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?

How realistic is it that the appeal for the 2nd choice school would have been successful? If she was rejected on the distance criteria she could hardly have had much argument against that, assuming the council hadn't actually measured the distance incorrectly?
The non event of the appeal to the 2nd choice seems to be adding more weight to the sense of outrage at the appeal's decision than it really merits, particularly in the light of it being her decision to postpone.

Poor littlePerma. I hope she feels more positive soon. And FWIW I think you are doing exactly the right thing in pursuing this, without her knowledge. And if you do, we all owe you one for clarifying this area so that no other child has to go through this.

Please don't feel you have to keep explaining yourself unless it helps you.

Your position is very clear, considered, reasonable and patiently explained.

Perma sorry to hear your DD is so upset but kids at that age are fairly adaptable and she did know this might happen. Is there a particular social reason that she wants to go to the grammar? What was her reaction on March 1st?

Please don't worry about patronising me, I've already been patronised on this thread (and on many others too I'm sure :)). But my own interpretation is quite different from yours still, sorry. I think in order to have been in with a shout at appeal your DD would have needed to have scored much closer to the last person in but on any measure she was vastly out. I don't think anything here, looked at objectively, is especially unfair. My own view is that the law has been correctly applied.

Yellow I like honesty and I like a debate, we'll agree to differ!!

Yes, they are adaptable, far more than adults. Seeing how her sister is thriving there is a major factor..... 1st March? Devastated but she got used to the idea fairly quickly. Then the tables turned.....

Re 2nd choice school - the two lads opposite have a place there. The eldest got a place there last year; the youngest has got in on the sibling factor.

Which, presumably, means we're right on the edge of the catchment area which has fluctuated against us this year. I don't think we could win an appeal there.

Ah. I didn't realise that, tiggy. I just assumed your starting position when appealing needed to be the criteria not having been applied correctly.
Seems odd, though, that people who are pushy enough not to take no for an answer can effectively bulldoze through the established criteria and get a place they didn't qualify for (not talking about Perma here, just musing), while others accept the decision and lose out?

tiggy - speaking generally if all the GS places have been allocated and there are others on the waiting list then, ok you can perhaps prove that a DC is 'GS material' but how do you prove that he/she is more worthy of a place than those on the waiting list?

Common sense tells me that you are describing a situation where a GS has spaces and selection is by a simple past/fail.

But I thought the error had to be one that cost the appellant a place, not one that benefitted the appellant? As perma's dd benefitted from the mistake, they then looked at the grammar school appeals bit.

As perma's dd benefitted from the mistake, they then looked at the grammar school appeals bit.

No, because despite Perma asking them to check and check again that they hadn't made an error, they insisted that they hadn't. Then seven days later decided that they had after all, and then passed the buck between them as to who was responsible, forcing Perma to go to appeal. But it was never an appeal about 'I think my daughter is of GS standard', although the appeal panel seemed to decide that it was. The appeal was about it being unreasonable to withdraw the place so late, but the Panel seem to have overlooked that.

And people are happy with that and outraged at the other???

At the risk of sounding antagonistic, I find a lot of the views expressed here highly contradictory. Officials shouldn't make arbitrary decisions. They need to blindly follow a set of rules. This IMO contradicts the view that the same officials can make an arbitrary decision and say that DC can have a GS place because the pushy parents made a good case and the kid in 1st place on the waiting list will have to stay there even though he might be brighter than the appeals kid.

If you are right in your interpretation no wonder some parents think that The System is biased towards pushy MC parents .

Habba Are you happy that he Admission authorities can apparently ignore what the law says? Is obeying the law, blind following? Why bother to make rules about admissions in that case?

Thanks tiggy. So the appeal should have been successful not on the maladministration or the grammar test but on the late withdrawal of a place? Got it.

Habba all parents have the right to appeal. All of them. If there were 199 on the waiting list and 199 appealed, and the panel found that the school could admit 5 without undue prejudice, it may well be that the 5 who were admitted were numbers 1,2,3,4 and 5 on the waiting list. It would depend on who had the best reasons on the day.

If there were 199 on the waiting list and 6 appealed, there may well be 5 happy parents and one sad one.

You can only go as far as offering every parent the opportunity to appeal. You can't make them do it.

LaVolcan - Says you and a bunch of MNetters.

A bunch of posters have done a bit of Google-ling and swapped a few anecdotes and come up with what they think is the definitive legal position. Is anybody's 9 to 5 job to do with being a admissions legal expert? If not then who are you to say that the law is being ignored? Who is to say that Yellowtip's argument isn't the valid one.

Either way, it's a bit arrogant how people are being dismissive of the appeals people and Yellowtip.

A friend of mine recently failed in her appeal to get her son into a school that had a superior SEN program. That's one reason why I can't, unlike the rest of you, invest emotionally in a case where a DC simply wants to go to the same school as her sister.

You are very rude Habba. Some of the people on here are most definite experts and know about the admissions process inside out. Most of them are of the opinion that the law has been broken. Yellowtip thinks it hasn't. Some clarity on the matter would be a great step forward.

Sometimes laws are stupid and need to be repealed or amended, but it doesn't give us all liberty to go round and ignore them when we feel like it.

You seem to be making it an argument about whether the OPs daughter is capable of going to a GS or not. That wasn't the issue.

So which one of you has a daytime job handling education appeals? If no one then why is it rude of me to point this out?

The queue jumping does outrage me but not for the reason you think. A lot of the posters here are the same ones that roll their eyes at pushy mums. The 11+ process should be a level playing field. Those with pushy educated parents shouldn't be allowed to have an advantage over kids whose parents are unable or unwilling to support them.

That is why I am a bit hearing people basically go - everyone can appeal to get their DC to jump the queue.

Basically, stuff you if you aren't articulate or educated enough to appeal.

Habba, that's how it is in a lot of things in life. There are a lot of people who aren't educated or confident enough to access their rights, and that's why there are support agencies which try to pick up those cases. It's awful, but I don't think you will ever level the playing field in life.