Best reasons in our appeals.

[Poppyella]

We have our appeal a week today to try and get dd the number 31 place in Year 3 in September.

I was wondering if there were any experts out there who could perhaps advise us which argument would be the strongest in our case, and the one that we might focus on the most. We feel our strongest arguments are as follows:

1. Capacity of school is 210, numbers for september are currently going to be 195, so 1 extra place shouldn't matter that much.

1. The head 'guaranteed' us a place for dd, before she knew that it was up to an appeal panel rather than herself, thus giving us an expectation of a place and raising dd's hopes.

1. She has a sibling there, he will be starting y6 in sept.

4.They have 14 after school clubs rather than only 6 at her current school, one of which is drama which she loves.

We are still waiting to receive the LA's argument so don't know exact figures about net capacity, calculated capacity etc but the fact that the school has an extra resource room, computer room and largish area outside 2 classrooms used for small group work, we hope will mean the school as a whole is big enough.

Any thoughts most gratefully received!

:)

I was leaving this for others to answer given that I have answered a similar question from you before. However, in my view point 3 is your weakest argument and point 2 is your strongest. Both the other points are significant, though - point 1 in minimising the prejudice that would be caused by admitting your daughter, point 4 in helping to show that your daughter will be prejudiced if she isn't admitted.

Point 2 is without doubt the strongest arguement as it is a legal requirement not to what the the head has done - give you an expectation that a place willl be offered - paragraph 1.36. The proviso to that is that you really need to be able to prove it as the LA presenting officer will undoubtedly say that they know nothing about this. The others are to my mind about equal.
I would not focus on any particular arguement, as it is upto each individual panel member to decide how much emphasis they want to put on each reason for admission. I know some panel members would say that keeping siblings together is really important and therefore might be tempted to give more emphasis to this argument.
I would be chasing up the LAs case on Monday as you really should have that, so that you can see what the LA are saying.
Given that the head has said they have no problems and the assumption is that they have admitted previously I would particularly push in part 1, what the highest number of pupils there have been in a junior class in say the last 5 years. You need to be clear that this is not the highest number that the LA have formally admitted but the maximum that any class has had in the classroom, which may not be the same thing. That may well become point 5 of your arguments if it has been at 32 or above.