appeal advice

[tibywibs]

Hi All,
We are in the process of moving counties and have applied for a place at the primary school nearest to new house which is literally across the road. We have been told by the council that the school is over subscribed by 3 already but we will get the chance to appeal. Having never done this before i am quite worried and am unsure of what to base my appeal on, other than the fact that it is within spitting distance from our front door and one of the reasons we moved was for that school. My ds is in year 1 and i have a dd who will start reception class in sept so will definately get a place. can i add to the appeal that come september it will be impossible to get 2 young children to 2 different schools at the same time?
thanks in advance for any help!

There are lots of threads about admission appeals - read them for general tips.

Your difficulty is that this will be a infant class size appeal (these are discussed a lot on the threads). Because classes in KS1 are limited by law to 30 pupils with one teacher - and by the sound of it the class is full with a short waiting list - you will only win the appeal if you can show that your application has not been dealt with properly or in line with the admissions criteria (unlikely, if you are applying in-year) or the admissions criteria are not in accordance with the admissions code. The fact that you live so close to the school or don't want to have your two children in two schools won't, I fear, cut any ice - the LEA is likely to argue, and the panel is likely to agree, that you could solve that problem by applying for your younger child to attend whatever school your older child is given a place in. Arguments about convenience don't carry any weight at ICS appeals.

I'm sorry to be discouraging, but you would be very rash to bank on winning your appeal. You need a contingency plan. One option (apart from both children attending another school) would be to accept a place for your older child at another school and then, assuming your younger child does indeed get a place in your preferred school, apply again. The fact that your younger child will already be there should then give your older child priority for admission, although you need to check this as some schools' admissions criteria only give priority to younger siblings.

Just one minor correction - this will probably be an infant class size appeal. Most appeals for Reception through to Y2 are infant class size. However, there are some schools which run classes with below 30 pupils in this age range. If this happens to be one of those schools it will be a little easier to win your case.

You say your daughter will definitely get a place. The deadline for applications is 15th January, although some LAs have extended it until 16th January. If you haven't moved by then you will probably be treated as a late application, in which case it is by no means definite your daughter will get a place.

Ah indeed. Mea culpa. Because the LEAs in which I chair panels are bursting at the seams and always have classes of 30, I was forgetting that there are some schools/LEAs which don't.

As prh47bridge says, timing is also important - I was assuming that OP had already applied for a place for her dd at the preferred school on the basis of the new address (although this is not straightforward before a house move, as most LEAs will want substantial and substantive proof of the new address).

As panelmember and PRH have pointed out you need to establish exactly where you stand as far as the infant class size regulations stand. How many are actually in the year 1 classes? When the council say the school is oversubscribed by 3 are they talking about year 1 or are they talking about the school as a whole?
There are only very limited reasons why the school may have a class of 33 if they really do have more than 30 in the year 1 class and the most obvious one is that a mistake was made when they were admitted into reception. That would have meant they were excepted pupils for the reception year but the school must have by now put in place a mechanism to bring the classes down to meeting the law of a maximum of 30 pupils with one school teacher. If they have done so, then they have probably employed short term an extra teacher but this does not mean that you child has any rights to a school place or that an appeal panel will admit - they are not allowed to increase pupil numbers in such circumstances. Under those circumstances your likely chance of winning at appeal are very, very low.
If you PP me and say which school and LA you are talking about, I may be able to find out some information from their website or do you have information on the class organisation and published admission number of the school?

Hmm. I took "oversubcribed by 3" to mean there were 3 children waiting to get in to Reception (or other classes).

It would certainly be worth OP establishing how many children are currently in each class and what is the PAN.

hi All,
many thanks for all of the replys. the council have told me that the yearly intake is 45. however this has now increased by 3 (so 48 children in year 1 as it stands). there are 2 classes in each year and the 45 are split between the 2 with a teacher and teaching assistant per class. The lady i spoke to originally said if i did appeal i stand a very good chance of winning as we are so close to the school but there are no guarantees so i hope she hasn't given me false hope! also on the council website there is a list of schools with certain year groups highlighted and this means there is no way an appeal would be considered unless the council have acted unfairly ( as panel member said) so as the school in question has no highlighted year groups for ks1 or 2 then this also gives me hope.
As for my daughter going into reception next year, i have already applied with address we will be moving to as the move is imminent but maybe a few days after the 16th cut off point. i was advised by the admissions team at the council to do so

Two classes in each year with an admission number of 45 (or even 48) would definitely not be an infant class size appeal.

