can anyone help please - admissions

[nickala]

Hi I am looking for some advice please. It is a very long story but i try keep it brief without it not making sense. My son ws due to start reception in january we did not get our preferred school as it was full, my daughter went to the school but was in the last year at application time of my son and my neices and nephews go to the school, it is the school my son has been linked to since age 2 and we are devasted he has not got in he is a shy boy and has had to starta new school nearer to my home. He has only just started this school last week straight into year 1. He is very unhappy and he missed his old friends at the school we hoped he would get into. I did not appeal for a place at the reception stage as i was put off by admissions and by the headteacher of the school although staff who taught my son there did everything they could to try and help including writing a letter to admissions stating why they felt my son should be at that school i.e social and emotional reasons, i applied for an appeal under rule 2 with this but admissions rejected it as it did not exactly specify why that school was the only school for my son. I have recently made an appeal for year 1, it was also rejected although the panel was very sympathetic they did not uphold it due to class size limits of 30 already being full and they also said in the letter that it was rejected because my application was not made on time and although i suggested during my appeal that my application was not late they said that the had to take the evidence provided to them from the admissions officer and that was that she had stated my application was 9 months late. they also said that is was because it ws not my closest school. My point is that i have now proved that my application wqas not late by sending admissions the email i got confirming my school application (thank god for email) dated back to 17th november 2009. admissions said i did not apply for my preferre3d school until 26th october 2010 which is totally incorrect and not dis proved. Is it ok for admissions to use evidence against me in my appeal that is not correct? They have admitted that it was incorrect but if one of the reasons for my appeal rejection is based on this incorrect matter, is this allowed? Also i asked admissions to work out whether if my application had been processed ontime would my son have got a place they have said no as the last child admitted under rule 6 lives such and such distance any my distance is 400 m more than that. However i know that the distance they have applied is not correct (old method as my application was before the new crow flies way of doing it) so they have suggested that the shortest designated route to be the way you would drive to the school which is obviosuly not the way you woudl walk to the school. The school is on a new estate and so one of the roads i would use it marked on maps as a unnamed round however it is now named and it is a perfectly good road that other mums use to get to that school. My route also involves cutting through the galleria which is again perfectly safe as there is a zebra crossing and pavement all the way and no point is the walk unsafe or not a public right of way. I am not going to challenge that the distance they have used is in correct and show that the last child they admitted is further away than how i can prove we can walk to school, am i allowed to do this after my appeal? if the distance has been applied wrong and i can prove a shorter way will i get my son back to his school? I had no idea that admissions had not recored my original application on time until it was mentioned in my appeal. they did not write to me they just automatically gave us our nearest school which is the one my son had to start last week. please can anyone give me any advice on this. thank you

Hi All,
Thanks again for all your wonderful advice. 3duracellbunnies, thanks for your comments and just to say that i dont discuss this in front of my son and I always encourage him with his new school, he seems to be getting on ok there. I understand what you are saying and agree totally.

After writing to the head of admissions with what admission told me to write on 2nd Oct, I seem to have moved forward in the last 24 hrs. I also told them that i was considering taking this case to the Ombudsman.

Today i got a reply from them, they havent said anything about why the mix up occured with the date of my application all though they have admitted in a previous email that they was wrong about this.

This is what they said -
When i first applied for a place at the school through their primary 2010/11 process they used a shortest designated route (SDR) distance measurement system to calculate the home to school distances. At the time of my original application 2010/11 the SDR from my address was 1956metres considered under rule6. The SDR is from the address point in my property to the nearest school gate. (I would just like to say as i said before that the distance was not to the nearest school gate or even to a school gate, there are 2 gates and the side gate is alot nearer to me than the main entance gate, the distance line finished 241metres away from the main entrance gate. )

They then go on to say that therefore a place was not offered on allocation day as the distance (SDR) of the last child was 1598metres. Further places were offered after allocation through the CI 2010/11 process, the last place was allocated under rule 6 at a distance of 1751m.

