Reposting here because I need more traffic.
Hello MNers,
I'm hoping you can help. Long story first of all:
I live in rural Yorkshire. The catchment area for our village primary school (a Community School) comprises the majority of our village and large swathes of open countryside to the east, west and south of the village. It cuts off a small sliver of the north side of the village, primarily late 20th century housing developments (70s onwards), but these are quite clearly part of the village in terms of their immediate proximity to the rest of it, i.e. it is a natural spreading out of the village rather than an outcrop or an adjoining hamlet.
For many years there has not been a problem accommodating all the children who applied to our local school. However, recently there have been housing developments within the catchment area, and the year eligible for school entry in 2012 was a high birth year. Consequently, our school was oversubscribed for 2012.
Several families, some within catchment, some outwith catchment, some with siblings already in the school, did not get in straight away, but most of those have now got in as many on the waiting list accepted places at other schools. Until this happened, nobody realised that the catchment area for the school is how it is (it follows an archaic parish boundary).
There is now only one family in the village but in the small area that falls out of catchment whose child has not got into the school. They have gone to appeal and were not successful. This child attended the village pre-school, who took her on settling-in visits to the school. Her father is a parish councillor and school governor. The child has in the past been selectively mute and it is felt that she will regress if taken out of a familiar enviroment with children that she knows and that she had been led to expect through the pre-school. This is the main reason for wanting her to go to the village school; the neighbouring school where she has been given a place is a perfectly good school - it is the impact on her development that the family are concerned about.
I should add as well that although there have been housing developments within the school catchment area, there has not been the accompanying funding to enable the school to expand. The development stopped one house short of the number that would have triggered extra funding. The LA are targetting funding towards other schools in the area and appear to want to allocate places to those schools instead. We have been told by local councillors that if the headmistress with the support of the governors petitioned for more funding, this might make a difference, but they do not appear to want to do this.
My personal involvement is that the family concerned are my neighbours and because I also live in this part of the village that is out of catchment, my DS2 who is due to start school in 2013 may also be affected, even though DS1 already goes to the school.
The whole village has been conducting a campaign ever since the issue of oversubscription became known, not just since this family lost their appeal. Letters have been written to the LA, to the local MP, there have been meetings with parish councillors and school governors. One district councillor has been particularly active, acting as advocate during the appeal process. We have found a precedent with another school in the same LA that had to accept extra children this September when catchment was the objection. The next plan is to send objections to the Schools Adjudicator that there is a breach of admissions policy. This states that the catchment area must be reasonable and clearly defined (the northern boundary that cuts us off follows a beck whose course was moved when some houses were built and nobody knows if it follows the old course or the new course). It also states that there should be consultation on admissions policy once every 7 years and as far as we know this has not happened.
The issue has triggered a review of catchment, but the change to the area will not come into force until 2014 - too late for this family, who was one of the cases that brought it to light, and too late for my DS2.
The media is involved; the local papers have run stories, and we are now awaiting TV coverage from ITV's Daybreak, pending release of figures from the DfE on rejected appeals.
In the mean time we are trying to raise awareness on Twitter. If this story has interested you and you wouldn't mind supporting us, please tweet #supportthemilford1
Otherwise, if you have any more ideas on what could be done to help this little girl, whose family is on their knees with stress, please reply to this post.
Thank you.