To think my daughter was denied a basic right (an education) and that we've been treated like shit?

[dobrovnikdreams]

She spent Year 7 in a school in our home town where she was happy with friends. Towards the end of Year 7 due to unforseen circumstances (family related, won't get into it as irrelevant) we had to move to Wales and we did so through a council house swap through someone who wanted our city. She spent Year 8 and half of year 9 in a Welsh school where she got a place instantly. She didn't settle very well as friendship groups were already established and she didn't really fit in (we're talking small town Wales where everybody knows everybody and speaks Welsh etc) so she struggled. Midway through Year 9 she ended up refusing to go point blank. She had a meltdown one night and begged to go back to England saying she wouldn't go to school unless we moved. The family issues had settled down by this point and a month prior to DD's meltdown I'd put our house back on the council swap site wanting to move back to our old area but hadn't had any offers.

I wanted to move back to England before Year 10 started because of GCSE's beginning etc so got very anxious by the time May rolled round and we still hadn't got anyone wanting to swap from my hometown to Wales. My worries were rubbing off on DD so I bit the bullet and ended up private renting us a 2 bed flat in our old general area (but was a few miles away in a different local authority as couldn't afford to rent in home local LA ) as we were both very homesick and DD wanted to get back to her old school ASAP. This crippled us financially but was necessary as both needed to move back home. Once we'd settled into the flat I contacted DD's old school only to get told they were full and that we would be put on a waiting list but were warned we had no chance due to different LA and wrong postcode. We appealed and got rejected. By this point it was late July and all the schools were shut and I couldn't apply anywhere.

Year 10 started and I applied to the nearest school in my LA. Got told "We don't accept place in Year 10 unless the child is in care." Appealed, failed. Applied for 2 more in my LA and got told the same. Failed appeal for both. In appeal they all used the fact that DD refused to attend the Wales school as an excuse for not taking her. After being rejected by the 3 nearest schools in the LA I applied to 3 others which were still in the LA but right at the far end and all of them had the attiude of "Why on earth have you applied here when you live 11 miles away? It's too far." Even more frustrating is that after each school rejected us they'd say "Apply to so and so they'll probably have her" and I got the feeling they didn't believe me when I replied that we'd already been rejected by "so and so" and every other in the fucking area. Because all the appeals took so long(you get a date something like 2 months after appealing) soon enough it was nearing the end of Year 10! DD was extremely depressed. No friends or social life due to lack of school and worrying about her future. It was heartbreaking.

As Year 11 started I applied to each school again hoping they'd think "A year later and she's still not got a school place yet? We are now obliged to give her one." bur half the schools said no and the other half didn't bother getting back to me. DD was devastated. She told me "Mum, I just want to go to school and be normal. Why am I being treated like some kind of criminal? I've done nothing wrong." Wow, a teenager wants to go to school and get an education, how awful! I ended up in actual tears writing a letter to my LA and another begging them (literally begging) one of them to give my DD a place somewhere as her mental health was in dire straights. Of course they both said "If her menral health is in a bad place then focus on getting her into CAMHS rather than school for now."

So, here we are. End of Year 11. DD has no friends, no social life and no GCSE's. Luckily she got into college on a Childcare course (was only offered foundation level which is fair enough, it's not the college's fault) so I'm hoping she will begin to feel she has a purpose and make friends and her life will improve. But we are both still so so angry about how we were treated. Our area is well known for having good schools (people move round here from all over for the schools) and it being difficult to get a place after Year 7 but we applied to 6 bloody schools (2 of which were the worst schools in the area, we were desperate so weren't picky) and none of them gave a shit. Yet I've heard cases of scrotes getting thrown out for stabbing someone, they do a month in young offenders then get a place at a different school immedietely :(

I am confused as to whether you formally applied for schools through LA or just rang/wrote to each and were met with negative feedback on availability. LA had an obligation to provide a school space somewhere, if they did not, nor on appeal, then you would have had an opportunity to complain to the ombudsman, councillor, MP. However that assumes you did make an In Year application and at no time indicated you would HE or look at independent schools.

