School admissions and appeals - some general advice and tips

[Panelmember]

In case this helps anyone, here are some tips and suggestions for anyone not happy with their offer of a school place and/or contemplating an appeal. This isn?t an exhaustive list and I?m sure other posters will be along with other points:

1. Check why you were refused a place at your preferred school(s) ? the letter/email from the LEA should provide some explanation.

2. Check that there are no obvious mistakes in the decision: was your child placed in the right admissions category? was the distance between your home and the school(s) measured correctly and so on?

3. If you have been allocated a school that was not named on your application form or is outside your catchment area this is not in itself a mistake. Where a child does not get a place at any of the schools listed on their application form, they will be allocated a place at the nearest school with a vacancy.

4. You can join as many waiting lists as you like. Stories are rife on MN at the moment of LEAs restricting people to a certain number of waiting lists or to the waiting lists of the schools they originally applied for. If they do this, they are in the wrong and you must insist on your rights. If all else fails, refer the matter to the Schools Adjudicator and ask them to intervene quickly.

5. The LEA should be able to tell you (if not today then very soon) which local schools (if any) still have places.

6. If you decline the place you?ve been offered, any other school the LEA offers is likely to be further away (although most LEAs will not make any further offer unless you specifically ask for it). If you decline the place you?ve been offered, this will NOT, though, give you any higher priority for another school or increase your chances of winning any appeal.

7. You can appeal for any of the schools you applied for ? or any others ? but if this is an infant class size appeal (ie where the school admits in classes of 30) you will win only if you can show that there was an error which deprived your child of a place or the decision to refuse a place was so unreasonable that it should be overturned. Only a very small minority of infant class size appeals therefore succeed.

Useful sources of information and advice are the school admissions code and admissions appeal code (available on the Dept for Education website) and the Advisory Centre for Education. There are several people on MN with experience of admission appeals who will help as best they can with individual queries.

roadkillbunny - many thanks for your message.

DS' school does sound a lot like yours - village location, sought after etc - but it is not VA, so the LEA is the admissions authority in our case.

All 3 classes in KS1 at present have pupil numbers above PAN - the PAN has not been increased for a long time, however, due to new housing development etc, the school is now oversubscribed, so there may be a case for review. The classroom sizes are sufficient to take additional children over PAN - eg 5 of the current 7 classes have more than 20 children in them.

DD is first on waitlist due to sibling link so planning to appeal, especially as it is not an infant class size appeal and there is precedent in terms of additional numbers etc. Am very cautiously hopeful given the above - however, you never know how these things will go on the day!

Hi - I am hoping I can get some advice. Long story short!
My dd has been offered our 3rd choice school, it is an outstanding school, but 4.1 miles from where we live. We have two excellent schools in our area, one in catchment, one outside catchment (both in the same village we live in. The 3rd choice school is out of catchment and not in our village.

First choice school and appeal -

1. We are in catchment for this school and 1 of 13 families that were not allocated a place. The last person to be allocated a place lives 0.99km from the school as the crow flies, we live .513km as the crow flies. We have a friend who lives closer to the school than the last person placed based on distance and they didn't get it, but my neighbour did!

They did not cite class size prejudice but stated insufficient spaces. The school is open plan and currently has 245 pupils from 5- 11. The Younger Team FS, Y1 and 2 are schooled together and there are currently 126 pupils in this team with a total of 130 places allowed ( so 4 places spare). the PAN for 2011 is 35 into FS.

Last year, the school was told to take in an additional 30 places (total 60) and given funds to build an additional classroom, which they have done.

The LEA's approach used to be to spread additional allocation around the local schools, but now they seem to "allocate" all to one school. This year, when i spoke with the head, she was adamant that they would not take in over 35.

Based on my conversation with the LEA last week, they indicated we were higher up the waiting list for choice 2 than choice 1! If they don't cite class size prejudice, what should I concentrate on for the appeal? I and other families feel they set a precedent last year and should accommodate the remaining children in catchment.

