Primary schools won’t take my DD

[Misschiff]

I’m getting seriously fed up. We moved back to my home village in January this year due to needing support from family, and since December last year I’ve been attempting to enrol my daughter in the primary school behind our house. It’s just gone to appeal with the church and been rejected.

The school states that they have too many children in the class with special educational needs and it would be a strain on the teacher and the pupils to add another pupil to the class. My DD is 7 and epileptic (controlled with medication).

I have tried 3 other schools in our local area (we have no transport and we are rural) and they have also refused her. I’m pulling my hair out.

Admissions are holding meetings constantly to discuss what their plan is with my daughter, Children’s services are on my case because she’s not in a school and all the while I’m home educating her in accordance with the national curriculum for key stage 2 and I’ve completed SATS papers with her. I also have a toddler and a baby.

Nothing I do is good enough. I’m pulling my hair our trying to get her into a school and nothing’s working.

I was going to tag the same people that Lougle did. they are collectively ace and I'm pretty sure will turn up in due course to advise.
under the Education topic there is a Primary education board which is where this sort of thing usually is posted. There is also a SN Chat and SN Education board which might be helpful.

( Olennas - tiggytape is gone some time ago now and got all his/her posts deleted )

Misschief, I have no advice re school but there’s no reason your little one can’t or won’t have a normal life with her epilepsy. I’ve lived most of my life with it and it barely impacts my adult life. I wish you the best.

Oh no, Teen! I hope they are OK

I think it might have been around the time of the hacking issues, but I'm not certain.

It is outrageous that your DD has been without a school place since January.

If there is no school with a vacancy within a reasonable distance, the council should be invoking the Fair Access Protical (FAP) to force a school to go over numbers. You don't get to choose which school - it is the one which LEA deems can best cope with an extra pupil.

I am dismayed that Children's Services did not tell you about this. Next time they are on your case, ask them why not and if they can pressure LEA on your behalf to get this sorted. It can unfortunately sometimes take a few weeks for a place to be found when all local schools are full. It is appalling that you have been left for 11 months

I have no doubt they are using a disability as an excuse. It is suprisingly recent that children with disabilities have been entitled to education and the system has not caught up.
However, you say that if you don't home school, a social worker will claim neglect? Home ed is nothing to do with social services. And if you're being checked on regularly (which as a home edder, you really shouldn't be), then you must be registered as homeschooling, and therefore the LA won't be searching for a place for you.

I think you have a very strong SEND Discrimination claim.

As you’ve already gone through an appeals process with the school, I would write to them again and ask who you take a further enquiry re possible Disability Discrimination with ie them or the LEA. If that doesn’t grab their attention...

You might find a space appears. If not, it’s a tribunal.

If you want to go down this route their are plenty of us who lurk on the SEND boards (under SEND and Education) that can help.

Contact children’s services to inform them you are home schooling only because you cannot find a school place and this is not your preferred choice. They’re not going to penalise you - they will have seen this situation before.

I'm responding to Lougle's batphone and agree with all that she's said.

Unless I've misunderstood, this isn't about lack of places - places have come and gone - but about the school's unwillingness to give a place to OP's child. Whether the school has been reasonable in declining to offer a place is (as Lougle says) a complicated judgement of balancing needs but what jumps out at me is that the school and the LEA have had almost a year to resolve any issues/needs for additional support and seem to have got nowhere. Delay of that scale in sorting this out is itself (arguably) unreasonable.

I'm assuming there is a letter showing what the school is relying on in maintaining its refusal and setting out the reasons the appeal failed. I second the suggestion of approaching the Ombudsman/EFA for their opinion on whether the school and LEA have acted fairly and reasonably. I don't usually suggest this (lawyers often make a bad situation worse by getting all Rumpole of the Bailey) but I think you need to seek specialist legal advice on the (possible) disability discrimination aspects.

Thanks PanelChair

I do think that you'll need to take this further, @Misschiff, and how you do so will depend on the official stage you've reached with the appeals process with the school you applied for behind your house.

If you've had a proper appeal, where you got to go in front of a panel, and that appeal was rejected, and you are still in time, then you need to go to the LGO, as PanelChair says, and ask for them to assess the process and whether you should have been granted the place.

Another route is to go back to the LA and say your DD has NO school and you expect her to be allocated a school, so why hasn't she been allocated a school? Is it possible that they think you are now electively Home Educating? If they think that, they will not try to give you a school.

The other route is as a PP said, which is Disability Discrimination. Through a SEND tribunal.

I wasn't criticising you for posting here, I was just saying that it doesn't get much traffic

Thanks to @Lougle for bringing this to my attention.