How close you are to the school shouldn't generally be a factor at appeal unless your son has a medical condition which means he needs a school close to home. Similarly transport and child care difficulties won't win an appeal. What matters is the strength of your case and also the strength of the LA's case to refuse admission.

Your case should be about why this is the right school for your son and how his education will suffer if he has to go to the allocated school. Once you know which school has been allocated you can start looking for features your preferred school has which are missing at the other school and which would help your son.

You will get help here with building your case and also with looking for weaknesses in the LA's case.

thanks prh47bridge. the school being offered is in the next village. it is quite a nice little school but has only been scored as satisfactory on ofsted (they are trying to improve though, new headteacher). It worries me that because it is small they have mixed year classes i have never experienced this but i can't see how it is beneficial to the children's education. it is also a c of e school which i don't really understand. does that mean there is a lot of religious study at a c of e school (please excuse my lack of knowledge!)

Small schools with mixed classes are often able to provide a very good education. I wouldn't necessarily regard that as a bad sign.

In terms of what happens on a day to day basis being a CofE school means very little. Some CofE schools are very non-religious and some non-faith schools are actually pretty religious. There won't be any additional religious study but the school may get visits from the local vicar regularly and may visit church on some special occasions. They use a different curriculum for RE from non-church schools. Their curriculum may contain more about Christianity or it may not.

There are some other differences (admission criteria, how governors are appointed and so on) but they don't affect the day to day life of the school.

tibywibs,
i would get your appeal in. 48 divided between 2 classes is two classes of 24, which would be considered small generally.
The issue that an appeal panel will need to consider is what happens further up the school. Generally in similar situations the classes can be 34/ 35 when it gets to the year3/4/5/6 classes and no appeal panel likes to get to those kind of numbers.
As PRH says you need to build a case based on the strengths of the school, but be careful about citing mixed age classes, there could well be mixed age classes in your preferred school in the higher year groups.

thanks for all the help, i am honestly clueless and am going on word of mouth and ofsted to make my choice of school. Although to be honest the school is one of the reasons we have chosen to move to this particular village, and i knew i'd have a fight on my hands to get him in! i am looking closely at the websites for both schools and i can just see that my first choice seems to be a better school as far as resources and attainment goes, plus the c of e school has a cross on the school jumper which worries me a tad! i'd be interested in taking my son around both schools ( don't know if this will be allowed in my first choice??) and see how he feels on the subject as i can only send him to a school where he's happy!

Not sure why a cross on the school jumper worries you. The badge of the non-faith school I attended included a cross which therefore appeared on the blazer.

I would certainly take a look around both schools if you haven't done so already. Don't rely too much on word of mouth - it is often inaccurate or out of date.

You certainly should go and look at both schools - Ofsted reports and SATs scores only give part of the picture. Depending on your child, you need also to look at things like pastoral care and the general atmosphere of the school. You might even want to consider things like after-school provision.

I would be very cautious, though, about letting your son pick his school. With the best will in the world, a four year old isn't a position to judge where he'll be happy. If it had been up to my child at the time, we'd have picked the school with the prettiest YR teacher!

Why did you think you'd have to fight to get your son into your preferred school if you're going to be living on its doorstep?

PanelMember - The son is in Y1 which appears to already be full, albeit well below the ICS limit. It is the daughter who will go into Reception.

tibywibs - I agree with PanelMember that I would be very cautious about letting your son pick his school. Even at age 5 or 6 he isn't really old enough to make an informed choice.

Just to echo Admission, I would check carefully what happens in the preferred school for all years. To be honest I am a little surprised that they aren't doing any mixed year teaching in infants. With an admission number of 45 I would generally expect to find 2 classes in Reception and then 3 mixed classes covering Y1 and Y2 (or possibly a Y1 class, a Y2 class and a mixed Y1/2 class). I would be very surprised if they carry on with two classes for each year right the way through the school.

Prh47bridge - Yes, I was posting in haste and so got the son's age wrong, but I stand by my comments about it being rash to leave the choice of school up to the son. It's hard enough sometimes for adults to make that judgement, and we have rather more experience to draw on! A further risk is that it may make matters more fraught if the son sets his heart on going to the preferred school, and then finds that he can't go - or, at least, can't go yet.

I agree too that OP needs to check out the configuration of the classes. In the current financial climate (and with the pressure on school numbers as fewer parents enrol their children in private schools) I would be very surprised to find schools running classes of only 24 or so and I would expect some mixed-year teaching to get 30 children per class. That bears further investigation.