Second choice and appeal
1, the LEA has advised me to appeal for my 2nd School,but this would be based on class size prejudice

what are your views, really be gratful to receive any guidance!

thanks
Flibs

For your first choice school, you can't really argue that they set a precedent last year by having a bulge class unless the school already has enough classrooms to accommodate the extra classes that would be needed if they had 60 children in every year. However, with an admission number of 35 it won't be an infant class size case so you need to concentrate on the features of this school that will be particularly useful for your daughter and which are missing from the allocated school. The idea is to show that she will be disadvantaged if she doesn't go to this school. Don't talk about the standard of education, discipline or similar subjects as the appeal panel can't take those into account. And be positive about this school rather than being negative about the allocated school.

By the way, I am confused about the distances you quote. Are you saying you live closer to this school than the last child allocated? If so, why didn't you get a place? Why did your friend not get a place at this school if they live closer than the last child allocated?

I am surprised the LA has advised you to appeal for your second choice school if it is infant class size. You should only win that appeal if you can show a mistake has been made.

Hi prh47bridge
Thanks so much for your reply. Much appreciated. We are working through the distance issue, as on the face of it and as the crow flies we are closer than the last child allocated. I have asked to review the mapping so I can be clear on their use of distance v our own.

again appreciate the guidance and advice
Flibs

Do check that they are measuring distance as the crow flies as opposed to using the shortest walking route or similar. Another possible reason for the distances is that you are in a lower admission category than the last child admitted. The third possibility that springs to mind is that the school uses a random draw to decide who gets a place. So it could be innocent but it could indicate a mistake.

The first thing you need to establish is what exactly is the admission criteria. Is it the standard one of catchment zone, sibling and then distance or what? Secondly how is distance being measured, is it straight line or is it shortest walking route. On the face of it you are being told that the last admission is 0.99km, which says a distance criteria probably on in-zone pupils, whereas you are 0.513km. That suggests that you are being counted as out of catchment, so that needs careful checking, cause something is not right.
The numbers that can be admitted are a bit of a mess, because of previous admissions over the admission number. The admission number is the key figure. That is 35 and therefore across the infant classes you should have 105 pupils which needs by law a minimum of 4 school teachers to teach them as they are all together. In reality they can have by law upto 120 pupils with the 4 school teachers. So based on the admission number this is not an infant class size case, until admissions move from 105 to 120 pupils.
However that is not the reality. You actually have quoted a figure of 126 pupils in the infant section, is this current numbers or expected numbers in september allowing for a 35 intake? It is the expected numbers for September that is the key number and I suspect this is what you actually have.
You have also quoted a 130 net capacity figure which does not make a lot of sense. With an admission number of 35 and an extra classroom built that exists for the infant section, the net capacity should be 105 + 30 = 135. So why 130?
Taking the figure of 126 or 130 or even 135, the number of school teachers should be 5 and actually by law you would be allowed upto 150 pupils for that number for that number of teachers.
The panel will have to ask about the number of teachers and in fact you need to because I suspect it is actually 4 and therefore the school is already illegal with an expected 126 pupils. They have no room for saying they are excepted pupils as they have already been given places by the LA and the school must by law have 5 teachers to meet the ICS regs, which opens up the possibility of extra places being available if there is sufficient space, which I think there is in the infant area.
But nobody seems to have considered the effect in a few years when this bulge reaches the junior end of the school. The question I would be asking as a panel member is whether the extra classroom provided is actually a mobile for the 7 years of the bulge going through the school or whether it is a permanent classroom which then gives rise to the obvious question of whether the LA are intending to keep increasing capacity at the school to say an admission number of 45 which would be a far more sensible admission number than the current 35 which is nightmare. Does the bulge class last year set a precedent? Under normal circumstances I would say no, but in this particular situation I am not sure with a key question being where is this extra classroom given the comments on rec/year1 and 2 being schooled together.
Sorry i think I have probably raised more questions than answers but they are the ones that a panel should be raising.

Hi guys - thanks for such an informative thread. I wonder if you can help with some advice for my situation: we are in a 'black hole' towards the edge of a catchment for a popular school and surrounded by other popular schools. We weren't offered a place at any of our 4 nearest schools (our 2 closest were oversubscribed within catchment and have reached infant class size limits) and have had to wait until today to finally be offered a mandatory place in 1 of 2 'bulge classes' hastily arranged by the LA when they realised there was an issue. This is at a school 2 miles away via a busy road (passing all 4 schools we didn't get into!).