Not sure what the college Foundation course is likeky to be but even without gcses she should be able to do a level 2 vocational qualification in September alongside English and Maths gcse.

This isn't your fault and I'm sure your DD won't suffer from this

Being out of school for two years and not doing her GCSEs won’t have an impact on her education? You’re having a laugh.

The state system is under a lot of pressure, especially in areas with lots of new builds. To many people having children and too few willing to pay for it. It’s terrible that the state system is failing children this way but it was almost inevitable. At least she has a place in college now, hopefully it will be smooth sailing from here.

Why the hell didn't you contact the press at the beginning of year 10. I'm appalled by this. You are getting slated though and I think that's a bit unfair. The OP doesn't necessarily have the social / analytical skills to be able to deal with this. The education officer has been involved and it is their job to sort this out. Shame on the local authority for not dealing with it on OP's daughters behalf. Even if OP has fault the daughter is a child and has been failed by the system entirely.

OP you need legal advice. Your daughter shouldn't be going off to do a childcare foundation. She needs to go to college to do her GCSE's and in my opinion the LEA need to pay for this. What a fuck up.

I have to go 'till much later, but wanted to say you've taken a huge hammering here, please don't let it stop you using this board and talking to the people who are trying to offer advice to try and sort things out.
You don't need to justify yourself, stuff happened, there are people on here (ph4bridge is one) who might well be able to help you in putting things right.
You may need to state some details about how things evolved so they can. Inevitably it will bring out more things and more people having a pop. You wanted to know what others thought, you've had that. Work on what you can now do about it. Maybe make another thread for help not judgments, and maybe link to this, to move forward?

Sorry OP, the buck stops with you and I think you’ve let your daughter down very badly. This has been going on for years -
I can’t fathom why you allowed it to drag on for so long.

Your DD must get her qualifications now so she has options and choices going forwards - I certainly wouldn’t be encouraging her to do childcare unless it’s something she’s passionate about.

You didn’t fight enough for her education, I’m afraid.

LA do close over Summer to the PP who suggested it doesn’t, just wanted to point that out. I know hindsight is a wonderful thing but you should have checked whether your old area had a school place for her before leaving the school in Wales. I realise she was miserable in that school but at least had you stayed there, she’d now most likely have some GCSEs behind her.

During the two years she was off I see you paid for a maths and English tutor which is great but did you realise you could have entered her to do her GCSEs in a college? Home educated children do this all of the time. It’s not the end of the world because she can now study them at college and do her exams, please ensure she does this otherwise she will greatly limit her future options.

If it were my children I’d have been on the phone to LA every single day without fail, I’d have also written to the local MP and possibly local newspaper too. You didn’t do enough OP, I just hope your DD doesn’t suffer as a result.

Hi there ,
I m so sorry and sad to hear about your situation . I can only imagine the heartbreak and frustration.

Unfortunately your case is not uncommon and I hear of so many children not being able to secure places in secondary schools even the worst ones.

We as parents to the future generation need to do something about lack of schools places and the general lack of schools for our kids .

Definitely set up a meeting with the local mp as a starting point but more than that as a community up and down the country we need to demand change in education policies so that no child is left without a place at school.

We need to demand more funding from the taxes we pay to pay for new schools to be established to cope with increasing populations when areas are developed/ regenerated .

Its all very good and well when housing is being developed and created but where is the additional infrastructure that is needed to support the extra residents or are the same already at bursting point schools and hospitals supposed to miraculously accommodate all the additional population?

It never fails to astound me how areas can boast redevelopment without the additional infrastructure to go with it .

Change can only happen if united we demand it and education is every Childs basic right .

We need a national uprising to fight for the right for the sake of the future generation ultimately for the sake of our children and their futures.

