Appeals at Secondary Level

[Twink]

Have any of you any experience directly, or know of people who have had to go to appeal to try to get their child into secondary school ?

A friend is facing the appeals panel soon and is feeling extremely nervous about the whole thing. From what I've seen, the whole process in our area seems designed to intimidate parents and the LEA won't be winning any 'Plain English' awards in the near future.

So can any of you offer any advice about the best approaches or even what not to do ?

Thanks on her behalf.

Been through it & feel for your friend. The first 2 appeals were a dead loss. They were just finding "evidence" to back up what they'd already decided. The 3rd appeal is supposed to be more like a tribunal. We pulled out before then but the advice we were given is:

Get the backing of an MP and/or school governor

Thoroughly research your case & be prepared to argue why your child deserves to go there- over and above someone elses.

Dress smartly... we were told we'd fail because my DH has long hair!!

Hi Twink,

I was going to suggest contacting ACE, but see from Scummymummy's thread that you already know about them!! They are fantastic and I would certainly recommend that your friend gets their appeals leaflet and speaks to them for advice.

Difficult to comment really without knowing details of why a place wasn't offered. For example an appeal for the most local community school would be very different than an appeal for a denominational school miles away.

If there is no suggestion of maladministration then your friend needs to make the case about the benefits for her child to go to the school and highlight the particular difficulties for her child if she/he doesn't go to that school. What is it particularly about that school that is most appropriate for her child rather than another school - the appeal needs to be positive for that school rather than negative for all surrounding schools ie. Not "we want him/her to come here because all the other schools are useless". Might be true, but it won't win!

Make sure that any supporting evidence is backed up - ie if there are physical/medical/emotional reasons then try and get supporting letters from appropriate professionals. Ideally these should have been submitted with the original application, but should definately be included with the appeal.

Include all the reasons - even the ones that may seem trivial - they can always be rejected, but can't be added in afterwards.

In terms of the actual appeal itself (I don't understand how Tallulah had 3 appeals - usually there is only 1 I think) I would advise your friend to stay as calm as possible - this is usually pretty difficult, so advise her to pretend to be calm - it works just as well! Make sure she has a list of things that she wants to get across in the appeal and to tick them off if necessary as she goes. If the appeal ends and there are things that she still wants to say then she should ask to add something. You have to come away from these things feeling like you've given them your best shot.

Whatever happens with the appeal, I would advise that your friend is now trying to get her child's name down on to other school's waiting lists - as I said on Scummy's thread it does not pay to threaten to keep a child out of school unless you are in a position to actually do so. Even if she accepts a place at another school it can be turned down if the appeal is successful.

Hope that helps - let us know how she gets on

Thanks very much for your response Kyliebump.

In this case the child has attended a primary school which feeds 2 secondaries. Unfortunately her mum's house is one street out of catchment for her (child's) preferred school but her father's house is in catchment (joint custody). They filled the forms in explaining this, assumed she would get in, didn't put any other schools down (which with hindsight they now realise was a mistake). The other secondary is oversubscribed too so she's on a waiting list for both schools (although is higher on the preferred school list !) and has been allocated a school about 10 miles away. We live in the sticks and public transport is as rare as rocking horse droppings so to say things are stressful for the poor child is an understatement.
It seems that if this appeal is unsuccessful they will then have to go through the same process again for the catchment school; is our interpretation right ? And are the LEA responsible for getting her to this other school ?

Hi Twink

If your friends child spends an equal amount of time at her fathers address then that is an important part of their argument. Do they have a copy of the form explaining their circumstances on the original application? If so they should submit it to show that that information was available to the admissions authority at the time that the decision was made. I'm not suggesting that the admissions authority have acted improperly, but it's the sort of thing that I would have thought the appeals panel could take into consideration.

I really hate the way that secondary school applications make you list the preferred schools in order of preference (not so common with primary schools). It happens every year that parents only put one choice on the form as they think that it would strengthen their case by showing that that's the only school they would consider. However, your friends may still not have been offered a place at the second choice school if all the places had been offered to people who had ranked it as their first choice. It would still have been a good idea to have applied there as it might now be more difficult to appeal to that school given that they weren't really a consideration in the first place. Having said that, it is still worth going to appeal for this school too and they may still be successful.

In both appeals they may be asked whether she has been allocated a school. I would advise that they try not to be too negative about the school offered, but to be positive about the ones that they want her to attend, and emphasise the difficulties of transport, moving out of friendship groups etc that going to the other school would mean.

I don't know if the LEA would be responsible for getting the child to the further away school. Definately contact the LEA to ask. Certainly if parents apply to a far away school then that is their choice and the LEA wouldn't have to help. However, as it's an allocated school the LEA may have to do something. You say you are out in the sticks and I don't really have any experience of rural policies, but when I have worked in London, assistance with travel just amounts to providing a travelcard for the child, not a taxi or school bus.

If neither appeal is successful then they can ask to be kept on both waiting lists and keep in touch regarding posisitons. Something may still come up.

Not sure I've been much help - if there's anything else I can think of I'll let you know.

Thank you very much (again), I think at the moment any information is a help because they feel so out of their depth with the situation. I'll let you know how things work out.