Our son is without school, what can we do?

[netdady]

Hello,
We moved into Ealing in the beginning of the month. Our son is in year 1 age. But there is no vacancy in his catchment area state primary school, and the same goes for almost all the schools in Ealing borough, except for a few in southall, which are too far away and are in problematic areas. We got registered in all he waiting lists and pressured Ealing council education department, but there are no fruitful results.
The outcome of this outrageous situation is that our child is without any school at all since we have arrived at London, and without any company of kids his age. He is getting frustrated and depressed, and we don't know who to turn to anymore for getting a place n a school.
We contacted the Department for Children, Schools and Families but they as well didn't solve the problem. We appealed as well, but the process takes forever and everyday our son is without school is a waste.
With no solution in sight, we would very much appreciate any advice in getting our son in a healthy educational environment as soon as possible.
Thank you.

Wow I am not really up with schooling but I am shocked that such a situation can even happen.

Shocking. I hope someone can help you.

stay on the waiting lists, stick with the appeal, go visit the schools he has been offered a place at and see them for yourselves (don't go by what it says on paper, ie ofsted), look into travel to and from these schools as a temporary measure, home school maybe until a more suitable place comes up, join beavers, and any other out of school clubs local to you so he can begin to make friends.

So you moved in the middle of the school year and think it's an outrageous situation that there wasn't a spare place in a great local school waiting for your child's arrival

You need to take a place in whichever school has a space, even if it's not exactly convenient, or home educate in the short term, and get his name on the waiting lists for the schools you do want. YOU put your child in this situation, not the LEA. Didn't you do any research before deciding to move?

The LEA has offered you a place in a school with space. You are on the waiting list for a catchment school.

What more do you want them to do? Ask another child to leave? Open a new school for you?

The situation is not outrageous, it's why people fall over themselves to move in their child's application year,

Sorry not to sound supportive but I'm not sure what you can do except home school until a place becomes available.

Are there any private places that you could afford in the short term?

No need to be snarky with the OP - if one was not familiar with the school situation in London, it would have been easy to make the similar mistake.

OP, your options are :

• take the place you have temporarily and look to move your child as soon as you can (not ideal)

-HE until a spot opens up locally

-look for a private option

In terms of meeting other children, how about sports classes (football leagues and similar) or joining the Park Club in Acton. It's a place you all can go to with terrific facilities and space and filled with children. We love it. They have a website you can check out.

This is what Forces families frequently have to deal with.

Thank you very much for all your replies.

Some clarifications please:

A. We moved here from abroad. Even if we moved before the beginning of school year, anyway we couldn't register for a school in time because we wouldn't have an address in London yet. He is in year 1 by the way, not reception, and the number of places is fixed and full in any time of the year.
B. The problem is not that he doesn't have a place in his catchment area school, but that there are no vacancies in almost all the other schools in Ealing, besides really bad ones that are very far away. We search hard to find a decent school.

Joining beavers and getting an independent schools advisor are great ideas. Thank you. Meanwhile, our son is already in swimming class and we teach with him at home using various notebooks.

Does anyone know who in the authorities is responsible for making sure that all children will indeed go to school, according to compulsory education law? Maybe they can help.

All the best and thank you again. We're looking forward for further ideas.

Is it possible to contact a neighbouring borough to see if they have a place for your son?

some of these responses are a little harsh! when you are caught in a chain and you don't have an awful lot of control over when you move. same thing happened to us the year dd was due to start in reception, we moved to new area in july, dd had no place at any of the local schools, but during the time we'd been waiting to exchange, we had to watch 5 school places come and go via the waiting list, which until contacts were signed, dd couldn't have. the delays were down to the rest of the chain, very frustrating.

ringing the local schools themselves is a good idea. dd got a place in the end due to one family moving themselves over the summer.

The Local Authority is required to have a Fair Access Protocol. Amongst other things, this says how they will find places for children arriving in the area outside the normal admissions round if the parents can't find anywhere due to a shortage of places. Unfortunately that may be in one of the bad schools that are some way away from you.

You should speak to the admissions department at your Council. Tell them that you have been unable to find a place and ask them to find one for you. If they try to throw the problem back at you remind them of their Fair Access Protocol.

You can appeal for admission to any school that says it is full up. However, appeals at this age are often infant class size appeals which are difficult to win. You can also go onto the waiting list for as many schools as you want. You don't have to send your child to a school in Ealing. You are entitled to apply for a place at a school in a neighbouring council if that gives you any better options.

Sorry - I didn't mean to be harsh. Obviously too early in the morning for me.

I think what I was trying to say is that it isn't the LEA being difficult or unhelpful - if there is no space, there is no space and they have offered you a space. Therefore being outraged isn't going to help your cause.

Beavers sounds like a great idea. A friend of mine was in a similar position to you for reception year and kept her child at the local montessori. A local one may take older children, although his peers would obviously be much younger. At least he would have a different environment, resources, facilities etc.

Hope something is sorted for you soon.

