Late Grammar School offer: over the moon but stressed/flummoxed

[PermaShattered]

What a 3 days we've had - any insightful comments welcome. In short:

1. Our daughter was offered 3rd choice (her 11+ score was about 30 down on passmark);
2. 3rd school is outstanding but we appealed to 2nd choice school as was our preference;
3. Last Friday took calls from our local Ed admissions authority saying why appealed when have offer from grammar school?
4. Said we hadn't. She made further calls to other relevant admissions authority and came back and told us we definitely have an offer and it would be in post next day (Saturday just gone);
5. It duly arrived, and we posted our acceptance same day (they should have got it today) - verbal acceptance of place given by phone on Friday;
6. On Friday the Authority also withdrew both our place at 3rd choice school and our appeal to 2nd choice school;
7. Today i take a call from a friend whose daughter got substantially higher score than my DD - and she is 188 on waiting list;
8. I call our admissions auth to check they received our acceptance (they said still in posttray but will be dealt with this afternoon);
9. I query whether there could possibly an error and i'm told categorically 'no'. And if there was, we have a written offer, accepted it and they can't take it off our daughter;

10. Finally, my other DS is that grammar school.

I'm perplexed. What could be a possible explanation?

Yellowtip This is the link to the ruling where a Head Teacher offered places to parents in direct contravention of the Code. The Admissions Officer, realising this had happened, wrote the next day to retract the offer, but the scope of that letter was incomplete.

As you can see from that LGO hearing, even though he had promptly written a letter saying 'there's been a mistake', because he didn't do so properly, it was found to be invalid.

Perma's case is watertight, I think.

"She only found out about her friend's daughter's score after she had already accepted the place"

At which point she realised that there were at least 188 kids above hers on the waiting list. And she still thought that there was no mistake? .

As for 30 marks off the pass mark being "nothing" ...

"Today i take a call from a friend whose daughter got substantially higher score than my DD - and she is 188 on waiting list ;

Apparently the OP didn't think it was 'nothing'.

As for being repeated assured that there was no mistake, if the CEO of Miss World personally assured me that I had not been given a wild card entry to their beauty pagent in error I still wouldn't believe it :)

Anyway, I don't know why people keep throwing the admissions rules at me because I am not disputing it. I am merely making the point that the OP had reason to believe that there was a mistake and that there was always the possibility of the mistake being discovered. So I don't really understand her OMG OMG posts since what she had been anticipating merely became true.

It wouldn't surprise me if they used this against her in the appeal. I mean, she repeatedly queried the 'mistake' so it could be argued that she didn't truely believe that her DD had a legitimate place.

""She only found out about her friend's daughter's score after she had already accepted the place"

At which point she realised that there were at least 188 kids above hers on the waiting list. And she still thought that there was no mistake? ."

No, if you look back you see that she then phoned the department and said are you sure there is no mistake? and they said 'Yes!'

"It wouldn't surprise me if they used this against her in the appeal. I mean, she repeatedly queried the 'mistake' so it could be argued that she didn't truely believe that her DD had a legitimate place."

See my post before yours, Habba. The LGO found maladministration despite a prompt letter explaining that there had been an error, because the letter didn't go far enough in retracting the offer and the parents still had cause to think they had a place.

The panel can't use the facts against Perma, because their only consideration must be 'were the admissions rules fairly and consistently applied'. The answer to this has to be 'No.' Therefore, they have to find in favour of Perma.

I will continue to throw the admissions rules around until people realise that this isn't about opinion as to whether it's fair or right, it's about whether a procedure was correctly followed, which it wasn't.

At which point she realised that there were at least 188 kids above hers on the waiting list. And she still thought that there was no mistake? hmm.

HabbaDabba Have you read the whole thread? Have you read the posting where OP says that once she found there were others on the waiting list with higher scores she asked the LA again to check? Where she was again told no mistake had been made?

Would you be getting so annoyed if this had concerned an oversubscribed comprehensive, (in a non-grammar area, so not a Sec Mod calling itself a comprehehsive?)

Habba you do not seem to have read the first few posts. Let me summarise: OP got offered her 2nd choice school; then OP got offered Grammar school, she accepted and 2nd choice place was taken away and re-offered; OP the spoke to friend and discovered friends dd had a higher score but was 188 on waiting list; OP phoned her LA to see if there was a mistake; she was repeatedly assured there wasn't; then a while later the two LAs involved realised there had been a mistake (actually they had known before, and blamed each other for it); OPs DDs place was withdrawn.

During all this time OPs DD had thought she was going to the grammar, and considerable time had passed. Meaning that the place should not legally be withdrawn.
Also OPs DD has lst her place at the second choice school.

In all of this the mistakes were made by the LAs, the OP and DD have lost out, to a lesser extent it could be argues that those higher up the waiting list also lost out to a lesser extent.

