School Appeal with Infant Class Size Prejudice - any tips

[xfabba]

Hello. My son wasn't allocated any of the three preference schools we listed for Reception places this year. We are appealing for the first and second choice schools. All are full so I am assuming the councils reason will be cited as infant class size prejudice - i.e that even though we have some suspicions that the distance wasn't calculated correctly (ground B) and that theer are some facts that I believe meet the unreasonable criteria (ground A), it will be extremely difficult to win an appeal becasue they won't want to take the class sizes above 30 (necessitating extra teachers etc).

ANy hint or tips to maximise our slim chances? All the advice I have had so far says we whould get fact and figures like how much square metre space ther is per child in the school, how the distance was actually measured etc etc , but I don't understand how I can get this information in advance of the appeal.

Sorry can't be much help but I remember hearing on radio 4 last year about the ways to increase your chances of success in appeal. There are certain key words/phrases which really help apparently.

Bit rubbish (sorry) as I can't remember them, but you could google?

Good luck, we live in an area where reception is massively oversubscribed. Friends 0.2 miles from school missed out. Crazy, horrible situation....

Fingers crossed for you XXX

We appealed on grounds of distance being calculated incorrectly and were allocated a place in advance of the appeal as they admitted they had got it wrong.

Why do you think they have measured it incorrectly?

Re - square foot per child: Erm - I suppose you could get the school's floorplan and number of children on roll and get your calculator out.

There's a set figure for amount of room per child and I think that it is calculated thusly.

re distance - they should have told you somewhere how they have calculated the distance. sometimes it's as the crow flies, sometimes it's GPS, along lighted streets, without shortcuts. so you need to get that information, in writing, from the LEA and then do it yourself, I would guess.

I don't know if this is true for all areas but I've recently been told that:

'It's worth finding out if the school is full overall as if there is space, say, in Y6 then it's not technically 'full'. The school can determine the way it structures the yeargroups and the teachers within them to make it possible to have an extra teacher in Reception.'

As I said above, I'm just repeating what I've heard but it might be worth a try.

The distance used to be measured using roads and pathways. Last year they changed it to as the crow flies. The stated admission criteria are:
1.Looked after children.
2.Exceptional arrangements.
3.Siblings.
4.Children for whom the school is the nearest to their home.
5.Others.
?Closest to the School? - is defined as the closest, as the crow flies, measured by the Local Authority?s Geographical Information System (GIS) software computer programme available on the County Council website, based on the child?s home address at the date of application as stated on the application form.
The council website says something along the lines of "we make no claims as to the accuracy of this system and it should not be relied upon" (I can't check at the moment as it has been unavailable since early March).
At time of application this system only showed distances in miles and had no information whatsoever on it about what happenned if you were equidistant in miles. Since I queried it, after the admission round, they clarified that it would go down to metres if equidistant.

Under the old "made up roads and pathways" measurement method our first choice school was by far the nearest so my child would have come under category 4 "Child for whom the school is the nearest" . Under the new "straight line distance as the crow flies" we show as 140m closer to another school that we did not apply to (and this is the one we were allocated and have declined) so my child dropped to category 5 "Other" for our first preference school which is pure straight line distance.

When I measure it using google maps I still find that our first choice school is closer, as the crow flies.

My questions are:

Why are they using a GIS that they state themeselves is inaccurate?

How can I find out the margin of error to see if it would make our first choice school closer using their system such that we would definitely have received a place?

The published allocations for our first choice shcool show category 4=62 category 5=4. Category 5 "Others" i.e distance went out to 0.7 km, we are 1.2km. However, the allocations suggest to me that all "child's nearest school places" (62) were filled before others (4 - to fill the school) so my son would have recieved a place if he had come under category 4. I assume.

How can I get the distances independently remeasured?

How can I get the LEA to tell me what they calculated our distance as and what the distance of the last "childs nearest school was"

Infant Class Size Prejudice appeals rarely succeed, unless there are truly exceptional circumstances. You'll have more success just getting on all the school waiting lists and badgering the schools regularly.

xfabba, good luck with this you will need it. We moved in the middle of September last year and got DD1 into year 2 of the school that DSD was starting reception in. We applied for DD2 to go into reception, had to appeal against class size prejudice (even though she has 2 siblings at the school) and still lost. I am currently doing a 6 mile round trip twice a day.

We were in the same position two years ago, and have to agree with critterjitter - very difficult to win an appeal on Infant Class Size Prejudice. My only advice would be to do as much research as possible to establish whether the rules were applied correctly - the LEA will actually provide you with some of this information on request, such as the distance from you to your school. If the rules have been applied correctly, you have very limited grounds to appeal on. There is also a good book by Ben Rooney called 'How to Win Your School Appeal' which was very useful. Although we found it a really stressful process (we didn't win the appeal), we felt that we had no choice but to try. I eventually got our daughter into our second choice school by putting her on the waiting list and checking with the school secretary on a regular basis to see if anyone had dropped out, which they did at the last minute. Good luck!

