Can I just check when exactly reception places are allocated?

[IngridBergmann]

Hiya, excuse starting a new thread about this but my other one quietened down a bit and I need advice on this specific point, if anyone knows their stuff on admissions

Basically, we want to remove ds1 from his school at some point in the near future. However we might be sending him back if things improve, and if his place is still available say in 6 months or so.

Ds2 is starting reception this autumn. We've applied for him based on having a sibling, but obviously if ds1 is leaving to be HE'd (even on a temporary basis) I'm worried ds2 won't get his place.

We applied in January, we find out at the end of March where he's got in, but if we take ds1 out NOW does it mean ds2 might not be allocated the place there? Do they check the school roll when allocating sib places?

Also if they have already allocated ds2's place, we might be free to remove ds1 now - but we can't find out because they won't tell us till march.

I'm not quite sure what to do - wait till we find out where ds2 has been allocated, and then remove ds1 I suppose is the obvious thing to do, but I'm not sure how appeals work and so on and what our best option is.

Thankyou for any insight. I have confused the man at the LEA already this morning and he was veyr nice but didn't really know what to advise

Thankyou very much for the ACE link, too - someone gave me it the other day, as well, and I haven't called them yet but I will do so.

Very kind of you.

X posts, again, sorry! Yes, too right - it would be illogical and perverse of me.

I can see that.

You see things so clearly and I am an emotional mess so you have really helped put things clearly. I do appreciate it and sorry if I came across as obtuse earlier, it wasn't intentional.

You don't come across as obtuse at all and I really do appreciate the conundrum you're facing.

I would never want to deter anyone from appealing - it's very much a case of nothing ventured nothing gained - but I hope that threads like this can help parents go into the appeals process with their eyes open and knowing (as much as they can) what to expect. I don't want to sound harsh but, equally, I hope I've explained where the LEA and appeal panel are likely to be coming from.

As I said before, double-check everything that the LEA has told you. And do speak to ACE - they were fantastic when a friend had a problem with her son's unreasonable exclusion from school.

Good luck with looking at the new school. The focus on behaviour is great.

I'm going to disagree with Panelmember for once, but only because I've been looking at the Admissions Code and have found that this situation is specifically mentioned. Until I found the relevant paragraph I was going to agree!

Paragraph 2.23 says, "Sibling criteria may apply where, at the time of application, an older sibling is expected to be on roll when a younger child starts at the school. If the older sibling unexpectedly leaves the school after an offer has been made to a younger child the offer of a place must not be withdrawn on these grounds."

So once you have the offer you can take your older child out of the school safely. If the LA does withdraw the offer you can appeal and point to this paragraph of the Admissions Code. I doubt many appeal panels will have come across this situation. As far as I can see, faced with this paragraph, the only argument the LA could put forward to justify removal of the offer is that your older child's departure from the school was not unexpected.

I've definitely learnt something today. Thanks IngridBergmann!

Aha. That'll teach me not to go back and look at the Code.

My only quibble now is that I'm not so certain that OP can withdraw her child (in prh47bridge's words) safely. This would (I imagine) be an infant class size appeal, so the threshold for winning an appeal is set very high. The LEA is therefore likely to bring out all the arguments against admission that it can. I haven't seen the thread about the older child's problems at school but I assume they're longstanding and well-documented. I think it's quite likely, then, that the LEA would argue that the withdrawal of the older child from school was the culmination of weeks/months of problems and so was not unexpected and the proviso in para 2.23 would not apply.

So, I think there would still be some risk in withdrawing the child - although nothing like as much as I first thought. Again, ACE would be a good source of advice on this.

Yes, it's been very instructive!

Yes, I think "safely" was perhaps a little too strong.

I can't find any cases decided by the Local Government Ombudsman which hinge on the interpretation of the word "unexpectedly" in this paragraph so I don't think we have any guidance from that direction. If it comes to it I agree that the LA is likely to argue that the withdrawal was not unexpected. I don't know what an appeal panel would make of it but, if they rejected the appeal, a reference to the LGO would definitely be worthwhile.

Wow! I really am talking to the big guns You guys really know your stuff...thankyou ever so much.

I shall keep paragraph 2.23 etched into my memory just in case..

Well, I have news too. After my email this morning I had a phone call from the admissions lady over at the county council.

She was very clued up too, very fast, had our application right in front of her and understood perfectly without my needing to explain anything. (weird but good!)

She said that this is what happens: in the next few days, the information about all the applicants will be sent to the different schools. So each school gets a long list of every child who wants to go there, with their criteria and so on. then each school sifts through them and makes a list of them in rank according to their criteria. (I didn't realise the school did this! Better keep onside!)
The school has to send this information back to the CC by the beginning of March. (this is all for our LA btw, might well be different for others).

Once the LA has these lists back from the schools, they go through them and allocate places based on what the schools have given them.
Now, this is where it gets interesting. If something happens, such as a family moves house, or we withdraw our son from the school, between March 1st and 31st, the school will inform the LA and depending on whether the allocation has yet been performed, the LA may be able to change the ranking (thus making us a low priority) or may not, if the allocation has already been 'locked into the system'. So it would be a risk.
but if we leave it until we have our offer, the place will be ours, whether we take our elder child out the very next day or not, because it all depends on where the sibling is when the place is allocated. NOT apparently where they are in September - or even where they are expected to be, possibly, though she did not mention this and if it's part of the AC then maybe it is a grey area as to whether it's expected or not?
Anyway, she said the place could not be withdrawn after being given to us, as people change their circumstances for many reasons including moving house etc. But it's all about where they are NOW.

Therefore it looks like keeping ds1 in the school until the end of March would be a good insurance policy, because if the school resolves the issue and the other child starts leaving him be, maybe gets a statement, maybe even is moved to a different school himself - ds1 will have the best chance of going back to all his friends in a familiar setting because he'll have the reverse-order sibling criteria in place.

It's intersting isn't it? I'm grateful that she was willing to spill the way it works, because I didn't understand what we were dealing with before.

Thankyou for all your research and for being so helpful. I think we now have a plan

Earwicga, yes, tackling behaviour is great, it just scares me a bit as we don't have a system like that where we are - behaviour seems very much under sontrol, the issue we are having is related to SN which is a bit different as you'll understand.

Will still visit other school tomorrow though

oh and the other thing is, because this school is our second choice (we thought we had a place at the other one for ds1, sadly it had gone) we won't get into the first choice based on sib criteria (though just possible we might anyway - but really unlikely) and we ought to get a place where we are now, because ds1 is still there at the moment.

So we shouldn't have to appeal it anyway.

That certainly sounds encouraging, Ingrid, as it sounds as if your LEA are interpreting para 2.23 to include all withdrawals of siblings and not just the unexpected ones. So that helps you, but (careful bureaucrat here) do make sure you log that phone call and, if you can, get it in writing too!

Good point. I hadn't thought of that...but the lady did email me first to say it was too complicated to explain in an email, so I have a record that she was calling me about it.
I think I would feel a bit cheeky asking for an email to confirm it - and she was so confident that I think she knows what she is doing.

Hope so anyway...I might email one of the other people there just to confirm that it would be Ok, though, and that they cannot withdraw places after allocating them.

1st March here

Do you mean when they are actually allocated Mrz?

In which case we might be safe to leave after that date?

Can they do them all in one day?

I think the safest thing to do is wait until you have the offer. The LA has far more freedom to change things before the offers are actually made.