After the 2010/11 admissions process was complete they changed from SDR to straight line distance system measuring. Therefore once my sons application rolled over from the primary application round to an in year application for reception 2010/11 my home to school distance was a straight line address point which is 1155m.

They have said that they note that i wish to query the route on the map i have been sent and that i should send details in so they can see if these meet the definition of a SDR and shorten my sons home to school distance.
In light of the inaccurate information given to the appeal panel about the date of my application I should be given a fresh appeal to address all these issues and so that the LA can give a full account of my application. (note they say all these issues)

Now as i have said before in previous posts the SDR they used to calculate our distance at the time of my original application is incorrect. I will provide evidence of this to them tomorrow. I believe our SDR to be 1400m taking out the route 241m past the main school gate and the silly walking up one side of the road and back down the other to get to a point that is literally opposite my house and there is a place to cross the road outside my house to get to this. Even if they tell me that the finish point past the school has been used for everyone they have no excuse for adding 340m or so at the start of our journey. Also i am inclined to believe that if they are saying the distance is to the nearest school gate, surely that is where they would have to finish the route, i am puzzled why this is not so and i have asked them to clarify this. ( i did call the guy who sent me the map but he was very vague and just said he didnt know!!!- Are they delibrately holding information from me, i have written back to them in reply to this email sent and have asked for clarification of this point)

If the last child was admitted under 1598m and then even further under CI at 1751m, my son ws denied a place due to this error of the distance measurement and so therefore they have made a serious error in my eyes. I can with my eyes closed show them how the distance is under 1751m, even if they say the finish point being at least 241m out is how they did it for everyone. They cannot say that they made everyone walk up my road and back down again. There arent any other children in that year that live near me apart from the child who lives further down my road who got in under appeal last year.

Surely at the end of the day if they have admitted a child that lives further away then we do and i am not talking about the child at the end of the road i am talking about the child at 1751m and 1598m they have messed up (on the basis that my route is agreed and shortened by them.

Is there a need for a fresh appeal if this is the case, i thought that if admissions make a mistake that costs a child a place they fix it. They have sent me emails whilst being in contact with them about all this saying more than once that if my son has been disadvantaged and should have gained a place at the school then he will. I am about to prove that they had administered the incorrect SDR for our original application thus costing my son a place at the school. If it had been calculated as it says it is the shortest designated route then my son would have got in under the original reception allocation day or at the very worst under the CI process whereby the admitted the last child up to 1751m. Am i making sense or am i going crazy??

after receiving their email i called the head of appeals just to say that i am going to have a fresh appeal and to check that i am alright to appeal against the distance error , she told me that as my appeal was a in year appeal (year 1) it would be heard again under a year 1 appeal and that the SDR route is no longer in use and that the panel will not be able to go back and investigate that nor are they able to investigate what has happened on the CI list - she said that i would need to make a complaint to admissions / county council and that admissions should have told me that, however she said she will set aside an appeal date and throughly agrees a fresh appeal should be granted given the incorrect evidence given at the last one about my late application. She told me she would call me tomorrow as she wanted to speak to the head of admissions about it anh why i have not been advised to make my complaint to admissions. She said it was tricky as the SDR i am disputing is in a previous year but she agrees that it sounds like my son has been disadvantaged. I hope she comes back with some good news tomorrow - i think i can also take this to the ombudsman not for the appeal inaccuries but for the inaccuries made with my SDR that cost my son his school place.

Also Friday was the first time i had seen a map of the distance route and i wasnt even aware of what the distance wa until it wsa written in a very small box in a very unclear way along with a lot of other figures in a print out they sent me before my appeal hearing.