Forgot to add, that the school's headmaster was also a useful source of information regarding facts and figures. Hope this helps.

Have you read the school admissions code?

I would have thought that the problem was that the class was full, children will have been given places and they can't be suddenly taken away from them. You can have really good reasons, but if a school is full, it is full. I would have thought that the best hope was a waiting list and some may not take up their place.

You can't use the question of whether the school is full overall in Infant Class Size Prejudice appeals. It can only be used at Y3+ appeals.

Best bet at infant level is to get on the waiting list and badger, badger, badger. Often what happens with waiting lists is that parents will put their children's names down on a number of them, and then only accept one of them/ decide not to move schools/ have moved out of the area/ gone private etc. But the school is still obliged to keep them on there until such a time as a place comes up and the parent/s either confirm or refuse it. So there can be a number of children on the lists who aren't going to accept the place anyway. Therefore, your child may be, for example 10th on a waiting list at any one time, but move very quickly up to 1st or 2nd, when a place comes up, and is offered throughout the list, and the school gets the opportunity to drill down the list and realize who is and isn't serious.

Really, infant class size appeals are not a constructive use of time, unless you have truly exceptional circumstances. The LEA have to listen to your appeal, but they'll just repeat the same old platitudes and send you on your way, quickly followed up with a "sorry" letter. And you'll have spent anything up to 2 months preparing for that moment.

If you can prove they have made an error the Infant Class Size rule allows for exceptions

"Permitted exceptions to the infant class size limit

1. Regulations (the Education (Infant Class Sizes) (England) Regulations 1998 as amended by the Education (Infant Class Sizes) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2006) prescribe the limited circumstances in which pupils may be admitted as exceptions to the infant class size limit. These exceptions are:

c) children admitted after the initial allocation of places because the person responsible for making the decision recognizes that an error was made in implementing the school?s admission arrangements and a place ought to have been offered;

e) children admitted where an independent appeal panel upholds an appeal on the grounds that the child would have been offered a place if the admission arrangements had been properly implemented, and/or the admission authority?s decision to refuse a place was not one which a reasonable admission authority would have made;

However the child will only remain an exception for the remainder of the school year in which they are admitted. Measures must be taken the following year to ensure the class falls within the infant class limit."

I'm attempting to appeal at the mo - I realise how hard it is with the class size rules but feel I owe it to my DS4 to at least try my best.

We have not been allocated our local, formerly 'catchment', school. We live 400 metres away as the crow flies. Sadly we have fallen victim to out-of-area people with siblings already in the school - 20 places have gone to sibs, with 10 of 19 'catchment' children getting in. My DS3 is currently in Y6 there, but because he will not be on-roll on 1st Sept, DS4 can't be classed as a sibling admission. I have had one of my kids at that school continuously since 1993 (16 years).

I didn't even fill a second and third choice in on the form as it didn't occur to me he wouldn't get in. Its unheard of and its only because of the rule changes that its happened at all.

I'm attempting to appeal on 'exceptional circumstances'. My DS was a LAC until last year and had we delayed his adoption he would have topped the list. He remains the same child with the same difficult early life experiences but looses his priority. On top of being an adopted child he has also survived childhood cancer, and is left with on-going health and developmental issues because of that.

I am very lucky in that I have support of the head Ed Psych of our LA (she contacted Admissions direct when I e-mailed her, to support the list of reasons I had given), the community paediatrician, my son's oncology consultant, and the LA adoption team manager, so far. But even so I feel his case is no better than 50:50, and I'm hoping that becasue we live so close that we are not very far off the top of the list and get in that way.

The unfortunate thing is that had I submitted all this info with the initial application, its quite likely he would have got a priority place, but I never imagined for a moment that five minutes walk away would turn out to be too far

We didn't get our first choice school but those who didn't get their first choice school were given ours as their second choice - does that make sense . DS been in the nursery unit for 15 months, those who had it second choice been in different nursery.

As it turns out, it's going to better for ds, as second choice school has recently been graded 2 out of 50 in LA - first choice was 36 .

Education authorites make it up as they go along............ Good luck.

We didn't get any of our choices. We are in the catchment area for our local (and closest) school but it was oversubscribed and 3 of 13 catchment area children missed out. My son is currently at pre-school there and loves it so I am really angry and upset about it. The problem is we live right on the boundary of the local authority area so we fell foul of the 'distance' tie-breaker (so although we are further away than others theres no alternative closer school, the school we have been allocated is 3 miles away). What makes it worse is we have to drive right past 'his' school (as he calls it) to get anywhere else

The situation is a bit complicated re the class size because the nursery and reception classes spend some of their time together in the reception classroom so the nursery places count towards the maximum of 30 - i.e. there are only 22 reception places allocated and 8 for nursery. What annoys me though is that they are treating it as 1 class in terms of the class size limit but places are allocated separately to nursery so an out-of-catchment nursery child could prevent my son from getting a reception place! Thats just wrong. Why can't they adjust the nursery intake to make sure all the catchmnt area reception children are accommodated?

