i dont know where to turn to,please help me.

[donna070]

my appeal for my son to attend my choosen school has been denied. my original application was a late entry. i was unaware of how to apply for a placement in the reception year,so when my older son started the school i asked at the office. i was told i would be sent forms as the local authority would be aware we were in the area.they were not aware and we did not recieve anything. it was only when my daughter who is 14 months younger got a advertising pack from play school i relised my son had been overlooked. he didn't attend a play school to get a pack when he was of an age to apply.the school im applying for is literly on my doorstep. the reception year will be full to capacity when he is due to start in january.my older son attends the school and my daughter will start reception in september 2011.is there anything i can do to get him into the school. does anybody have any advice for me on what i can do next,please.

Which year is your son supposed to be in?

If your oldest son is already in the school then he will be the first on the waiting list so if anyone leaves he should be first to get in.
my only advice would be to pray hard that a child leaves.

my eldest is in year 4. he is on the top of the waiting list,but it is unlikely that people will leave. it is a popular school with good reports and grades.

sorry, he shud be in reception.

Home Educate the middle child until the place becomes available?

this is my plan. it was a long slow process getting him to go to the pre school and not cling to my leg crying. he now goes into class to stand by 1 of the teachers,but still wont sit down on the floor with the other children. i dont realy want to go through that all again,and want to get him into the school sooner rather than later. hes quite happy at the thought of goin to his older brothers school. hes going to miss all the induction days and other things they do to ease them into school.

School is not compulsory until they're 5 so maybe you're okay to keep him at home and wait for a place to become available. It sounds like your ds will benefit from that anyway; I am sure that he'll be eased into school anyway when he starts.

When was your appeal turned down? Is it recently or was it in the summer term? If it was in the summer term then you could exercise your right to appeal again in this school year. However you need to understand why the appeal was refused last time before you do so. What did the letter say?
It could be that the school has 30 pupils in the class, which would be the maximum by law they are allowed with one school teacher. As such the appeal letter should have said that the appeal had failed under the infant class size regulations. If it says that then you have very little chance of being successful at an appeal and your only opportunity is to hope that a vacancy happens.
If it does not say that then it is an "ordinary" appeal and there is a better possibility of success.
Either way you need to talk to the LA admission office who will now be handling all admissions and ask to be on the waiting list and appeal or not as seems sensible.

i have not received my letter yet,the appeal was last week. the 2 classes are full to capacity. my argument was that the process of admissions is wrong and i had not had anything to say that it was time to apply for my sons place. the school had told me i would be sent forms for my son. he was not in any preschool to get the pack my daughter has not long received. there hadn't been a place for him untill the january after all advertising in the preschool had been done. i've been told if you dont apply for a place the la admissions send you a letter asking why you have not applyed. i have never received anything of the sort. they told me i hadn't done enough to get him into school. i wanted to know what else i shud of done, when i did what the school had told me to do.the clerk to the panel had said that there had been so many complaints about how the advertising is done,(not just in my area,in the country) that the onbudsman had investergated the process. they had found in favour of the la. the woman talking against me said things are changing in the next year or two as to how things are done. if this isnt an admission of some guilt i dont know what is..... if its not broken dont fix it, so why are they changing it?

i was told that letters get sent out with council tax correspondence also. but i never had any. the council would be aware as to who is living in my house. i want to know why his name wasnt known to the relivent authority.

Sorry to hear that your appeal was turned down.
I act as Clerk to the Panel in my Borough and we have a lot of parents that appeal because their child did not get a place as the parent did not apply, or made a late application. The Panel are normally not sympathetic to such cases, especially if the parent has an older child at school, for whom they would have had to go through the admissions procedure already.

In the Authority I live and work in posters to remind parents to apply for a school place are visible at GP surgeries, play schemes, nursery, bus stops etc. The Authority does not automatically send out a pack as it is seen as the onus on the parent to find out and apply for a school place and the Local Authority just has the obligation of offer or notify of a school place once the application has been received.

AS your child is of reception age, Infant Class Size Legislation applies i.e. max of 30 children per class. Your case has to be extremely exceptional for the appeal to be allowed or you have to prove that the Admissions Authority did not apply their admissions criteria correctly. Even if you have an older child in the school, although sibling priority may apply there may be other siblings also waiting for a place so your child will not necessarily be first on the waiting list. Also waiting lists change daily i.e. in my Borough we don't have primary catchments, so its based on distance, so tomorrow someone else could move closer, one sibling gains a place in say Year 3 and his/her sibling ends up on the waiting list, pushing your child down iyswim.

