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?

This is more complicated than a simple mistake on the waiting list, though. The OP's daughter failed by a significant margin to qualify for the school concerned, so wasn't even on the waiting list.

I think she needs to be prepared for a serious battle with the LEA- admitting this child would surely call into question the whole selection process. The authority is certainly not going to want to do that, and will, I suspect, fight tooth and nail to avoid it.

OP- if you have strong feelings about the other schools in the area, you really need to do something about getting her a place somewhere you can be happy with. The worst case scenario here is that your dd ends up at your least favoured school- the one with any places left when this is all over.

" Coconutty Thu 02-May-13 22:39:51

I can't imagine how the mistake was made but really don't see how they can let the offer stand. The rules on GS entry are very strict and I can't see how they could get around it."

The admissions code is clear. Mistakes happen, but the burden of the mistake must rest on the Admission Authority, not the child.

It doesn't matter that it's a grammar school. It doesn't matter how awful the mistake. It doesn't matter that there are 180+ children who would have benefited from such a mistake. Nor does it matter that there is one child who would have a place had it not been for the mistake (they will get their own appeal and will win).

The OP was offered a place. The place was accepted. A significant number of days passed (more than the 3 days that has been deemed too long already by another appeal). Therefore, the OP's DD keeps her place.

It doesn't matter how embarrassing this is for the LA. It doesn't matter how many children are upset by the fact that someone got in ahead of them.

For each of the other children on the list, the only affect is that they are 1 place below their rightful place on the waiting list. For the child who is number 1, they should appeal. They will win.

x-posted with you there, tiggytape.

I am just niggling over one thing that has been pointed out as being in the OPs favour andi wonder if, in fact, it may go against her.

As the OP queried whether there had been a mistake on receiving the offer, as she knew that was likely the case, will the admissions authority point to this and say that she KNEW it to be a mistake?

Sorry- badly worded.

I mean that she accepted the place suspecting that it was mistakenly allocated to her DD. IYKWIM.

No. She is a parent. She is not expected to know all the rules. She asked if there was a mistake. She was told 'no'.

Irrelevant to whether there is a mistake, the process is a formal one. The issue isn't whether there is a mistake in itself. It's whether that mistake lead to an expectation of a place at the school, by making an offer.

Once the OP had a written communication from the LA saying that her child had a place at the school, the clock ticks. The clock ticked past hours or even a day (the widely accepted time that an appeal would be rejected) and past 3 days (the time that an appeal was allowed on the basis that 3 days is too long to wait before withdrawing) and even past 5 days.

It's too late.

For each of the other children on the list, the only affect is that they are 1 place below their rightful place on the waiting list. For the child who is number 1, they should appeal. They will win.

Yes, the child who is really losing out here is whoever is no 1 on the waiting list and who should have been offered a place at this school. Will that child and their family actually know about all this, so that they can appeal? How would they find out? That child seems the only one the OP has a responsibility to (as well as to her own, to do the right thing for her, of course).

For the child who is number 1, they should appeal. They will win.

As Mmmm says, how would they know they've missed out on a place through the LEA error?

Thinking about it, the person who misses out is whoever is top of the waiting list once all places have been accepted and filled until such time as the waiting list is no longer used. It's not necessarily child #1 at the moment as they may get a place anyway.

I know of a child who was about 50 places down on the waiting list who has, just last week, been given a place at grammar school. In our area there's a lot of movement between offer day and acceptance. People are offered places at various schools, depending on how many they sit for.

In that situation, how would the next person on the list realise that they had lost out on the place?

X posts Tiggy I see they would not be informed. I only knew there had been a mistake as my friend rang me straight away, fully expecting me to have had a call as well. We were so lucky.

Yes, SoupDragon (lovely name, I wanted it!) you're right. At the end of all this, there will be one child, whatever number, who didn't get the school they wanted and were eligible for. And it won't be in the LA's interests to make that known at any stage, so that that child can appeal.

OP, this is astonishing.

If you are confident your child will be fine then go for it. With an older daughter in the school you know what the demands are and will have a good sense about whether your daughter can manage.

In our case the Prep school tried to tell us that our daughter was not academic and would not be able to cope in a selective London indie. Her CAT score was awful as was her 11+ result. Despite this she did get into a selective indie ahead of girls who were seen as shoe-ins. We were not worried as to us she seemed as capable as her supposedly academic older brother, just different.