Again I am deeply sorry for what has happened to your daughter and I think an apology from the powers that be is at the very least in order .

LA do close over Summer to the PP who suggested it doesn’t, just wanted to point that out

No, the local authority don't close over summer. However, schools do so the LA is unlikely to make any significant progress with admissions issues during that time.

I'm very interested in the school's refusal to take Y10 pupils. Does their admission criteria state this? All schools must publish their criteria and they must comply with their own policy. Obviously the school would be identifying so I can't check but you absolutely need to review their admissions criteria. If it makes no mention of Y10 they've broken the law.

Fuck me, common sense dictates that you don't move without looking into suitable schools surely? In two years, could you not have looked at moving elsewhere?

What did she do every day for two years? I get that she didn't want to be home educated, but surely you took some responsibility for keeping her education going while she was waiting?

Sorry OP but it sounds like you're in a right mess. I don't understand how you've let your daughter dictate the terms of her education - she didn't want to go to school in year 9 so refused and then refused to be homeschooled. What if she hates her college course and refuses to go? What's she been doing for two+ years?

You need to speak to her college about support to help her with her studies and about doing GCSEs. These qualifications are vital, you can't just continue to accept whatever situation you've found yourself in.

I'm a bit confused as to how this has happened. The LA is obliged to find your child a place. It may not be close, it may not be a preferred school but they must find somewhere. So what happened when you told the LA your child had no school place anywhere? I don't understand how they can argue that your child should continue attending a school in Wales. It's not even a different LA, it's a different country! AFAIK, the school place must be in the authority in which you're applying (although no doubt there are rare and extenuating circumstances).

Did you ever look into taking legal advice? There are specialist law firms who deal with school appeals.

You can’t unfortunately claim that the reasons for a cross country move have no relevance. You took a massive risk in removing your child from a school they were happy at and moving them to a smaller area. Did it not occur to you the issues likely to be faced?

Secondly - it sounds like you’ve missed steps or not pushed schools as hard as you should have. How often did you email your local council, councillor, headteachers, MP about this situation? And why did you choose to not enrol your child in some form of education program at home? You’ve allowed her to waste to two years while you attempted to appeal. Surely when you realised it wasn’t working in year 10, you would have started to look for a serious alternative? Yes, the education system hasn’t shown itself well here, but you have also failed your child as well. When she began to refuse to attend school, what exactly did you do? Did you discuss the ramifications with her? Look at alternative places in Wales? Or just assume that someone else would pick up the pieces? People fight incredibly hard for their children to attend school (I work in a school, see KS4 students move all the time and see what parents are prepared to do to ensure a decent education) and in all honesty, it doesn’t sound like you did and now want someone to blame.

I do feel for the OP actually. The LA appear to have done a crappy job.

The thing is though sometimes public bodies do a crappy job and let people down. Personally I would not have put up with this for weeks let alone two years and would have carefully researched the position, escalated, got politicians and or ombudsman involved etc. And using the fair access protocol if needed I would not have rested until she got a place swiftly. Essentially I would have been sharp elbowed.

But here is the thing. I’m a highly educated professional. I’m used to locating policies, frameworks, legislation and working out how it applies and how I can use it to achieve what I need. I can present well on paper and verbally and have the confidence to be able to push matters up high and not take no for an answer. And there are a far higher proportion of people like me on Mumsnet that there as in the population as a whole.

Many people do not have those skills and experience and would struggle to push things in the way I can. And if the LA had done their job properly it wouldn’t have been needed. So sadly due to the LA and the lack of sharp elbowed parents the OP’s daughter has lost out on a critical slice of education.