Also if what happened in year r and before is not applicable to my appeal why was it mentioned in my appeal that my orignal application was late, surely this would have no relevance! but it did as it was one of the reasons why the panel rejected my appeal - saying the appeal panel noted that the admissions officer had no record of an ontime application whilst i say i did submit one- the panel can only consider the evidence in front of them at the time of the appeal and so had to accept what the admissions officer was saying. Since i had not applied at the time of original allocation was made and then applied for year 1 and was not given a place as the year group was full. In addition this is not my nearest school therefore the panel had to conclude that the school admission arrangements had been properly applied and my appeal should be rejected. soooo confused!!

Sorry to go on about this and it is strange to be telling strangers all this but i have really got some useful advice from you guys and its nice to know what you think. thank you all once again :) please let me know your thoughts

prh47bridge, in respect to your post below -

please remember it is not enough to show that your distance is less than 1598m. You have to show that your son would have been admitted if they had measured distances correctly. They therefore have to look at the distances for all the children and figure out if your child would have been admitted. It may be that if the distances had been measured correctly the last child admitted would have been a lot less than 1598m from the school.

I can show i bellieve that my son would have been admitted if they had measured distances correctly. Surely if they have admitted children who live further away than us whether or not they admitted them correctly or incorrectly they have admitted them under the said distances.

Sorry i am not being critical at all sorry if it sound this way I am just trying to understand what you mean, my brain is turning to fuzz with all this.

thanks :)

"Surely if they have admitted children who live further away than us whether or not they admitted them correctly or incorrectly they have admitted them under the said distance"

The short answer is no!

Let me try to explain this with an example. Let us imagine that the school only has one place available. Three children have applied to the school. According to the LA, Arthur lives 400m from the school, Bob lives 500m from the school and Charlie lives 600m from the school. They therefore give the place to Arthur. Bob's parents then complain that the distance has been measured incorrectly and they are only 350m from the school so Bob should get the place.

The LA look at this and find that Bob's parents are correct. However, they look at the measurements used for Arthur and Charlie as well to see if they were affected by the mistake. They may find that Arthur wasn't affected but similar mistakes affected Charlie and he is only 300m from the school. In that case Bob will still lose out as the place should have gone to Charlie.

Another possible scenario is that all three children were affected and Arthur is actually only 250m from the school, in which case Arthur got the place correctly.

That is the point I am trying to get across. We don't know if the 1598m for the last child is correct. That child may actually be a lot closer to the school than that. And the problems may have affected other children as well, so your child may still have failed to get a place.

I hope that makes things a bit clearer.

ok thanks i see what you are saying and i understand, hoping that this will not be the case though. I will still go for the arguement that we live closer than the last admitted child and see what happens. Are you a teacher by any chance? Thank you once again

HOORAY!!!! I SENT MY MAP OF HOW I THOUGHT THEIR ROUTE WAS WRONG AND THEY CALLED ME THIS MORNING AND SAID THAT THEY AGREE AND THAT MY SON HAS BEEN DISADVANTAGED BECAUSE OF THIS AND HE HAS BEEN OFFERED A PLACE AT OUR PREFERRED SCHOOL, SOOOOO HAPPY HE IS GOING TO START MONDAY!!!
THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HELP
NICOLA

Excellent news! Well done! I am really pleased for you and your son.

Well that is a result. I have to say that the LA are being quite honourable about this because many would have said that because you did not appeal in the "appeal season" and with the change of distance measurement method , you had lost your right to such an appeal. I am not saying I agree with them but that is what many would have said, so good on the LA.
Hope everything goes well from now on.

its a great result, i know where you are coming from with what you are saying however a mistake is a mistake and whatever way you look at it it wrongly cost my son a place at his preferred school. They were at fault to make that mistake in the first place and we have had to go through this for no reason had things been done properly in the first place. I must admit that i was expecting a battle but they were very honourable and held their hands up, i sent my evidence at 5pm weds evening and they called me thursday morning at 9am quoting they were about to make my day, and that they did!! Thanks admission and prh47bridge for all your advice with this. :)