The LA haven't been able to tell me the grounds for deciding which of the 60+ families with no offer went to which of the 2 bulge classes - 1 was much nearer than the other for us and yet we have been offered the furthest away one. It seems that the normal very clearly stated admissions criteria do not apply when bulge classes have to be put on for families with no offer - is this right????

Does anyone know if we have a case here in terms of a decision that a reasonable authority would not have made?

I feel the need to protest and do all I can to get a different result but am struggling to see much room for manouevre - any tips??

KipsOnLine - My most straightforward answer is that I don't know.

I can't find anything in the admissions code which covers the situation of a bulge class created after offers of places have been made (or before, for that matter).

If the classes had been created before offers were made, I would have expected each school (or, more accurately, the LEA acting as admissions authority) to offer the additional places to the next 30 children on their admissions priority list. On the one hand, arguably, they should still do so now, as that means that the admissions criteria for the 'original' and 'new' offers are consistent. On the other hand, I can see that that would bring problems, in that the 60 children receiving offers for these new places would not necessarily be the 60 children without any place (some of whom would still be without a school to go to, leaving the original problem unsolved) and there would be further uncertainty for pupils and schools with all the resulting to-ing and fro-ing as people receive and accept/reject new offers. So, in that sense, the decision of the LEA to offer the 60 new places to children with no current offer might seem a pragmatic one.

The question is whether an appeal panel would consider that the decision was so unreasonable that it should be overturned - the usual benchmark for a decision to be overturned is that it is irrational. I am not sure whether this particular decision would be held to be irrational - much would depend on whether the LEA could satisfy the panel that, in the circumstances, this was the only thing to do or, ata least, was not an unreasonable thing to do. I certainly think you should question how the split between the two schools was decided, but to me it seems very much open to argument whether the LEA have taken a decision that no reasonable one would take.

As for how the children were allocated between the schools, I would expect the LEA (if they weren't referring to the school's standing criteria for admissions) to aim to allocate each child to the nearer of the two schools with a bulge class. However, there may be situations where that wouldn't work. Depending on geography, there could be (say) 45 children for whom school A is the nearer but only 15 for whom school B is the nearer, in which case some children will be offered places in school B even though it is not the nearer.

Have you spoken to ACE? They no doubt have some knowledge of what has happened when other LEAs have created bulge classes after places have been offered. That would also give you some sense of whether your LEA are following accepted recent practice or are going off at a tangent.

I don't think it is covered by the admissions code. The LA have to offer a school place and have made some pragmatic decisions as to where the bulge classes will be located. They could not apply the waiting list criteria because if they did that they would have to offer places to pupils who already have a place thereby defeating the whole object of the exercise.
The obvious way to decide which school is as panelmember says by distance to the school as far as possible, so I think you really need to press the LA on the methodology that they have used to allocate places. You might point out to them that they will have to say how at appeal!
If it is on distance then I suppose that you have a reasonable arguement that you have not been allocated to the nearest school, though if the LA can show that all pupils allocated to the desired school were nearer, you have no case. However if they have made decisions with a waft of the pen, then I think you do have a case for the LA having acted irrationally.

bettybutterknife, your situation is so similar to mine is amazing. I dont think we live in the same area. We have 5 schools in the area and we chose 3 in the area. We have been allocated a place at a school in a very rough area. like you we refused to play the system and get the kids baptised to get them a place. We are appealing on the same grounds as you, I hope the fact that w council forecast a problem and did nothing to rectify it will help us. If you are not in the same area it is worth finding out if a shortfall was forecast. i found the info on the councils own website...
my advise would be...
Find out how many schools in your area took more students than they originally said they would last year and how many of those were more than 30.
Quote the council on it environmental ethos and point out that you will have to drive to the school. State the cost to you per year, the effect on your childs health of not being able to walk to school etc.
social aspects of your child not having friends in scool near their home should be of consideration. If your child is upset at not going to the expected school say that, my little boy is.
Any medical or developmental concerns should be raised as well of course.
Good luck!xx

Chrissie1981 - I'm sorry to be harsh but most of those arguments will get you nowhere.

