Illegal school admission policy aid by LEA

[REDHEN12]

Nightmare..... before I start everything say I say is the truth and I have documentary evidence to prove it. Here we go. Time for the move up to secondary school. Family thinking of moving out of the area but not sure due to circumstances. So completed form SA3 with school choices in order of preference and sent that to LEA and waited. My boy has SEN. Finally received a letter from the LEA addressed only to me with decision notice regarding my three choices. All were refused. So decided not to move out of the area ie down south. Two days later from the decision notice received a letter from the academy school which was our third choice stating that they had received a copy letter from the LEA acknowledging that we didn’t get a place at their school and we could appeal through the schools independent panel and so we did. Day one was in the hall with all parents appealing. We new we were up against it straight away when the headmaster stood up and stated if your child has Sen needs you needn’t think your coming here as we don’t have sufficient Sen resources. Eventually we got to the day of our own personal hearing. Going into the meeting guided by the clerk to the independent panel she asked if we were no longer moving down south. This struck a cord with my wife as we had not told anybody other than the LEA in our choices of school. So the appeal meeting went ahead. We put our case according to the schools admission policy and referred to our child’s SEN needs where again the head suggested we go to another school that could cater for SEN needs. I also noticed that the headmaster had a copy of our form SA3 which fool me I didn’t pick up on. Appeal meeting over we went home and waited. Later advised we didn’t get a place under the pretext of the schools appeals policy. We stewed on this for a while and then decided to do a subject access request both to the academy we appealed to and my sons junior school before. The academy disclosed a copy of the confidential letter addressed only to me at my home address with the decision notice detailing our school preference in order of preference. The headmaster at public meetings had previously stated that if you don’t put us down as first choice you won’t get in. So thenLEA had processed confidential data which had been passed through the school to the headmaster and then the independent clerk informed of the contents hence how she new we were thinking of moving down south. Next and the cherry on the cake. The junior school also disclosed a bundle of documents which we would not have otherwise seen. The Senco officer at the junior school had rung the admissions officer at the academy trying to get reconsideration for my son. The conversation she Senco officer made a note of and put in the comms file for the child. She also sent her note by email to the local authority and her Head. Neither responded. In her notes she records how the schools admissions officer stated ! at great length that the real reason he did not get a place was that he was just too late and that he had put us down as third choice. All this means that the LEA supported an illegal admission policy contravene data protection laws as did the school and by the schools admissions officers operated a covert admissions policy. We as parents are horrified and upset. Had it not been for the subject access we would not have got to the truth. Question is has this been used against other children as well and what do we do now? P.s. yes we did subject access requests to the independent panel clerk for the minutes of day one and the minutes of our hearing and we were duly refused copies of. In the politeness of ways almost ... the school admissions officer told us where to go! Can anybody help?

OP, your first post asks "can anyone help?"

What is it you'd like help with, specifically?

Here you go see what you think

OP, your note there is about the appeal, and why the admissions officer thinks you lost. Not about the original decision to admit your child. It says nothing about the school's admissions policy being wrongly applied.

Whoever the SENCO spoke to at School Admissions should absolutely not have speculated about why the appeal was unsuccessful; they would not know why, as the independent panel would have discussed this by themselves, in confidence. The admissions person is speculating, very unhelpfully. I would imagine those are arguments the school made, and are assuming were persuasive.

Did you get a letter after the appeal - you should have got a proper decision letter, explaining why the appeal was rejected.

If you want to try another appeal, you can appeal again as I said, assuming your child is now in the year above. You can complain to ESFA, but the outcome, at best, will be the same - a new appeal.

That just sounds like the SENCO didn't really understand what he/she was being told.

What was your appeal based on? And why are you raising this now, two years later?

Agree with PatriciaHolm. The note is clearly about why the admissions officer thought your appeal failed. It says nothing about the reason your original application failed. It is not evidence that the school is operating a "first preference first" policy. The only thing it does show is that the admissions officer doesn't understand how appeal panels make their decisions and was guessing.

