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?

Rain - I am not criticising Perma for accepting the GS place. I would have done exactly the same thing. And same with the appeal. I would have argued the same thing about the three day rule etc etc.

What I am debating is whether Perma had a reasonable expectation of a place.

If you were to go back to the early posts everyone, including the OP, believed that an mistake had been made. The advice ranged from don't attract scrutiny to it's a mistake but since it's day 4 they can't legally withdraw the offer.

So it's kind of silly for the same people to argue that Perma believed the offer was legit because she had been assured 4 times.

What I don't understand is why she didn't ask what had happened to make the place available. Surely that's what most people would do?

Indeed Rain :)

nenny you state my position incorrectly: I do not say the well established law on withdrawal of mistaken offers doesn't apply, I say it shouldn't apply without further consideration of whether a child has shown itself to satisfy the academic requirement for entry, since that's the whole reason for selective schooling.

Of course I agree that the Code applies to selective schools and I expect that all selective schools are well aware of the Vesey ruling and indeed to have tidied up any parts of their independent appeals procedures that needed tidying up. But it is clear rom hat ruling that maladministration only matters up to a point. In that case the point appears to have been those with a pass mark in excess of 318. Below that and the maladministration was in effect held not to have caused injustice.

tiggy most parents don't have a clue about LGO rulings so you're definition is obviously useless for the overwhelming majority of parents.

If you don't want to risk a particular answer, then you don't ask the question curlew.

If it were me I would phone up the school. Simples. In a situation like this, had their been a remark, the school would be bound to explain and be helpful. And Perma is a parent of a child already at the school! No excuse for not asking really.

Tiggy - Last year a tech guy turned up at my desk with a new 32 inch monitor. Everybody gets a standard 22inch unless your job function requires a bigger screen or you control your own budget, in which case you order whatever you want.

I told the guy that he got the wrong desk. He checked his paperwork and he called his supervisor. Yup, the monitor was mine. I knew that it wasn't but I said 'ok'. He installed the 32inch and took away my old one.

A week later he turned up to take away my monitor. It was for a different "HabbaDabbaDoo".

I should have argued that I had it for a week and had gotten used to it and that I had assurances that it was mine from the tech guy and his supervisor. But since I knew a mistake had been made and I had taken a punt that it wouldn't be discovered, I couldnt get too worked

I don't know what made me think of this anecdote

... too worked up...

I don't recall seeing it posted but has anyone seen the full text of the appeal denial?

Its just that everyone is outraged that the appeals panel has ignored the law but I would have thought that the official letter would have detailed the legal reason for denying the appeal.

All that is happening at the moment is that people are laying down the law as they see it and since the panel didn't interpret the law in the same way then the panel must be legally wrong. Slightly arrogant IMO but hey ho.

"The grammar school itself would be in charge of drawing up the candidate numbers and tallying them to scores and checking the candidate numbers matched candidate names etc."

Does it? I thought all that stuff was dealt with by the admissions people.

Of course the HT would help in answering questions had a remark taken place and an error of this magnitude been found tiggy. It's disingenuous to say an academy grammar has 'no part in admissions'.

Habba it's also interesting to check out the full text of the Bishop Vesey case. Rely on this at your peril Perma: in 2010, the year in question, the qualifying mark at Bishop Vesey was 318. The lowest score to be admitted was 325. All appeals heard in the 2010 round were judged to have been subject to maladministration but only those whose sons achieved the qualifying score of 318 were deemed to have suffered maladministration causing injustice (not those with a lower score) and so fresh appeals were ordered only for those. I think the Bishop Vesey case pretty much ties it up. Maladministration yes, injustice no. Genius!

Point to Yellowtip. New balls please.

Thank you for the tutorial tiggy:) But I simply asked you to get it right. That's the point: if there was a remark (the only scenario in which the new offer made sense) then the school would be responsible for that remark and would be only too happy to share.

Anyhow, I think we are moving onto surer ground here, with the helpful link to the text of the BV case.

Come on Habba, matchpoint please :)

I love common sense, me.

Sorry Yellowtip but I can only award matchpoint when the final decision is officially rendered. But you are looking in good shape at the mo

Anyhow, I think we are moving onto surer ground here, with the helpful link to the text of the BV case.

Are we? That case was dealing with a mismanaged appeal. There was no mention of a place being taken away after being offered. Mrs K's child never held a place, Perma's daughter did. Perma's argument is about a mismanaged offer. The issue which needs to be fully resolved first is, is an offer withdrawn later than three days reasonable if the selective standard wasn't met? Since that specific question never seems to have been tested, no one knows what the answer is.

If it was a straightforward appeal; the prejudice to the daughter is greater than the prejudice to the school, then from what Perma wrote, it didn't seem as though that part of the appeal was conducted incorrectly.

Yellowtip your point about Bishop Vessey had be sweating a bit until I saw that Bishop Vessey sets a pass mark and then takes the 124 highest scores above that pass mark. In other words, they have the option to take only one child if only one child scores higher or equal to the pass mark.

The reason the LGO ordered that only children who scored greater than the pass mark was to stop an unfair anomaly - that a child who failed to meet the pass mark and appealed would have an unfair advantage.

Perma's Grammar School did not have a pass mark. Her DD did not fail, she simply didn't score as highly as other children.

Therefore, that detail, while interesting, is irrelevant.

The Bishop case was to do with the appeal process being incorrectly handled and how some parents were given leave to appeal.

It had nothing to do with whether the petitioners should get a place, merely that they can't be prevented from appealing.

So I don't understand why people are going ah ha!