I am afraid that unless you can prove some kind of maladministration there is not much you can do. If however you do feel that there has been maladministration then you should write to the ombudsman giving details of your case and they will investigate your individual case. Contact the Clerk to the Panel and request a further action letter.

Sorry to have gone on and good luck.

Agree with others. Just to respond to one point...

You say "if this isn't an admission of some guilt I don't know what is" regarding the way the LA advertises for applications. The LA presumably feels its process can be improved. That does not mean the existing process is so poor that it is in breach of the regulations. As long as the LA have done the kind of things firsttimemum77 describes they have carried out their responsibilities.

when i applied for my eldest's place it was just puttin his name down on there books at the nursery and he moved on to primary. this was at a different school. i cant remember doin what i've done for my daughter,filling in application forms and sending them off. we moved to the area we are in now when he was in year 2. there was places in his year and had no problem getting him in. i am living in an area that is a large developement. also there is alot of out of area, applying for places. i have been told by the clerk to the panel that im top of the waiting list. theres not much chance of anybody jumping up the list in front of me. i live oppisite the school gates with only 1 house closer, and their children will be starting school with my daughter. thank you for taking the time to post on my thread.

Donna,
The fact that you say the two classes are full to capacity makes me believe that the admission number is 60 and that this would have been an infant class size case. As such the panel would not have had any alternate but to reject the appeal because the LA had in effect done nothing wrong - I know you believe they did but I don't believe they have, the emphasis is on the parents completing the necessary paperwork, not the LA finding you.
You need to make sure that you are registered with the LA as being on the waiting list for the school. All LAs have to keep a waiting list till Christmas but many will not do so after Christmas, so you need to confirm what they do then.

i was told the la would be aware of my son being in the area and the forms would be sent out to me. i had no idea of how to go about getting into schools, other than putting their names down on a waiting list for nursery. i went to do this when my other son joined the school in 2008, and was told that the nursery next door wasnt part of the school and this way was no longer the way things happen. as soon as i had my daughters info pack from her preschool i went online that night and applied straight away. my son was 2 when i went to find out what to do to get him in school. it was only when i had the pack for my daughter that i found out that my son had been overlooked. as i was told when i asked why i hadnt received anything for my son when i took in my form to apply for an appeal.

Hi. There is no way a clerk to the panel would know about waiting list information unless she obtained that info for you from the admissions section, which is not usual practice. The panel are not even supposed to know about waiting list positions. Unless of course it is obvious anyway I.e only one child on the list.

I think it's been an unfortunate case of misinformation for you as it seems you have been given the wrong information from the start. But it's your word against the information givers, hence proving may be difficult.

it did come from the admissions section, he said there and then he was top of the list. it is a mistake on their part given out wrong information. thing is they dont loose a moments sleep over there actions. i cant bring myself to tell my son hes not goin to his brothers school after christmas. when i got the phone call i didnt stop crying all night. i would do just about anything for my children and would not of brought this on him for the world. i feel like they callin me a liar.

Can't add much to the excellent advice already given.

I can understand that you're upset, OP, but this situation is as much about your actions as about the school's or LEA's. You complain about their actions but the LEA - which is the body that handles admissions, not the school - has done nothing wrong. It is unfortunate that the school gave you dud information, but the fact remains that the LEA expects parents to check what the admission process is and to comply with it by submitting applications in time. As firsttimemum says, posters advertising the admission process are usually plastered all over bus stops, libraries and the like. By the time you applied, I dare say all the places were full and so now you choices are to wait for a child to leave (and home-educate in the meantime) or find another school with a place (when you could still stay on the waiting list for your preferred school).

My advice is to keep in regular touch with the LEA's admission officer, at least on a weekly basis reminding them that you are still waiting for a place. People move all the time so a place will come up in time.

If you are top of the waiting list, the chances are that a place will come up (people move, decide on private school etc etc). In the meantime, you could keep your DC at the playschool or look around other pre-schools in the area. He will get a nursery education grant until the term after his 5th birthday. This may actually be a positive thing if he took a while to settle at the play school. A couple of children with late summer birthdays have joined my DS1's year 1 class after an extra year at nursery, and they are doing really well. Reception has changed over the past couple of years, and now follows a much more play based method with formal learning starting mainly in years 1 and 2.

Good luck