What you don’t admit is that the school admission officer stating “ named ........ as their third choice at the time of the application “

1. Application, not appeal
2. How would she know as admissions officer what our preference of choice was ?
3. As an academy she would have dealt with the admissions criteria.
4. Third choice !! It’s an equal preference scheme! What’s parental choice got to do with the admissions officer ?

What nobody seems to acknowledge either is the school is sitting on a private letter addressed to me at my home Why ? That’s a very serious breach of data regulation. If they are not administrating first preference first scheme they do not need my personal correspondence. To pick up on a previous comment. You do not need the advising LEA school places letter for an appeal. We certainly did not furnish the school with it and the LEA are stating they don’t. So why is my letter at there school?

But the officer is not talking about how the initial allocations were done.

They are speculating about why the appeal was lost.

2 completely different things. By the time this email was written the appeal has been done, and by then school/admissions officer had seen your full application form. They are guessing (incorrectly) that your choice influenced the appeals panel.

Nothing in that email says anything about the information the school had at the time you applied. There is nothing here to suggest anything untoward about the application.

...and as PRH has said, it is not a breach of GDPR for the school or the panel to see the decision letter saying that you have not been allocated a place and why. In fact I would expect to see it, as part of the appeal evidence, in order to be sure that the admissions process has been followed properly; as would the school, given they are their own admissions authority and thus ultimately responsible for the correct administration of the application.

Rubbish. The school has no legal right to read my letters and particularly my choices

Again, I agree with PatriciaHolm. The admissions officer is saying you named this school as third choice at the time of application and is speculating (almost certainly wrongly) that this is why you lost your appeal. She is not saying that this is why you weren't offered a place initially.

What nobody seems to acknowledge either is the school is sitting on a private letter addressed to me at my home Why ? That’s a very serious breach of data regulation

I have already dealt with this. The letter concerned is the decision letter sent by the LA telling you why your child was not admitted to the school. This is part of the evidence for the appeal. Using it in this way is normal and is absolutely not a breach of GDPR or any other data protection regulations.

We certainly did not furnish the school with it and the LEA are stating they don’t

It would be, to say the least, surprising if the LA did not supply the decision letter to schools when there is an appeal. The school needs to provide the appeal panel with evidence that the admission process was handled correctly. The decision letter is frequently used as part of that evidence.

In a freedom of information request to the authority they state they do not supply the decision letter at any point

The school has no legal right to read my letters and particularly my choices

They do not have any legal right to see your choices before allocations are made but it is not illegal for them to do so, although it is poor practise.

Once you appeal, the decision letter will almost invariably be sent to the school and will be supplied to the appeal panel as evidence. I have attended many appeals across the country and have seen the evidence for many more (shared with me by parents I have been assisting). I cannot recall one where the decision letter was not part of the evidence. Once you appeal, the LA has every legal right to share the decision letter with the school and the school has every legal right to share it with the appeal panel.

We need to be clear, what evidence does the decision letter demonstrate other than not getting a place. And it’s nothing to do with the school our other choices.

In a freedom of information request to the authority they state they do not supply the decision letter at any point

Bluntly, I don't believe them. I think they have answered your FoI request incorrectly.

The Admission Appeals Code requires the admission authority to provide the appeal panel with the information contained in the decision letter. It is therefore, as I have said, normal for this to be provided to schools when someone appeals. The school then include it in their evidence which they send to the clerk, and the clerk then sends it to the appeal panel.

Look. If you genuinely think a breach of GDPR occurred, report it.

ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/

but even if it were a breach, it had no bearing on your original allocation. Or the appeal itself.

Nothing you have said suggests anything was done incorrectly in terms of the first allocation, or the conduct of the appeal.

You can complain to the ESFA. You can request a new appeal assuming your child is in a different year now.

There is nothing else you can do.

But the admissions authority is the school itself not the Lea. So they deal with their own admissions. So that’s ok they can give those details you refer as it’s there own info. But the Lea lis my letter. They should not have that. It does not give any reasons for the respective school decision in any case.

