” criteria. It would have been better if they had said that without including 2.56 and 1.55 miles, since those are confusing. But I assume it’s auto filled.

From Lougle’s posts and yours, it sounds like for any other school in the LA, this would be right, but for FIRST SCHOOL, their published policy was badly worded and looked somewhat like it was just based on distance.

I’m sorry, OP, this is rubbish and unclear and I am keeping my fingers crossed you get FIRST SCHOOL.

I have no idea which school and which LA we are talking about, but this sounds like a mess. The school's published admissions policy sounds a bit like they intended to follow the LA in prioritising children for whom they are the nearest school, but didn't actually achieve that. The information from the LA suggests they have indeed prioritised children for whom this is the nearest school.

The important point is that the school, as admission authority, must follow its published admission arrangements. It can't say, "that isn't what we meant" and do something different.

Do you know how far away from the school you are as the crow flies - have they got the numbers the wrong way around?

They do in the tie break:

(a) For those children who have applied for a place at the nearest school to their home
address (category 4), priority will be given to those living closest to the nearest school

measured by the shortest walking route.

However, the mistake is that category 4 actually refers to "Children of permanent staff".

What I was saying about the County page is that on one hand that say 'First choice school is nothing to do with us, contact them.', then they say 'First choice school uses site A to determine distance.'

I can't find it @PatriciaHolm . There's all sorts of messy. On the policies page only 2023/24 is present. Google doesn't bring up 2024/25.

The LA page states the oversubscription criteria for the County, but specifically mentions the first choice school as being excluded from the criteria and to contact the school itself for criteria.

Then, further down the page, under criteria 4 (nearest school applied to) it specifically states that first choice school uses site A rather than site B as the 'location' (which implies that it does use the same County criteria).

Then, the policy itself refers only to distance, but in the tie break section refers to criteria 4 (nearest school applied to) when in fact criteria 4 is stated as 'Children of permanent staff'.

Furthermore, the school website says that X County Council manage the admissions for the school.

Is it definitely not anywhere? I had a case last year where the previous years policies were in one place - the obvious page - and the new one somewhere else completely!

The admissions policy should have explicitly said "23-24" on it, not "24-25", which would have shown you which admissions year it was relevant for.

However, it is a legal requirement for the relevant policy to be on the school website, so if it really wasn't there somewhere, that could be something to cite in appeal. It wouldn't win an appeal on its own though.

As the 2024/25 policy isn't on the website, it's worth taking a screenshot to prove that.

Hmm...good point. My posts relate to the 2023/24 policy. The 2024/25 policy isn't on the school's website.

@kdandml you'll need to contact the school and ask for it.

No, you definitely need the 2024-25 admissions policy, not the 2023-24 or the 2025-26.

Both should be on the website for the rest of this academic year, 2023 only being removed in August 2024 as it's no longer applicable.

What I'm saying is that the school thought they had included a criteria "children who have applied to their nearest school" as category 4. However, Category 4 says "children of permanent staff", not "children who have applied to their nearest school".

It is possible that at the last change round, they decided to add a priority to children of staff, but have also accidentally deleted the criteria for children who have applied to their nearest school. If it is a genuine mistake, the LA may not be aware, so applied the intended policy.

You would contact them and say that according to the published criteria, you should have been given the place. They will see that there is an error in the policy.

I think there is an omission in the policy for the school you have applied for. The policy continues:

1. Tie-breaker

If you look at the policy, however, category 4 is 'Children of permanent staff'. It was clearly intended to be 'Children who have applied for a place at the nearest school to their home address'.

The main admissions page on The LA site specifically states that this particular school does not fall into their overarching admissions criteria.

I think you need to go back to them and point out the error, stating that you relied on the fact that it said 'nearest to school' not 'applied for their nearest school'.

“I think this is whats happened. Please see below though - this is the admissions policy for 23/24, uploaded to the school wesbite in august 2023:”

Possibly a typo but material if arrangements are in a state of change - don’t you need the policy for 24/25 as your kid will start in sept 24?

Either way, take a copy of the relevant pages on the website now, in case you need them later.