AIBU to ask for thoughts around what makes a secondary schools admission appeal successful?

[irritablehead1]

If you end up appealing a second school place, does every council have different criteria? Or is there 'winning' criteria that you can use to have a successful school appeal?

Ime only if they have misapplied the entrance criteria.

Sorry, @Haggisfish3, I don't understand your response

if they misapplied the criteria - so if the mistake was on their part - you can appeal but if the grounds are fair it will be tricky

You need really solid evidence as to why the school is the more appropriate than any alternative offer. Preferably backed up by evidence.

Sorry pressed send too early, meant to add from professionals.

I guess that's my question - what constitutes fair, solid evidence?

We had medical evidence that the school was safer for her and a better fit for her SEN. She's in mainstream.

For secondary (and anything that isn’t infant class size rules) there doesn’t need to have been an error, you ‘just’ have to show that your child will be more disadvantaged by not going to that school than the school/other pupils will be disadvantaged by having an extra pupil. You should focus on things that the school you want offers that the school you were given doesn’t. Transport is rarely a big enough argument on its own. Ofsted rating isn’t a valid argument.

There are some amazingly knowledgable and helpful posters over on the MN education boards, who sit on appeal panels and can give lots of worthwhile and factually correct advice.

Thanks @Meandthesky, that's really helpful.

Will it irritate those people on the Ed board if I go over there with this hypothetical question?

I’d suggest starting a thread in the Secondary Education board with “appeal” in the title to get help from experienced panel members btw, in AIBU you’re likely to get a lot of incorrect advice (as already demonstrated!)

I apologise for my info op and good luck!

You should definitely win an appeal if the admissions procedure contained an error and your DC would have been offered a place had no mistake been made (eg they got the distance from your home to the school wrong)
Also if the decision is so unreasonable that it's perverse in a legal sense (threshold very high for this - maybe child protection issues, or allocating the only school that isn't adequateky accessible to a pupils who needs to use a wheelchair)

Those grounds apply even for Infant Class Size appeals (where they are the only permissible grounds) but for year3 and above there is also 'balance of prejudice'

This means that you can win if you can show the detriment (prejudice) to your DC by not attending the school is greater than the detriment to the school and it's other pupils if they go over numbers.

So it all depends on

• how strong the school's case is that they cannot admit more - it might not be particuilarly strong if they have been a few pupils over the PAN (permitted admission number) most years - you can ask to find out the actual numbers in each year group in recent years
• how strong your case is. What is it about this school that is so particularly important to your DC that cannot be met by the offered school - for example, availability of a certain language (with evidence why that provision matters) proven musical child and availability of orchestras and groups etc,

It has to be detrimental to your child in some concrete way, or a mistake in applying the criteria by the school or admissions authority.

One example from my last school - a parent successfully appealed because they are a wheelchair user and this was the only school they could reasonably get to for when there are meetings/parents evenings and so on or if their child was sick and needed to be collected.

Thanks so much. Have also posted on Secondary Education board