Its fine. She is towards the top of her cohort, and probably doing much better than a good proportion at the grammar. (Indeed I wonder how good the grammar actually is. Given how selective they are, their results in comparison are not stellar.) She just was not ready at 11 and has got her act together since.

I would be tempted to try to get this message across. My assumption is that the grammar are concerned that a girl 30 marks below will not cope and are telling their education authority this. The worst that could happen is that she gets in but the school have already written her off. I would also try to ensure that she will cope. Perhaps some help with core skills such as maths or English before she starts if she is weak in either. Or help with the first year exams, as this is when schools really decide who is struggling. (I took a week off work and helped my daughter revise. Great as I also learnt that aural revision was much more effective for dyslexics.)

If however you are concerned that she might bump along the bottom, I would try to parlay the error into agreement that she goes to her second choice school. Grammars are not necessarily better, just more selective, and being at the bottom, knowing you only got in in error, would be awful.

Dont tell people. Girls can be cruel and it is very possible that insecure girls will remind your daughter that she was lucky to get in.

Morning all. DD not good this morning. And what's hard for both me and her is I have four children (the youngest a gorgeous but demanding 2 yr old) so i can't give her all the attention she needs right now :(

Anyway I'm not going to get into a debate about others on the waiting list. The outcome of this isn't going to affect them in the slightest. I'm not going to get into a debate on whether or not she will cope - that's not an issue for us in this particular case. I'm not, of course, saying please don't comment on that though! It's an open forum and I'm reading all the posts with interest.

I emailed Mr Admissions Director which was effectively a note of my recollections of our telephone conversations - none of which he disputed :) He has also emailed me to say he has written to the other LEA to say that should this go to appeal we are likely to have a very strong case.

He also told me we should receive the formal notice of withdrawal this morning. For once, I'm hoping it's delayed!

BTW I haven't read messages posted since about 8.30 and probably won't get round to until later this afternoon now.

It's all starting to hit me - can anyone send me some valium?! ;)

Can't send you valium - hope these will do instead and

Chin up - keep fighting. This is the LA's mistake because they didn't apply their own code properly.

Yes lots of indies here. The grammar school offers 320 places across two sites and you are effectively allowed a preference but may be offered at your less preferred site. Therefore although you have a place, it may not be your first choice and as this is is a different authority, so some distance away, lots decline offers for the, even further away, site. Some go to indies, some don't apply due to their placing and likely hood of getting preferred site. But you are only applying for one school IYSWIM. It is usually that anywhere up to place 370 you are likely to get in, but it is through second round offers. I'm not sure how that works but the child I am talking about was somewhere around that placing and had accepted an Indy with scholarship but has now had that last minute offer.

There is no grammar system in my local authority though and the state schools and academies are rarely oversubscribed so there is, almost always, another option.

PermaShattered, you must be absolutely exhausted. Thank goodness it's a Bank Holiday weekend. Although it will 'halt' any progress it will give you time to stand back and take stock and 'regroup' ready for more action next week.

It sounds as if you are doing an amazing job and have well and truly risen to the challenge.

I guess what you've got to hold on to, is that for whatever reason this 'glitch' has meant that your DD potentially will have an opportunity (which she wouldn't otherwise have had) of a grammar school place. All the experienced and informed Mumsnetters (thank goodness for them) suggest that you have a very, very strong case and it doesn't exactly sound as if Mr Admissions Director is saying otherwise either. That is what you and your daughter have got to hold onto...If it works out that your DD gets the place thro' appeal you will be able to look back at all of this and see that it's been an unbelievably positive quirk of Fate! It's not the type of thing that anyone could imagine happening....

Can you do anything physical to go and positively let off some steam - a run, a game of squash?? You need some type of physical release....

"In that situation, how would the next person on the list realise that they had lost out on the place?"

Because people will know that the OP's dd didn't pass the 11+. And they will then see her in the grammar school.

That is why the LEA will fight tooth and nail to stop the op's daughter having the place. It is such a can of worms.

What would happen, I wonder, if a girl was accidentally given a place in a boy's school, and the parent decided to insist in her going?