Misschiff - I will do my best to help. Myself, Admission and PanelChair are all experts on school admissions.

To start with the blindingly obvious, it is totally unacceptable that your daughter has been without a school place for nearly a year. The LA should have invoked the Fair Access Protocol ages ago. However, the good news is that they say they are now "formally approaching the school". I understand you think it won't achieve much but this sounds to me like the LA is about to direct the school to admit your daughter. That means the school has to admit your daughter whether they like it or not. Before directing the school the LA must consult the school's governors. They then inform the governors that they intend to direct them to admit. The school then has 15 days to appeal to the Schools Adjudicator. If they don't the LA can direct them to admit. If the school does appeal the Adjudicator's decision is final. Bluntly, I would be very surprised if the Adjudicator allowed the school to refuse to admit your child in this situation.

I have to echo Lougle's questions re your appeal - Did you get a bundle of papers with the Admission Authority's written argument, PAN, Class arrangements, Capacity diagrams, etc.? Did you have the opportunity to state your case, to question the Authority's representative, etc? If these things did not happen you haven't had a proper appeal.

In general, if a school has places available in the relevant year they must admit any child who applies. Refusing to do so on the grounds of her epilepsy is appalling in my view.

I am assuming from what you have said that your daughter is in Y3. If that is so, an appeal should be easier to win than an appeal for Y2. And, as your daughter doesn't have a place at all, it should be easy to win any appeal.

If you would like to PM me (click on "Message poster" alongside my name) with the name of the school and LA involved I will see if I can provide any further advice. I will be happy to help in any way I can.

Yes, we need some clarity about whether there's been an appeal hearing - I wondered whether the "appeal" mentioned earlier was just a conversation with the school.

Who has told you there are places in these schools that are rejecting your daughter? You say friends have told you of pupils who have left, that doesn't necessarily mean there is a space free...

Misschiff,
you are in a ridiculous situation that should never have happened. I suspect that the basic problem here is that the Local Authority decided that you were home educating your daughter and as such are not doing anything to resolve the situation. Unfortunately you have been slightly misled into believing that you need to home educate as you have no school place which is not correct.
I agree with what PRH is saying about Fair Access Protocol but would add you need to send an email to the LA stating that you understand that they are now in correspondence with the school but that you need them to understand that you are not home educating and that your daughter needs a school place with immediate effect. I would also state that if the LA cannot resolve this issue within the next 5 school days then you will be contacting the ESFA as a complaint about both the school involved and the Local Authority. That might just apply the pressure needed to get an early resolution of this situation.

I have no advice sorry but this is shocking. Is it worth contacting your MP do you think? Sorry if that’s a totally stupid idea

OP I commented very early in this thread and had no advice but felt awful for your DD!

I’ve now got some advice (teachers in the family/reading online...etc) and although it has already been said I don’t think it’s been hammered home enough. Stop home educating your DD!!!!

Or at least...tell the LA you simply can’t do this due to the needs of your two younger DC. (Maybe keep doing it quietly so DD doesn’t fall too far behind)

If LA are aware DD is not being educated their duty of care and pressure to find her a space increases massively! Right now, unintentionally, you’re giving them a huge out and taking the pressure off.

Apparently, that’s the reason kids from ‘rough’ and ‘challenging’ backgrounds always seem to get spaces in schools- the parents (generally) say NO when the LA ask if they can home educate ‘just until they can find a space’.

Now I mention it, I recall when I was a primary school (small middle of nowhere village) the school was desirable and lots tried to get in- my parents jumped through a million hoops to get me in and the school closed their doors ‘FULL-NO MORE SPACES’ - a few days into term a new girl rocked up - she was from a notorious family on a nearby estate and her parents had done ‘Zero’ to get her into the school but had ‘kicked off’ refusing the home educate when they’d basically just turned up in the school reception expecting she’d be let in!

In the end (a few weeks of discussion with LA) the school let her in 😮 she just joined the year late and that was that...lots of angry parents whose DC hadn’t made it but what can you do? She barely came as her DM kept shunting them around so the place was pretty much wasted anyway- feel sorry for the girl but it was a total piss take

It's the council you must keep on at, not the schools. Ask them to invoke Fair Access Protocol. Go to chief exec if necessary. Do NOT tell them you're HE.

Ignore me - I see the experts have arrived en masse!

That’s not bad advice, titchy! It might be the FAP that’s behind the LEA’s current belated attempt to resolve the situation. But we don’t know that (or what the outcome will be) so we’ve been suggesting that OP goes down the Ombudsman route.

You’ve had some good advice so far

Attached some tips on appealing and websites to visit to get info, to give you some idea of what to look for.