Does being a young carer help in a Year 7 school appeal?

It is their responsibility and they will have done that but they will also have to look at the strength of all the other appeals and make a decision as to who has the strongest case and how many can the school take. You might think your case is strong but you won’t know what other appeals have been heard and their strength. If I was on your panel I would wonder why your child needed that support specifically in school as opposed to getting it outside of school. I know from experience that young carers are very much impacted by their role but I would still want to be assured how imperative it is to get this support in school. Why is it your child needs that provision in school?

I’m sorry that you haven’t had the outcome that you wish for. You have done your best for both of your children and you can’t ask more of yourself than that. Unfortunately the Bucks grammar schools are very oversubscribed and they can’t offer places to all those that wish to attend them in neighbouring areas, no matter how worthy the case is. We live in Bucks and the competition for places is high. I’m nervous for my child (entry 2028, if he passes) and we live well within catchment. I hope your son does well in his allocated school, best of luck.

You're misunderstanding me. The number is redacted if it is low enough that individuals could be identified - for FSM as well as Young Carers. Otherwise, for example, a published entry saying there are, say two children receiving FSM (or are YC) for St Munchkin Primary, Borsetshire would mean that anybody in the village could say 'Ah, that's the Grundy kids, that father of theirs must be fiddling the dole to qualify' or 'Young Carer? That's got to be the Archer's kid, unless Grundy's also pulling a fast one about that as well, means he's claiming disability benefits, the workshy layabout'.

The OP didn't even know about the statistics site until the information about the site was volunteered - so where exactly did they get the information prior to that?

Did you give any reasons why you feel that ppl carer support is necessary?

Given that the information is collected in the school census and published by the government, it clearly is public information. The fact that some schools may fail to report the figure or report an incorrect figure does not alter that. And I struggle to see how revealing the number of children who are young carers would allow them to be identified without additional information, any more than revealing the number of children on FSM allows them to be identified (also public information).

It's not public information if the numbers are low enough in a specific school that the individual children could potentially be identified. You didn't submit an FOI about the school (or you would have said so) to the local authority or the school themselves and the Panel wouldn't have questioned it.

So how did you obtain the numbers of young carers in the school/schools concerned?

Presumably distance is the tiebreaker and there will be other dc living closer on the same score who also missed out on a place. Was this your highest preference on CAF and have you appealed others? Is the allocated school also selective?

Again, I don't think that argument is valid. Distance from school is an acceptable tie breaker for admissions criteria under the code. There will be many children who miss out because of the inability to be located close to desirable schools, either through the location of family, jobs, lack of funds, etc.

Without knowing the specific school allocated and the specific school preferred, I would give this general advice:

• Look at whether it is clear that your child has specific needs arising from their carer status, and that it isn't just an incidental fact. In other words, have you been clear why it matters that they are a young carer?
• Buckinghamshire has a whole school strategy for young carers. Were you specific about what was different in your preferred school?
• Carers Bucks offers young carer support. Why do you feel that there needs to be a particularly strong support system within the school?

On the face of it, if all the published information I've found about young carer support in Buckinghamshire is true, I can see why the panel felt that it was a weak reason to need a place at a presumably highly desirable grammar school. However, I don't know your child's circumstances or the foundations of your case, so I can't comment on that.

There’s a lot of information on the Buckinghamshire website.

This is (unless I’ve overlooked something) the first time you’ve mentioned that this was an appeal for a grammar school. I’m assuming that your child was qualified for a place but missed out because of the distance from school. If not, there will have been another element to the appeal in deciding whether your child was of grammar school standard (I dislike this terminology, but it’s what is commonly used).

But that's not the threshold for winning an appeal. The equivalent would be 'beyond reasonable doubt' i used in criminal cases, being applied to a civil case where the threshold is 'on the balance of probabilities'.

In an appeals case, 51% in favour of the appellant is the minimum threshold.