But for admissions at standard entry points, the responsibility to administer allocations is delegated to the LA, to ensure everyone only gets one offer.

So the letter that goes from the LA is the final and only letter that comes to you saying either you have a place, or in your case, no place was allocated. The school gives the LA the responsibility to do this. There is nothing wrong with the school seeing the letter, and indeed it is important at appeal that they do.

I don't know what else to tell you at this point. As you say, the letter isn't realty relevant anyway. You have no evidence of anything untoward happen.

Appeal again if you wish.

OP, you are acting as if the knowledgeable people here are on some kind of trial. "What you don't admit..."

They are trying to understand what your legitimate complaint is to see if they can help.

You think there has been a GDPR breach. As an outsider who knows about GDPR but not school admissions, you might be right. I can't see how the school needs to see the initial application form. If it isn't necessary to share personal information, it shouldnt be shared and doing so may be a breach. Report it if so.

You seem to also have issues woth both the initial application and the appeal procedure. I don't think that either of the people posting with obvious knowledge in the area can see any evidence of this based on what you have posted. A GDPR breach alone wouldn't be enough I think. You'd have to have evidence that the breached data was used in a way that broke the school's policies.

Is your son placed in a school at the moment? Is he settled or are there problems?

What is the point of this post? Do you want help getting DS into the school? Are you happy with where he goes to school now?

Thank you, best response so far !
Ok this is where we are. The SEN officer well understands the appeal process at that school...... she even had to go through it with her child.
The recorded conversation, states.... “ third choice at the time of application “ that comment smacks of ‘first preference first’ this is a equal preference scheme! So any reference to preference by a school is clearly wrong.
Letters. All the responders are missing the point.... applicant sends his SA3 to the local authority, the LA then deal with schools that they have under there control and act effectively as agent for others. The others the la sends basic details out to those schools , academy example. The academy then deals with the schools own admissions criteria. They then go back to the la with the outcome (this ‘outcome’ being only what any appeal panel needs to see at that school) the la then writes back to applicant with all three places and possibly another option offer.
The letter to applicant is confidential data that the school has no right to see ! The only detail they have a right to see is in relation only to the application school. If they see anything else it’s a serious breach of data. As long as the application process continues including appeal they should not see parents choices as this could be said to breach the school admissions criteria and take in to consideration that parents could be appealing more than one school so release of that data could be prejudicial. We say that the admissions officer knew of our order of preference as she referred and she states that our son did not get in simply because we put the school as third choice. That’s first preference first based on a private letter breached to the school. I have read silly comments on here about basically one or the other people involved in the note are stupid or probably didn’t know this or that etc. Both are very well experienced mature people well knowledgable about their position. In fact both know each other well as well. As to the admissions officer she stated what had happened as fact not guess work. She even handled all the paperwork for the appeal inc reading it before passing it on to the Clark to the appeal. There is a trail of the data released by the school to the head and the Clark to the appeal panel. Where is this going? Our view is a breach of the data protection act by the la which was sent to the school bringing the admissions criteria in to disrepute as evidenced by a conversation which took place between two well experienced professionals. The process should be whiter than white.
My son now travel 3 hours each way out of county now ... so not at all happy.

Wow, don't you have a way with you 😂

I'm not sure why you think it appropriate to say that the experienced and knowledgeable people who have taken time out of their day to help and advise you are making "silly comments."

How about a "thank you?"

Okay so you clearly have your opinion and won't listen to anybody so what do you want from this thread?

We say that the admissions officer knew of our order of preference as she referred and she states that our son did not get in simply because we put the school as third choice.

Yes, she did know the order - after you appealed. She was told after you appealed. She thinks the appeal failed, in part, because of the order. She was not part of the appeal panel, so should not be speculating on that. She would not have been in the room when they made their decision.

There is no evidence she knew if before you appealed, and no evidence it had any thing to do with allocations.

Even if everything you say happened, happened, your options stay the same.

Complain to the ifsa about the breach.
Report to the EFSA.
Request a new appeal.