In infant class size cases the ONLY grounds on which the panel can admit is that the authority has failed to follow the Admissions Code, or has not implemented its admission arrangements correctly, or has acted irrationally. Even medical or developmental concerns won't win an appeal, let alone the other arguments you suggest.

There are only limited situations in which a school will admit over PAN or have more than 30 children in a class in infants. The fact that it may have happened in other schools in the area last year is entirely irrelevant. If it is an infant class size appeal the fact that it happened in the appeal school last year is irrelevant. If it is not an infant class size case it may be relevant if the school has had years over PAN before as it shows they can cope with extra children.

The council's environmental ethos, the cost to you of having to drive to school and the effect on your child's health are all completely irrelevant. No appeal panel will admit your child on any of those grounds unless you can provide independent expert evidence to show that your child will be more affected than other children. The panel will be aware that you are entitled to free transport if the allocated school is more than 2 miles away, so any costs you incur for driving your child further than that are entirely voluntary, and they are likely to conclude that any effect on your child's health will be minimal.

Similarly the social aspects are irrelevant in most cases. Again, unless there is independent expert evidence that your child will be more affected than other children an appeal panel is unlikely to admit on these grounds. The fact that your child is upset at not going to the expected school is definitely irrelevant.

If it is not infant class size, medical or developmental concerns can win an appeal provided they are backed up with independent expert evidence about the effect on your child. Evidence about the effect on children generally won't help you.

PRH47bridge is quite right.

Most of the factors mentioned in Chrissie1981's post would be completely irrelevant to an infant class size appeal, which is about identifying errors or irrational decisions. Arguments which can be summed up as "but I really really want my child to attend this school", however heartfelt, won't win an infant class size appeal. They may carry some weight at any other type of appeal but, even then, they have to be weighed against the prejudice (disadvantage) to the school in taking an additional pupil.

my youngest child has failed to get a place at the infant school my second youngest attends. This means that as of september i will have 5 children at 4 different schools. The three oldest children will be going to the nearest senior and middle schools. The second youngest ( who has a SEN ) will be in year 2 at one infant school slightly further away and the youngest will be going to another infant school further away still . All schools start and end at the same time! My wife doesn't drive. You have said in previous posts that appeals on travelling difficulties do not suceed but this is where 2 children go to 2 different schools. in my case this is multiplied!
In addition the education service run a "traffic light" system for late attendence and absence from school. this means that if a child is absent or late for 5% of the time they get an amber warning letter, and for 10% the parents get a red warning letter and a possible fixed penalty notice.
Each school want us to sign a school-parent agreement saying we agree to try to get the children to school on time and to avoid absenteeism.
Walking to the furthest school is just over two miles after walking to the other schools first. but is under two using a direct route.
The head teacher at the new school has already commented that our youngest will be "knackered" even before she reaches school.
Can an appeal help?

It rather depends on whether the school concerned is going to be subject to infant class size regs. Under those conditions you probably have not got much chance fo success at appeal unless the admission authority made a mistake. If is not infant class size clase then I would definitely appeal. The panel will not feel that there is any issue over the senior school child, they should be able to walk there themselves, but having 3 schools for 3 different children will be a starting point for an appeal.

Both schools were oversubscribed, our first choice much more so.
the allocated school is having a temp. "hut" delivered to allow an extra reception class in September. The school have said that they were chosen by the LA and have had to recruit new staff in a hurry.
most the children that did not get into the first choice school are going to the allocated school.
can I argue why the extra class was not set up in the first school?

No, it is for the LA to determine where to put in extra places, which will depend on all sorts of reasons not the least fo which is whether the school was willing to have an extra class and whether they have the space to accomodate the classroom.
Do not be put off by the "hut". The probability will be that it is in better condition than some of the other classrooms in the school.

Admission, thanks for the information and confirming what i really thought would be the case.
Am at the appeal tomorrow and will concentrate on the 4 children at 3 schools. the youngest (who will have just turned 4) being the furthest away.
I can't see us being successful but I have to try. Is it a bit much to say its an exceptional and compelling social need?