I don't think it's just London - it's everywhere.

Ealing is difficult depending on where you are. My son is in Yr 2 and in a private school partly because we moved to Ealing after the cut off for Reception apps and got told they had 61 applicants for 54 places left (we are happy with his school and can afford to keep him there). It doesn't look like it has improved much. Get yourself on to as many waiting lists as you can for the schools you do like.

well we put down 3 choices and didn't get any of them. that's the way it is.

i think investigate neighbouring boroughs too.

PRh47bridge is right - you need to remind the LEA about the Fair Access Protocol, but the LEA may argue that they have complied with that protocol by finding a school place for your child. The reason your child is without a school is because you have rejected what has been offered, so the LEA may feel it can't so anything more for you.

Speak to John Chard - I think his company is called School Appeals - he charges £150 for unlimited advice and help with the school appeal. I paid and got my son in albeit in a school in Wales. I presented my own case at the appeal - John recommends not taking a solicitor as it is seen as aggressive - and highlighted the reasons why that particular school was necessary for my son. In my case, I worked from home and didn't have a car so couldn't possibly take him the half hour walk to the school they did offer, that the secondary that this primary fed into had a 6th form whereas the primary offered fed into a school that didn't (it was also in special measures and being closed down but he advised not mentioning the negative), that the ethnic mix at the one I was offered wasn't diverse enough (my son is mixed race) and also it didn't have the extra curricular activities that my son had pursued for a number of years - musical instruments, languages etc.

John gave me advice on admissions policies etc which differ between England and Wales - how much per square footage area each child needs etc. Sorry, I know I'm not explaining this correctly. Under age 7 it is harder as the ratio of children to teacher is higher than over age 7 which is more flexible. I also found the attendance figures for the school so even though the head and council members were fighting it saying we're full to the brim etc when I said yes but that's based on 100% attendance and your attendance is only 95% so that means there is that wriggle room and one extra child will not affect the education of the other children in the class (which is the basis for the argument in an appeal). I also managed to show figures for when class sizes had gone above 32 so the precedent had been set for accepting over 30. Hope that helps. I think choose the school you want and look at every angle to get him in there without mentioning it gets better results etc. John Chard was well worth £150 just for the support if nothing else.

Some good news: we found a place at a reasonable school, even though it is over 30 minutes bus ride away. We are happy with it as a temporary solution and our son's mood got much better already.

More clarifications:
A. Ealing council didn't offer us anything. They just sent us to call all the schools in Ealing (dozens) and rush over there if we find a vacancy. There is a list of vacancies getting published but it's not relevant. Places published on it get filled before it was even published, by kids from the catchment area. The only thing you can learn from the list are general tendencies of the quantities of vacant places in different schools and different areas in Ealing.

B. I do think this situation is outrageous, since this is going on for a good few years and the authorities should have anticipated that and act accordingly by expanding the schools fast. Sunnydelight and fruitstick, yes, schools shouldn't be filled till the last place, but a few places should stay for newcomers. Because this is reality: people in London (and everywhere) move to new neighborhoods. That's a natural known phenomenon. The authorities should be prepared for this situation, and not having kids sit at home without being at school or travel unreasonable distances. It acts against basic rights of children: the right to receive fair education, and the right to be part of their own community.

I think that maybe we should consider to collaborate more than on online forums but go the council and protest, as a group, maybe this way things will change. Otherwise the situation will just get worse.

Keeping spaces free doesn't solve anything in a community with lots of coming and going. If a school always has to keep a few spaces free, it just means that the number of children they can accept is even less. If they had allocated one of their free spaces to you, where would the next family to move into the area go to find a place for their child? Or would they only be able to give you a "free" space if the knew someone was leaving at the same time? Leaving the situation right back at square one. School funding depends on the number of children on their roll and no school is going to deliberately reduce their funding in order to keep spaces for an unknown length of time.

yes as annh says, schools can't keep spaces for children who may or may not move into the area.

Their funding depends on having as many children as they are allowed, so of course they will fill spaces.

Anyway, imagine if you were a parent of a catchment area child who didn't get a space becasue 3 spaces were being "saved" for possible movers-in! That would make an MN thread!!

I didn't mean of course that places in schools should be kept free on the expense on people from the neighborhood. What I meant is that the number of places in schools should match the demand in its catchment area. Therefore, the council has to enlarge the number of places in schools in a way that there will be reasonable spare places for newcomers.

Well my LEA is complaining because, it is struggling to provide enough places for all the children in the LEA. This is because the birth rate has gone up, and the number of children going private has declined a little. However it also has lots of children from outside the LEA apply to schools here. So it can be very hard for LAs to know how many children there will be in the future. We have always been an area that people move to as their kids get older, as well.

But if there are spare places in a popular school, there may be people who already live there, even in catchment, who want to go there.

I don't understand how there would be spare places really. Popular schools that have classes of 30 are full. If they had classes of 28 to save some places, locals who didn't get in might get fed up - and rightly so IMO.