To think I have reason to kick up a fuss re school place offer?

[Moleskine]

I am posting on here for traffic and in the hope that someone in the know or with previous experience will come and help with some advice.

We applied for a late school reception place due to a house move. The admissions team told me we would be considered in the 2nd round offers which were supposed to be made mid May. They were delayed and letters went out yesterday. But we still have no school place despite living 50m from our local school and being 1st on the waiting list.

The admissions team told me today that of the 90 places offered, all have been accepted except one. It is a place offered to a sibling so they are expecting it to be accepted too.

However the closing date to accept or decline a school place was 2nd May. So surely we should be offered this place if the other family have still not accepted on 28th May?

To add to this, 2 'special cases' have also come in late and they are to be considered this Friday. I am not sure if this means they are appeals or just higher priority applicants (looked after children or SEN). If successful, they will be placed ahead of us knocking us down to No. 3 on the list.

I am wondering if I should insist on the place that hasn't been accepted yet being given to us? Do I have grounds for this, as as things stand on today's date, the 2 'special cases' have not been decided and we are basically next on the list.

Please come and offer me some advice on this. Am becoming more and more anxious about my son not having a school place come September.

Her Royal,

I lived in the US for a bit - luckily not while DS needed a school place, as there was so little space that schools were running staggered sessions each day to make sure all children got in....so there are problems there too!

The US system sounds so much more efficient!

I really hope we get some positive news soon, my anxiety levels are through the roof.

The person whose details they gave me to contact for appeal has not responded to my emails.

I will be onto the Appeal process on Monday but they have been very unhelpful in telling me how to proceed with one.

I was in the position last year trying to find a school for DS1 as we'd just moved here. I was doing as you would in England, ringing around the schools to see where he could go, it was so stressful, then was finally told, call your nearest school!!

teacher There are problems in all systems, and we live in an area of high growth, but generally the system does work better as you are not left stressed out like this looking for school places.

Moleskin, I can tell the borough you are in from a local post. I have lived in the borough for about 10 years.

The stance of the LA is very typical of them. This is how they run things. Every year, there are people who have no place right up until the last minute. The LA assumes that if you live here you must surely have enough money for private school underneath your floorboards :(

There is little concern for families and the stress it causes although you will probably read in the local press that they are "very concerned". They are not, they are only concerned with meeting their budgetary requirements and only running schools with 0 spare capacity. They will simply say that they can not help if our schools are so good that everyone wants to move here...It's an old chestnut that's been running for about 20 years and every year it is the same situation.

There is an additional similar number to getting no place who also got none of their 6 choices, so in total about 150 seriously unhappy parents. I know quite a few with nothing around the centre of town.

Last year there were over 300 places rejected by Sept, there is a report on the councils website (search browse committee documents, then Admissions forum, Sept 2013) that details for each primary, the nature of the rejections, whether it is a move, going to private or getting a better choice. PM me if you can't find it. It may reassure you.

This year however is slightly different in that they announced a huge number of bulge classes on offers day. Only a few were public knowledge beforehand. S Mount and the Vyard were expanded and I think both of these schools are popular among potential private school parents, so if anything I think there will be less filter out to private for these 2, but that's just my opinion.

I think the wait lists will trickle if there are no more additional classes, I can't see no more bulges happening. The reason they don't announce these or delay them is to try to ensure that as many people as possible move out of the state sector or move away (I had this info from a councillor in an email btw), effectively they are solving the councils problem for them.

I do know of 2 families though who have the school I think you are after and 1 is planning a move abroad but it is not definite for Sept although it is definite, so she is keeping a place, and another who has since moved to the other side of the borough is looking to move to a school on her street and is on a wait list, so that's 2 more you probably didn't know about. But you are right, most people who got this school will have put it 1st choice.

We got 4th choice school, but are selling up and moving quite a way away. We felt it just wasn't worth the ridiculous house prices to get a school that we thought would just about be ok, when you can move, get a bigger place and also get a school that is probably just as good.

Are you on Twitter ? Write to the local paper ?

Oh and I believe there is info somewhere that no-one has ever won an appeal against the borough, something like in the last 4 years. Maybe you could ask them what the success rate is next time you contact them. I considered appealing for our 1st choice, but I thought it's not worth my time, if there is a 0% success rate. Just another fallacy for the parents :(

My personal opinion is that it needs a complete overhaul, but I don't have the answers. If no one complains nothing will ever be done though.