Thanks lougle, I don't know the case law and have never had reason to seek it out. I can see that this case is cut and dried for a non selective school but unless there are cases directly applying to selective schools, I'm currently not convinced that the case is watertight. If I were acting for the school I'd be putting a strong alternative case that while the mistake is highly regrettable etc. etc., different considerations come into play where the child in question has scored so far below the pass mark for selective education. The admissions criteria are different for selective schools and the academic one, as determined by the test result, could well be seen as paramount - especially since there don't seem to be any mitigating reasons for the poor performance. Obviously if there is case law square on the point, then I'm wrong. Which is fine. But something seems very wrong in admitting the DC in a case like this with so many people above her on the waiting list.

mummytime it would be much more appropriate and fairer to all concerned if the place at the second choice school was restored. I can't really see why that isn't an option. It seems a sensible middle ground way to go.

It was a bit worse than that mummytime. OP was offered her third choice. The mistake only came to light when she tried to appeal for her second choice, and the LA asked her why, when she had already been offered her first choice.

Who knows what would have happened if she had decided to go with the school originally allocated? The first time she queried it might have been when she found she wasn't getting any information about Open days, uniforms etc. from them.

As someone further up the thread said, this sort of mistake might have been being made for years, but it's only now that they have published the scores gained in the 11+ that it's come to light.

Habba, I thought you were somewhat mean-spirited when I read your first posts. But my jaw dropped at your attempt tos it in judgement when I read that, by your own admission, you tried to steal £3000! You knew full well that £3000 wasn't yours, but you didn't alert the bank, and instead, you spent it. By contrast, OP suspected there had been an error and immediately alerted the appropriate authorities. They insisted there had not been any error, and furthermore took away her Dd's place at school 3 and aborted the appeal to school 2. So despite her honesty, she will have been massively disadvantaged by this catalogue of errors if they do not allow her DD to go to the grammar school, as it will mean she loses out on schools 2 and 3 as well. Can you not see this?
Are you deliberately obtuse, or do you have a private axe to grind about the grammar school system? Personally I happen to think is unfair, arbitrary, divisive etc but nevertheless if you live in an area that operates that system you've got to confront it one way or another. OP is only trying to ensure her daughter's happiness - there was so duplicity or deviousness on her part. Now back off!

Sorry, I should have said restore the place at the third choice school and allow an appeal to the second choice school.

Slightly different situation here tiggy since the offer made in March wasn't erroneous, it was correct. There was a subsequent bog up seven weeks later during which, for a short period of time, OP thought her DD had got lucky.

I don't believe you can say that it's fair to all those children further up the waiting list who have shown themselves to be more suited to that particular school's education as measured by the test. By no stretch of the imagination is this fair.

Can anyone tell me whether or not any case law applies to selective schools or not? I do think different considerations should apply in the particular circumstances of this case, with the mark being so far down, even though I have great sympathy for the OP's DD.

We are not all vipers Perma- just some of us!! Hope the people who have nothing constructive to say on here will butt out - its all been said and it's not helping!!

DIddled am I included in those 'not being constructive'? Has the thing about case law relating to selective schools been dealt with in previous pages? Apologies if it has.

I'm sure any parent would appeal tiggy, yes and I'm sure that the Appeals Panel will have access to the list of results if that is thought to be relevant. I would still suggest that if there is no case law relating to selective schools on this sort of thing, then one can't blindly accept that that relating to non selectives will apply. The whole rationale for admissions is different and so the decision may be too.

tiggy I understand about excepted child but what neither of us knows is whether another child higher up on the list has already appealed and been refused on the standard ground of school capacity. In which case I think it would be unfair to that better qualified child.

tiggy where is it either explicit or implicit that the case law applies to all schools of all types? I'm not convinced, given the different criteria and what appear to be the circumstances of this case, though I'm happy to be persuaded. Are you sure you're not merely assuming that it does?

I understand appeals (at least for superselectives) to succeed only in the case of serious mitigating circumstances which go well beyond 'being nervous'. Of course where there is serious mitigation such as the death of a parent or a major medical condition then one would expect that child to get in with a lower score than others who have no such circumstances to explain a below par performance. That's the whole point of explaining the mitigating circumstances at appeal!

I think that in this case the fact of the school being selective and the fact that the score was so far below the pass mark might well trump the seven days of parental expectation being raised. I'm assuming though that there aren't any cases on this set of circumstances because you don't seem to have them to hand. s a matter of common sense it seems to me that the 'right' result would be to allow an appeal to the second choice school as though it had been made in time, as indeed it originally was.

I can see that appeals in a grammar school area may differ from the superselectives. Presumably the school in question falls into the first category, not the second.

yellowtop no, you're not "not being obstructive", you have raised a valid issue which i think has been comment on previously and I've thouht about too. Off out but will come back later