Urgent advice on school admissions process needed

[FnD]

To cut a very long story short.

On wednesday we were offered a place at our first choice junior school ( which has 60 places) for our oldest DS (he is currently at the linked infant school which has 75 places. We were also offered a place for our middle DS to start in Sep at the linked infant school.

On friday, we received a letter saying they were very sorry but due to an admin error they had offered too many places at the junior school and were going to have to withdraw my DSs place. They offered another school instead which is nowhere near the infant school or my childminder who does the school runs and looks after my youngest DS.

I have posted on education and someone has said that according to the schools admission code, they do not have the rights to withdraw the place once offered.

I need to start dealing with this tomorrow am and would really like to know if what the admissions authority / LA have done is legal.

Can anyone advise me please?

No - I don't think they can withdraw the place once offered - it is their error and they have already made a contract by offering you the place to start with.

Stand by your guns on this one and at least you do not come under the key stage 1 "30 rule".

The LA will have a legal dept of course.

IIRC, I don't think that the location of your childminder counts for anything.

I don't know about the withdrawal of the place though.

I sit on Admissions appeals and have a copy of the admissions code SEmummy refers to.

I have to say though that it looks as though they were withdrawing the offer under the limited circumstances permitted.

I would ring the admissions clerk first and ask for their advice, the ones at our LA are extremely helpful.

You might want to take legal advice but unless the LA admit an error you'll end up going down the appeals route.

As someone else said the 30 maximum doesn't apply at junior schools, but they do still have a limit and admissions have to follow a strict order of priority.
There will probably be many appeals and the panels tend to hear them all on one day in order to prioritise. They do have the power to overule LAs but you need a good case.

I'm sorry to say that proximity of your childminder is not going to be enough.
Much better to focus on the educational needs of your child.

The reason why I will be making a big deal of my childminder is that my youngest DS is with her every day. He has Downs syndrome and the liklihood of me being able to find someone else who will look after him, take him to his therapy sessions, use makaton, understand dysphagia etc is slim. Plus as he has already been with her over 1 year I do not want him unsettled. But this will probably only come up at appeal which I am trying to avoid.

Marmitebabe - they have already offered 64 places instead of 60, which I think is because they are trying to appease as many people as possible due to their screw up. Is there a limit after which they will not take anyone more children?

The first thing an Appeal panel looks at is whether the school has been correctly filled.
Then they can look at your particular reason for wanting a place at this school. They may have parents in catchment also appealing, but you may be able to persuade them that you should get priority because of your circumstances.

Each school has a "minimum" and "maximum" capacity. The numbers are divided among the year groups giving the admission level. They can go over the number in the year group as long as it doesn't take the whole school over capacity.
So if the school has 4 year groups and a maximum of 240 they can go over 60 in one year if another year is under. But the school cannot make the decision to go over, only the LA or Appeal panel. And I don't think they can go over 240.(Might do for a child in care).
I wish you luck but I doubt you will avoid going to appeal.

If you do have to go to appeal make sure you submit all the information you can, including the original offer that they reneged on, medical report on ds, letters from gp/social worker/hospital, letter from childminder confirming how long she has had him, the hours she has him and what she has to do for him etc.
If you can manage it (and I understand this is very emotional for you) try and type out the information, your reasons etc etc and try to be as dispassionate as you can. Then you can either read it out at the appeal or submit it to the panel to read if you are too upset. They need facts and details to make their decision not a tearful sob story.

I wish you the best of luck and feel for you in this difficult situation.