Appeal - school dinning hall sizes

[chopchopquick]

Hi all

I am just getting things ready for our school appeal. We have received details of the schools argument and they mention the size of their dinning hall being an issue. I have managed to find out the size of the dinning hall but I can't find the recommended measurement for school dinning halls. Please can somebody point me in the right direction to find this information.

Thank you!!

Chopchop

I am sure that there will be something legally somewhere, but i have never heard it quoted.
I suspect that in more than 75% of the appeals I do either the dining room or the hall is small and is an issue. But ask the school what they do and they say they handle it.
Like you will put everything that you believe may be relevant, in your appeal, the admission authority will do the same and corridors, dining rooms and halls will all get a mention.
Whilst it would be wrong of me to say ignore what they say, unless it is with a lot of other facts that all show an overcrowded school, I would say concentrate on the issues that are important to your case.

My dd's school has a tiny hall/dining room. They get round it by having two sittings for lunch.

Don't know if that's any help to you.

We have staggered lunch breaks as not all children can fit in the hall at the same time so I'm not sure that it is a valid reason to refuse admission.

I also have never heard a size quoted, nor can I find anything. As Admission says, this is something that crops up regularly in cases to refuse admission. Are they really right on the limit? Will one more child suddenly mean they can't cope? Didn't think so.

Thank you everyone.

That is good to know that type of comment is quite typical. Considering the the area is short of schools places and no bulge classes planned the children will need to go somewhere so this could be a problem for where ever the children get placed unless they have ended up out of the area. Some of the local schools do have staggered lunch breaks but not the school that we are appealing for and there is no mention of this being a problem in the ofstead report so perhaps it can't be that bad. When we visited the school the dining room was set up and I was not counting but I don't recall it looking cramped.

I wasn't really going to use the information as part of my grounds for appeal but I just wanted to be prepared with a reasonable response should this be brought up at the appeal.

Thanks again!!

So you have a ready made question to any such suggestion of overcrowding. When I was at the school we did see the lunch time arrangements and to me there was no overcrowding. How can the school believe that there is any overcrowding if they were quite happy to show us this whilst we were visiting the school? Argument shot down in flames without firing a bullet!

As admission says worth also checking if the school has alleviated this - I know of other appeals where dining hall space issues were also quoted by LA but with no mention of fact that there was also a new cafe at the school to spread the load. Hence may be easy to negate this objection at appeal.