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!

Thanks again prh47. i was hoping you'd see my post! Will requset those numbers today. I am aware that there are 3 children oven PAN in Y1 and those 3 all won appeals, does that help me?

No, I'm afraid it doesn't. It could be a negative if the classrooms used for infants are small and the panel thinks putting a 25th child in a class will be too much. At best it will have no effect one way or the other. It certainly won't strengthen your case. What would help would be to find that Y2 is 4 or 5 over PAN as that would indicate they can handle this number of pupils.

The way that the class structure is set up, the classes will be 22/23 in each of the infant classes and then 30 in each of the mixed junior classes assuming that each year group has 45 in it.
When an infant class case comes to appeal, certainly in our area, the key issue is not that the infant classes have 22/23 in a classroom which will probably accommodate 30 but that each addition to the year is an extra pupil over 30 in the junior end of the school.
At present the school has 13 pupils over the theoretical number from a PAN of 45, which could be 2 in each year group (and to some extent the 3 in year 1 would support this) or it could be that they are very unevenly distributed across the school (maybe a mistake was made on admissions in one year group).
So I would be interested in seeing the number of pupils in each year group but with year 1 already being 3 over PAN and what, if reproduced in all year groups, would then represent 32 or 33 in each junior class I would as a panel member be starting to get somewhat nervous about putting anymore into the year group.