My son was due to start primary school in jan 11 - his bday is aug so he would go into the 2nd intake of reception children. The first intake started Sept 10.
Hi,
can anyone help out with any goodknowledge and advice please

In November 2009 we applied for the school we wanted as our first choice, the dates for this application to be made were from 15th november 09 to 29th jan 10, i applied on 17th November 2009.
The school which we put as our first choice is the school my son has been at since he was 2, in their daycare 2 days a week and then pre school and nursery. My daughter also went to the school but was in year 6 at time of application being made so didnt count under the sibling rule and it is also the school other family members go to.
In April 2010 i was informed of the school we had been allocated, being the closet school to my home but not the school we wanted as mentioned above. I was obviously very upset but did not appeal as was advised not to (should have done) so went on the CI list hoping for a place in the near future. My son was due to leave nursery at our 1st choice school at xmas 2010 and start reception jan 11 but as we did not get out preferred school we deferred this until he legally had to start school sept 11. The school we wanted where he was at nursery thought that given my sons struggle to settle in and the amount of time it had taken him to be happy and secure where he is that is would be a good idea to defer the allocated new school in the hope that my son would get a place before sept 11 at their school. he was at that time no.2 on the CI list. ALso the school had a high turnover of children in previous years so it was a high hope that this would be the case again and my son would have a fixed place there before he had to legally start his allocated place in sept 11. The nursery were very helpful and when it was possible to take my son into the reception class to aid his learning they did so although he offically did not have a place in that class.

The school wrote me a letter stating why they felt my son should stay with them noting how long it had taken to settle and how he was not happy and comfortable in his environment and they felt that the school was the only place for my son to progress with his learning skills and social development. I sent this letter along with a letter of my own and applied for a rule 2 appeal. However the evidence was not sufficient enough and the rule 2 was not adhered to.
My son stayed with the school until the summer term 2011.

I did not appeal at reception stage as i as told it was a waste of time and also i was under the impression i had to do it before May 2010. I thought was what i read in the admissions booklet.

When the time came i then had to put my son on the in year CI list (which i think is basically the same as the one he was already on), his position throughout had jumped from 2,3,4 and back to 3 it now stands at 4. I can oly think tat children are moving into the area or applying to the school waiting list who live nearer.

Upon reading up advice on the net and admissions website i realised that i could appeal for a year 1 place, although i was aware of class size limits i had to give it a go. My appeal plea was basically the same as my rule 2 plea but with added medical letters to support it.

When i went to the appeal the admissions lady there told the panel that my application to the school i was appealing was late, it was recorded as being received Oct 10, I told the panel this was not true and they advised me to find the proof and send it to admissions, which i have now done, i proved my application was sent to them 17th november 2009. Admissions have admitted this was an error. When i heard the outcome from my appeal the panel wrote that my appeal had not been upheld due to class size limits and it had been rejected due to the evidence supplied by admissions that my application was late and that is was not my closest school. I feel it very unfair that one of the reasons they have rejected my appeal on was infact not true, can i request a fresh appeal because of this? surely the evidence needs to be correct regardless of whether it would have affected the outcome. It must have set me in a bad light suggesting my application was late.

I was a little confused as how they could say my application was late and yet send me out the usual letter of what school we had been allocated in april 2010 if they had not yet even received my application. Admissions have told me that if no application is received the automatically allocate you the nearest school.

In light of what i had learnt at the appeal about my application supposedly being late i realsied that our application had obviously been ignored and that our preferred school was not noted until they went though the late application process stage. I ask admissions to let me know if this made any difference to my son not getting our preferred school they said even if the application had been processed on time and not as a late application that my son still would have not got a place as the last rule 6 allocation has a 400m less home to school distance and so the error made no difference to his allocation of our preferred school. i asked them for the measurement of the home to school distance which i can see is based on the distance that you would drive to the school. As my sons application was before the new crow flies rule the method of the shortest designated route was applied. However the way you drive to the school is not thw way you would walk to the school there is a shorter way (you cannot drive the way you would walk), no one in their right mind would walk to that school the way i suspect they have made measurements on. I have asked for a map of the route they used and i am waiting for it. If i can prove the shortest route is not the route they have used and that it is closer than the last child admitted under rule 6 can i get my child a place at the school. Also can i even challenge the distance if i have had a rejected appeal. Can i request a new appeal based on incorrect evidence used against me in the appeal?
Thank you to anyone who has taken the time to read this, your comments are so much appreciated.