Hi all,
Many thanks for all the advice. I have done some digging and found that my preferred school does have mixed classes in ks2. There are 328 pupils on roll split over 11 classes which averages out at 29.8 in a class.
Further investigation has found that the school offered ( the c of e school) takes religion very seriously and I can't help nut feel uncomfortable about this as religion isn't part of our daily lives. Ex hub and ds's father is also from the Muslim faith and although he is non practising, he too feels uncomfortable with the strong Christian ethos the school has. Taking ds to see both schools on Monday though and will go with an open mind and lots of questions!
Also while I'm here. We get the keys to our new house next Friday 20th but had to leave our rented house last weekend so have been staying in the ex hubs 1 bed flat (luckily we get on to a certain extent!) so my son can continue to go to his school while we wait to hear about the appeal. Talking to the council further, the nearest date for an appeal hearing is the 10th feb. What would happen regarding ds's education if we were to move to our new house and wait for the appeal? As obviously he wouldn't have a school to go to. Are we best to continue in the ex husbands flat or should we move? (to be honest I'd rather move but obviously I need to do what's best for ds's schooling.)

Your son is entitled to continue attending his current school. You will not lose the place there just because you move.

Thank you prh47bridge, I am not too concerned about him still having a place at his current school. It's more a case of what would happen if we were to move next week when we get the keys to the new house. (as we would have to if the ex hadn't let us stay). Would my son be expected to attend the school offered or would he stay at home and not attend a school until after the appeal hearing? If I had it my way I would move to the new area next week, purely on selfish reasons though as sharing a one bed flat with 2 little ones and an ex is not the best!

Ps the new house is 40 miles and a toll bridge away so travelling to and from current school every day is not possible!

In that case you need to check with the LA what will happen if you don't take up the offered place. Most LAs will only hold the place for a few weeks, which means there is a risk you could lose it to someone else. However, they may be happy to hold it for you until after the appeal.

As your son is in Y1, legally you should home educate him if you aren't sending him to school.

Appeal scheduled for 10th Feb. Non pref school willing to keep place open til half term. We are going to look round both choice schools tomorrow. Are there any specific questions i should be asking them?

Hi. I'm in similar boat and desparately need advice!! moving house. Nearest school has vacancies but is ofsted satisfactory. 2nd closest school to house is ofsted outstanding and full. have applied "in-year" for my son who is at reception currently. my 3 year old will be going to reception in sept. tactically what is my best course of action. haven't visited either school yet but outstanding school's website looks a dream so far...no doubt i will have to appeal and likely to be over 30 children appeal...HELP!!

Hi Jennie,
From the excellent advice i have received so far, it seems that if you have to appeal for your 1st choice school, then the only way you will win an infant class size appeal is by proving they have made some kind of mistake.
My council has a list of which schools are full based on infant class size and the admissions department have helped a great deal.
I would Look around the schools, and apply accordingly. If you do prefer the outstanding school and need to appeal NOT based on infant class size, you need to work out why that school is best for your child (i am struggling with this i must admit!) as the appeals panel will look for what is best for your child.
Failing that, youcan appeal each school year so if you apply for youngest dc and are successful, you may have a stronger case. This is the route i will take if my appealis not successful in the coming weeks

Sorry to be all over the shop, but am trying to build a case and going round in circles.
Here is some more info on the school i am appealing for.
PAN is stated as 45 on school 2011/2012 prospectus.
Also states school has 328 pupils on roll split over 11 classes..
Year break down is as follows.
Reception, reception
Year 1, year 1
Year 2, year 2
Y3/Y4, Y3/Y4, Y3/Y4
Y5/Y6, Y5/Y6, Y5/Y6

My calculations have the net number of children in the school should be 315, at 328 this already has them 13 over! Does this strengthen or weaken my case?

It is difficult to tell whether having 328 children helps or hinders your case without knowing the capacity of the school.

I would ask the LA for the net capacity (that's the official capacity of the school) and the calculated capacity. The calculated capacity will be a range. If they have set the net capacity at or below the bottom of this range it helps you, especially if the top of the range is more than 328. If the net capacity is at the top of the range it may not help (in which case you don't bring it up!).

Whilst an admission number of 45 suggests a net capacity of 315 it doesn't necessarily follow. The net capacity could be higher or lower than that. If they are over the net capacity that could suggest they are getting overcrowded, particularly if it has been set at the high end of the calculated range.

It may also be worth finding out why these children have been admitted beyond PAN. Are they all successful appeals or have they been admitted for other reasons?