I think asking for the notes, or at least a fuller explanation, might help here because it's hard to tell whether the panel was saying 'this is our decision and we note that the admissions panel for social/medical needs agreed' or 'I'm not sure about this, I don't think it meets the threshold and in our support the panel said that too.' which is subtly but significantly different.

I don't think that you can use the fact that you couldn't be closer as an argument for admission because so many people will have reasons why they can't live closer to a preferred school. But, neither should that be a factor in appeal. The whole point of (prejudice) appeals is to give people who feel they have compelling reasons for admission, despite not otherwise meeting the admissions criteria, the opportunity to advocate for admission on the grounds that they will suffer detriment if they are not awarded a place.

Surely the fact that you are appealing for two school proves their point - each one is not the ONLY school that would meet his needs?

The fact that the allocated school doesn't isn't what they are arguing - what they are arguing is the other school would so why MUST it be them

The decision letter should have included this information.

As Lougle says, nobody here can give an opinion on the appeal panel's decision, because we haven't seen the evidence from you or the school and we haven't seen the precise wording of the decision letter.

However, on the basis of the snippets you have posted here, I think there are some points you could raise in your complaint, as what you have posted suggests that the panel might (I emphasise might) have taken the wrong approach and might have misdirected itself.

Firstly, on the finding that "I am not convinced that XXX is the only school that can meet his educational and social needs": This (in my view) is going too far. The panel should be considering whether the preferred school can meet the child's needs better than the allocated school and can offer something which the allocated school cannot.

Para 3.8 of the appeals code 2025 says:

"3.8 The panel must balance the prejudice to the school against the appellant’s case for the child to be admitted to the school. It must take into account the appellant’s reasons for expressing a preference for the school, including what that school can offer the child that the allocated or other schools cannot. If the panel considers that the appellant’s case outweighs the prejudice to the school, it must uphold the appeal."

It does mention "other schools" but it doesn't say that the panel has to be satisfied that the preferred school is the only one capable of meeting the child's needs.

Our authority takes the view that appeal panels should not stray into arguments about whether a third/fourth/fifth school could also meet the child's needs, because the appeal is not for any of those schools and taking those schools into consideration and expecting the parent to prove that only the appeal school is suitable would be raising the bar too high. That seems right to me.

Secondly, on the finding that "Ideally this is supposed the medical and social criteria where they already rejected saying the same": This seems to imply that the appeal panel took the view that, because the medical-social need panel did not give admission priority to the child, the appeal panel has to reject the appeal. As I said earlier, the two panels have different purposes and make their decisions against different criteria. The appeal panel is looking at the bigger picture of the prejudice (detriment) to the child if not given a place, and the prejudice to the school in having to accept an additional pupil, so is free to reach a different decision where the evidence supports it.

So, if you are taking this further, you might want to highlight these two points and any others.

I think this is a difficult situation because without knowing the details of your child's caring role, and therefore the impact on them (which you rightly won't want to be specific about here), it will be hard for any of us to know how strong your case for admission is.

For example, both DD2 and DD3 meet the 'young carer' criteria. However, their own SEN trumps any young carer needs they may have, and it would be stretching limits to try and argue that they needed a school specifically to meet their young carer needs. Similarly, a child doesn't have the right to the best school, only one which meets their needs. So a school can have fantastic facilities for <insert need highlighted> but if another school has 'good enough' facilities (and 'good enough' will depend entirely on the circumstances of the child in question), then an appeal shouldn't succeed unless the school has failed to demonstrate a prejudice would be created by taking another child.

I'm not sure that the panel is saying that they have relied on the medical/social criteria being rejected. It seems like they are just saying that ideally, if it was considered that this school is the only school that could meet those needs, it would have been recognised by that panel, and that they appeared to agree with the conclusion of this panel.

If you wanted to outline the difference in provision, or give vague reference to how the support might benefit, it might be helpful to give more advice. On the face of it, I don't think it's unreasonable for the panel to say that they are unconvinced that your child needs this school. It might have been helpful if they had stated why they thought that, though.

Is that second sentence in bold a quote from the decision letter?