Also there are 3 members of staff who cover nursery and reception - 1 teacher, 1 assistant and 1 nursery nurse. Surely the infant class size thing is meant for children of school age? (the nursery children aren't so why do they have to count towards the total?).

We are appealing but I'm not holding out much hope. Think our best chance will be to keep on the waiting list and hope we can get into year 1...

anyone any ideas on how to explain to a 4 year old that cant he go to his school any more?

squeezy he mnight well get in on waiting list- several kids often get offered other schools or go elsewhere quite quickly; find out who administers your list- if it's LEA just get on anfd hope, if like ours it is Secretary get on and suck up LOL

AS for ther est, just be positive about the other school and amke it sound like its a bif adventure. I know that's hard when you're worried yourself but at that age kids absorb what you tell them and so you should be able to pull it off. Had to transfer ds1 at end of reception (moved) and ds3 last week (in Yr1- gone to a special needs unit) and a sort of blase, wow-aren't-you-lucky approach seems to have worked both times.

squeezy find out if the nursery schildren can count as taking an infant class place? That might be the crux of your arguement if they can be excluded then they are not full oninfant class size prejudice grounds and you might get in. Have you appealed?

yes we're appealing - have the sent the form in but haven't got a date yet.

its LEA who administer the waiting list - unfort we are 3rd of the 3 catchment area children because we are the furthest away so would have to be a fair bit of movement for him to get in, but I suppose it could happen. (I'm a bit of a glass half empty person which doesn't really help in these sorts of situations cos I just get down and depressed about it...) Reasonably hopeful tho that even if he doesn't get in for reception we may have more chance for Year 1, as then there won't be the nursery kids to count against the total any more.
Thanks for your suggestions re explaining peachy - I'm sure he will adapt as he's a pretty sociable little boy. (Think he is more of a glass half-full type thank goodness!)

1d - Ive actually looked into the definition and an infant class is defined as a class where the majority of children will be 5, 6 or 7 by the end of the school year. So technically I suppose a combined nursery+reception class does come under that definition (most will be 5, some will be 4) but it seems logically wrong to me to count children who aren't of proper school age.

and back to my main bugbear - if it does have to count as one class why the hell can't they allocate places as one class?

We will try our best at the appeal anyway and then just keep our fingers crossed that a place will eventually come up

Ah you know 3 isn't that much really, quite often once children are settled in elsewhere or uniforms bought etc a child willmove and a few refuse the offer as a alce. I would be unsurprised if your DS has a place within R year.

Find out if the school is full be asking the LEA what the 'net capacity' is and how many children will actually be there in september.Sometimes schools will have had a bit of building work done but not upped the admission limit.Eg our school had had a loft converted to form a library about 10 years earlier but not upped the admission limit
If this is the case then find out how many will be in each year group and how they could be arranged in such a way as to allow a place for your DS.

We appealed and failed but my understanding about the distance issue isn't which is your nearest school, but which children are nearest the school. So if every other child who got offered a place lives nearer than you, you will get offered the second choice, unless every other etc etc. HTH.

you're right stroppy the actual criteria they use only looks at the distance from school to each childs address which is why we've missed out and been allocated a place at the only school in the area with room. Grr. Its blatantly unfair to anyone like us who lives on the boundary, we're going to be the furthest away from ANY school. (the distance criteria in effect is operating under an assumption that if you are furthest away from school x you must be closer to school y - that not the case for us, theres no closer school). I could bang on all day about how unfair it is but I suppose rules are rules and theres very little we can do to change them.

I think a lot of problems happened when they did away with catchment areas and introduced nearness to school. Therefore, children from further away maybe got in one year, and their siblings then get priority in following years (subject to moving more than two miles etc). The whole thing, despite published critera is not very clear and there seems to be a lot of misinformation and belief about it all. We didn't get in to our local school when we moved because it was a juniors linked to the infants, and the infants all took priority. It is more flexible in juniors - they can take an extra 1 per class, I think whereas infants is a maximum of 30 (this is what I believe from our appeal, not gospel)

Squeezy - I have looked into this and I think that schools can not allow less than 30 pupils in in Primary (the class size prejudice argument) unless they have made a case to have less. You need to find out how many Primary children they have made a case for. Nursery should have no bearing. The Admissions Authority should have supplied you with the number in the information sent to you with the application form.

I have looked long and hard into appeals on class sized prejudice and can help you if you need.