In England any 16-19 year old who doesn’t have GCSE maths and English at grade C/4 or above must study for it (or functional skills if they are not able for GCSE) alongside whatever other course they are doing. So she will almost certainly be given this opportunity at college (and if not you need to ask why not). Be aware though that these will generally be resit classes, with the presumption that students will previously have covered the syllabus but not achieved the required grade, so she may still need some additional support at home. Many, many jobs however look for at least 5 GCSES or equivalents, so it may be worth looking at what else she can do through either online study or evening classes.

I hope you didnt move to Wales for a bloke you 'met' on the internet...as it seems to be a thing at the moment. Did your daughter only want to go to the school she had previously been too I wonder and refuse to go to any other like she did in Wales....there's more to this story that we are not hearing

Why didn’t look to see what schools had places before you moved? See which ones you were likely to get into, then rent a property and apply to the LEA as soon as you had that rental agreement, before you’d moved back to England?
Then you should have been home schooling her in all subjects whilst you were waiting. Why were you applying then waiting, then applying then waiting and so on. I don’t understand. It’s one application with your chosen schools and the LEA will tell you who have places available and who not. Some schools may have hadn’t placed at the start of war 10, but by the time you applied they were gone, 12 months later- that’s how it reads.
If a school does not have a place, they don’t have a place. Many can not just add another because your child needs it.
Why several months into year 10, were you not shouting and screaming, sending letters to the LEA, your MP, following all the protocols etc? I would be devastated if my child was missing out in the education, and would be kicking up the biggest fuss ever.
It sounds like you just applied for one school, day back waited to hear, moved on to the next one and so on. You should have been going full throttle before you’d finished unpacking.
But ultimately YOU should have been homeschooling, buying all the revision books for her GCSE, because unless she is amazingly talented, starting GCSE’s at the start of year 11, she would have struggled so much, as she had already missed a year of work. How would you expect her to catch up on that? Where would the time be? This is where home schooling would have been beneficial and helpful to her.
I hope she gets on at college, and is going to be doing her GCSE’s alongside them. Because she will seriously struggle without them. As most jobs require 5 GCSE grades C or above, I know that’s obviously now going to change with the new English grading.

Final point - to me the Wales move and it’s motivation is a bit of a red herring. People move, things happen. Regardless of why someone has popped up in a LA, that LA still has their duties to find them a place. And whilst schools may not like admitting into year 10 or even 11 that is no reason to deny a child an education.

Now if the OP has been complaining that the allocated school was inferior to the school they couldn’t get back into then I would say yeah, that’s a consequence of their move suck it up. But to pin the 2 year lack of school place at the OP’s door because she had the temerity have other factors in her life, that’s a no from me.

"The LA is obliged to find your child a place. It may not be close, it may not be a preferred school but they must find somewhere."

That is what is supposed to happen but doesn't mean that it does happen.
There will be parents involving solicitors and going to tribunals today and every day because local authorities failing to provide what they must provide.

Sockwomble I take it you are referring to SEND tribunals. From what OP has written this is a child seeking a mainstream place which is far easier to resolve and doesn't need a tribunal system. Children with SEND are too often let down by suitable provision not being easily available. This isn't the case here as this child doesn't seem to have or need an EHCP and a named school. Let's not conflate the issues

The root problem is caused by too many people.
Maybe moving to Wales in the first place was the main mistake. Maybe giving up on Wales was also a mistake. Maybe you could have learned Welsh.

We don't have perfect hindsight though, do we.

From the OP it does appear that the LA at some point knew about the situation and still didn't do anything.
As for send tribunals, I think people assume they are for parents wanting a 'better' school but in fact it can be wanting any school because the child doesn't have a school.

Poor kid - I feel sorry for her.

Being uprooted from her social life and feeling like a bit of an outcast is one thing, but this has also had massive ramifications on her education that may continue to affect her future.

I’m not trying to be hard on you, but I do think you let bureaucracy get in the way a bit. Instead of waiting months for responses etc you should have been a bit more forthright and planned ahead.

Maybe speak to a solicitor that offers a free consultation and see what they suggest? What does your daughter want to do?