Appeal stage 1 hearing

Based on your “advice” to op, he hasn’t a bloody clue.

"Our consultant raised a good point about finding gout average absence rate - its usually around 5%. So if Y7 has capacity for 180 kids, 9 will be off each day."

How does the consultant think this will help? Would you happy for your child to be in a different class each day depending on which one has someone off sick?
An average of nine missing each day is unlikely to mean a space in the same class every day; numbers will fluctuate, and be higher at some times of year than others.

The only circumstance in which I can see this making any difference is if the school is nominally taking a number of traveller children who it is expected will never actually turn up (certainly used to be the case for one school I know).

Raise this in your individual hearing. The stage 1 hearing is about whether the school has complied with the law and followed its published admission arrangements, and how difficult it will be for the school to cope with additional pupils. The fact they haven't answered your questions isn't relevant to that and doesn't affect the other appellants, so your individual stage 2 hearing is the right place to raise it. If it were me, I would raise it right at the start of presenting my case in stage 2.

Yes. Tell the panel that you have been hampered in your preparations for the hearing by the school failing to answer your questions as required by the Appeals Code. That won't win your appeal for you, but it should mean the panel will be more inclined to give you the benefit of any doubt.

As a parent I think it’s also useful to know how many children the school has had in the previous say, 5 years, in the year groups at a specific point (October census day or summer etc) . This information is rarely presented by the school and panels don’t think so ask because it’s something that would take some time to gather. Worth asking the schools or doing an FOI to find out. It’s helpful to show what sort of numbers the school has previously managed with.

In addition to reviewing the NCA report, check the capacity in the Funding Agreement. You could also ask if the school has offered over PAN for 26-27 at the request of the local authority, or has done so of its own volition (probably won’t help your case much as if the LA is ambivalent it may mean surpluses in nearby schools while the school you are targeting has gone over PAN).

Have you also checked the admissions policy and PAN for the next AY (27-28) in case the PAN has been permanently increased. You could ask for a copy of their most recent Census return, but they might not be willing to share. You can also look at the number sitting GCSEs in 2025, by looking at the schools performance tables, which could indicate if the school previously had a larger PAN.

Worth looking at anything the LA has published on school place planning, as that could indicate plans for permanent expansions or ways to manage down surplus places.

On what grounds are you appealing?

There is nationally published information here https://content.explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/api/releases/960750dd-6ed7-4e32-a9df-3cc9132bb1a4/files?fromPage=ReleaseDownloads

That will tell you how many places the school had capacity for and the number of pupils on roll. It won't give you accurate data for this point in time though.

You ask the school. They are required to answer any reasonable questions you ask to help you prepare for your appeal.

Where do we find this magical document?!?!

I'm sorry, it is hard. The other thing you have to take into account is that we imagine nice rectangular classrooms that have lots of space but the reality is that some classrooms are triangular, or L-shaped. They may have counters along one side which reduces the useful space, then doors and radiators, etc. Then there may be a whiteboard or Promethean Screen at one end which means that anyone sitting in the bottom end of the 'L' can't see the board.... This all reduces the useful capacity of a classroom.

The Net Capacity document takes all of this into account to give the capacity for each classroom and the school as a whole.

I see what you are saying, I didn’t think of it that way. That’s a bit rubbish 😔 but glad it was pointed out now. They had expansion works a few years ago which enabled them to take additional pupils at every intake (the 30 last year was in addition to that, apparently something the LA insisted they did). These additional yearly intake hasn’t filtered through every year yet as only started a couple of years ago. I know from the LA stats there are spaces in other year groups so the school as a whole is not full. But totally see your point that taking another class of 30 is actually different to one more child. Glad this has been explained now, before my appeal, but can’t lie, has knocked me back a bit as felt it was a good counter argument. This whole process is so hard 😢 x

I think we're missing a trick here. "You've got no chance of winning but you could ask this question and I will sit in the room while you do. That will be £1200 please!!

To be fair, on several panels I've been on, one of the panel members will get in first with this as a 'Devil's Advocate' thing, so we don't actually know whether a parent would have asked (thus possibly depriving one of the gotcha! moment they were assured would make someone's fees all worth it, it would seem. Truly, every day is a schoolday, as rhe saying goes).

If it’s the top hit on google, he has not chaired 1000 appeals. He was a clerk and apparently legal advisor to schools.

(Testimonials are very patchy too.)

X1000, don’t you know? Could be the same cowboy on all of them!

The clerk does not chair the appeals. Their role in the hearing is to keep a record of proceedings and provide advice on procedure and admissions law. The hearing will be chaired by one of the panel.

And I'm afraid I agree with others about your consultant. Every time you've mentioned advice he has given you, it has been wrong. For someone who you say claims to have chaired over 1,000 appeal panels, he knows surprisingly little about how appeals actually work. An argument around absence levels will fail. The appeal panel will not be interested.

I think you're going to have a bit of a battle if they've got an extra 30 children in last year's group.

Have you seen the Net Capacity document? It will tell you the number on roll which will give an idea of how full they are. Regardless, though, that won't help if they are saying that some of their classrooms are too small to accommodate extra pupils.

Anything that centres on 'The school isn't as full as they say it is' or 'Even if the school is a bit full, they can squeeze some more in' will be a stage 1 argument. It's the part that determines prejudice. If there is no prejudice and the number of appellants is fewer than the number that would create prejudice, then the appellants win. No stage 2. If there is no prejudice and the number of appellants is greater than the number that would create prejudice --> stage 2.

Stage 2 is for anything that centres on 'Yeah, ok, so they're quite full, but even if they are, they should squeeze my child in because it's so very important that they attend this school.'