Hi Goldi, it's good to hear from someone locally. Have PM'd you

No practical advice OP but I am that it's acceptable to leave children without a school place for so long. Here you just state the language your want your child to be educated in and they go to the nearest school. Hope you get it sorted soon.

I feel your pain, the year ds1 was starting school there were 400 children without a school place!

And the council, in their infinite wisdom decided to build a huge housing estate literally right next door to one of the most oversubscribed school in the county, their catchment area was about 300m :/

Ds1 eventually got placed in a school 1.9 miles from our house (straight line distance obviously!) and we don't drive, plus ds2 was at nursery so there was no physical way we could get him to the school he had been placed in (also one of the worst schools around). They refused to help us with transport, we appealed, no luck, we applied under different rules since ds2 has a disability, still nothing! Ds1 was out of school for a whole year, and he was about 3rd on the waiting list for a school less than 500m from us :(

The whole system totally sucks! Good luck, sounds like you know where to go next :)

Out of school for a whole year, and they did nothing about it? I'm stunned that this is allowed to happen .

Mole, because they'd offered extreme a space, their obligation ended there.

Moleskine, the point is in extreme's case that a place WAS offered (the one 1.9 miles away, which would be considered a reasonable distance - in fact in rural areas might well be the closest school by far), and was turned down by extremepie. At that point, the council has done everything it is required to do, and it weas extreme's responsibility to provide a suitabl;e education for her child from the pioint at which they passed statutory schol age. She would have had to declare her child home-educated, or else face legal sanction - because in her case, she had turned down a place offered. In your case, no offer has been made, so the ball is still in the council's court. Once your younger child is awarded ANY place, however undesuirable yiou think it is, as long as the travel time is considered 'reasonable' (up to 1 hour) then the council will have done everything required of it.

Ok I see.

The councillor came back again today just to say they council are aware of the Year 1 shortage and are doing all they can. I'm so unhappy at their lack of concern or action towards this problem.

There's the same issue at secondary - which is why a new free school in online format is opening for English secondary students in 2015.

The OP's situation has been common in many areas for well over a decade now. It was one of the factors behind UKIP's rise in popularity. The government has prioritised it's academy and free school agenda over making sure all children get a state education. For children with SN's the situation is even more dire.

We need a small scale revolution around educational strategy and planning in England and Wales asap.

In my case yes, we had to turn down the place because there was no physical way we could get to the school, the walking time would have been over an hour each way and at the time we had ds2 in nursery so we could not get them both there in time, also ds2 has autism and would not have coped with being in a pushchair for the length of time, hated buses etc. They wouldn't provide transport as we were just under the 2 mile limit although the actual walking distance was a lot more than that!

It was very hard and ds1 is still catching up because of all he missed, I still feel angry about it tbh :(

We were in a busy town too so no shortage of schools, there were 9 schools closer to us than the one we got offered!

Your situation is different though as you haven't been offered a place and they have to give you somewhere! The special cases you refer to will be number 1 priority though, even if it means they have to go over the 30 children class size limit, this happened to someone I know who was in the same year as ds1 - he moved to the area in July but because he was a looked after child they gave him a place at previously mentioned very oversubscribed school, taking their class size to 31 (we found out about it when we did our appeal)

I am also in the same borough as you, Moleskine, and have a child currently in Y2. FWIW, in her year there were hundreds of families with no place after initial allocations and there was movement right up until the day before term started in terms of waiting lists - a couple of children I know were offered places at a very popular school a few days before term began so it wasn't just places in unpopular schools being freed up. Another child I know moved schools a term or so into Reception having rejoined waiting lists because the school she got didn't suit her for various reasons. I agree that it's not acceptable at all and wish you the best of luck. Feel free to PM me too if there's anything I could answer for you. We are not too far from the schools Goldi mentioned. I'd also like to reassure you that honestly there are no genuinely bad schools in the local area - my child is at one of the least popular and is thriving. The school is fine. So please don't worry too much if you get a school that isn't your top choice.

Hello,

We had some good news today and both our children have been offered school places. Different schools, and one is quite far away, but they do have schools to go to.

We're hopeful there will be enough movement on waiting lists for them to attend the same school by September as it will be tricky to get to both .... However I am very relieved we haven't been left waiting over the Summer with no offer at all.

Thank you to everyone who posted with advice, it has really helped us out.

Excellent!