Please, I need advice!

[DeeBiron]

Hi.
I applied to school for my child for 2012. So, he will start the school this year. But just before deadline (15 th January) I received the letter, saying that they changed the school admission criteria. When I applied they had rule that child should attend the church for minimum 2 years . Now they say, that they will give priority to child who attends the church longer. I go to the church for 6 years , so my child comes with me since he was born. But he was born in 30th August 2008. Some children who comes to the church from birth was born September-October 2007. So this mean, that they will have priority despite the fact that they parents start to come to church only when children were born.

Does anyone know is it allowed to change admission criteria after it was published? Because if I do not get place I will appeal and I should know was it legal to change rule just before deadline.

In my opinion, I think when they received most of applications they realised that some of their nursery kids will lost their place so they decide to change rules. I think I am going to have big fight with them. But I really don't want to fight with anyone. I just want fairness. My child is not guilty that he was born so late.

Thanks

If you have been attending the church longer, you could put that in the section to support your application. As you say, it's not your DC's fault that he was born just before the cut-off date for the academic year.

Good luck.

I would imagine this rule has been brought in to differentiate against people who miraculously find faith just before their children start school. As a long time genuine church goer I can't imagine it will impact you. Are you sure that the new rule is based on the exact time your child has attended church? That sounds like it would be very difficult to prove if they are going down to exact week and month.

Governors will allocate places according to the length of time the child has attended church. - This what was written on their webpage.

I think that not only length of attending to church but child?s date of birth should be taken into consideration. 

This year there are more than 200 applications and only 30 children will be accepted. School governors will have very hard job this year. And I am sure 170 people will appeal.

Are you sure this is a change to the admissions arrangements for entry in Sept 2012? If it is they are not allowed to change them at this stage in the process.

It may be that they are consulting about changes to the admissions arrangements for 2013 (they have to complete this by 1st March 2012 for entry in 2013).

With regard to the (proposed) change, they are not allowed to "use oversubscription criteria that give priority to children according to the
alphabetical order of their first name or surname or their date of birth." (admissions code para 2.16o) )- which you could argue that this does. The LA should automatically refer any unfair admissions criteria to the School's Adjudicator (even if this is a VA school, which I'm assuming it is as you are talking about governors allocating places) - if they don't then you should do it.

DeeBiron,
This a maintained faith school, not a private school?
In theory the admission criteria for school admissions for September 2012 were consulted on and agreed April 2011. There are mechanisms for admission criteria to be changed after that, but that has to be with the agreement of the Schools Adjudicator and the kind of change that you suggest is happening is very unlikely to have found favour with the Schools Adjudicator. I tend to agree with BetsyBoop that admitting on the length of time that a person has been going to church would be illegal and how the governing body decide how long the child has been coming to church is a near impossibility to understand.
Can you name the school and LA or send it to me as a private message and I will look and see what I can find out.

admission, thank you for your response, I sent you the private message.

BetsyBoop, This changes for 2012-2013. In the letter they said that it was clerical mistake, they forgot to update the admissions criteria with these new changes. I noticed they updated their website recently.

If this is HG (which comes up when I Googled the phrase you say appears on their website), I have read their admission arrangements on their website. This is clearly a late change as the admission criteria shown in the LA's admissions booklet gives distance as the only tie breaker, whereas they now use the length of time the child has attended church as the primary tie breaker with distance only coming into play after that.

I note that the new admission arrangements state that the supporting letter from the priest, pastor or minister must state the length of time the child has attended church. This requirement is not in the published admission criteria so they are clearly disadvantaging parents who were not aware of this new requirement.

The published arrangements (both before and after this change) ask for a letter from the priest indicating their "degree of involvement, frequency of attendance, entry on the electoral roll, communicant member of the church, acting as a server or reader, or participating in the choir." They do not give any indication as to how this information will be used. To me this suggests they are making subjective judgements as to how Christian a family is rather than simply following their admission criteria. They are not allowed to do this.

They cannot make this change at this stage without the agreement of the Schools Adjudicator. I also agree with BetsyBoop and Admissions that this tie breaker is in breach of the Admissions Code.

It seems to me this school either doesn't know the Admissions Code or thinks it doesn't need to bother complying.

I suggest you contact the LA and the Schools Adjudicator immediately and complain that the school is altering its determined admission arrangements in breach of paragraph 4.23 of the Admissions Code and that the change is unfair and a possible breach of paragraph 2.16o. I would also question the requirement for a letter from the priest as it appears to require information which is not relevant to their published admission criteria.

Their excuse that this was a clerical mistake won't wash. They don't need to go to the Schools Adjudicator to correct a misprint but this is rather more than a simple misprint. As far as I can see this is a clear breach of paragraph 4.23.

If it is HG ( I found the same via google) then it looks like they are also trying to introduce sibling priority within each category,"In addition, siblings who qualify under any of the categories 10. A to H, will be given priority over other children in that same category in order to ensure, as far as possible, that siblings can attend HG School together." when their published admissions criteria (on Westminster site) clearly says "sibling links do not override preceding criteria".

If nothing else then they have made it very difficult for parents to understand how their application will be assessed - is it attendance at church, participation over and above simple attendance, do siblings get priority or not, how does distance come into it, that was supposed to be the tie breaker?

I agree with PRH, this is not a "clerical error" type of change...

Well spotted Betsy .

These admission criteria are a mess. On the one hand the governors will allocate places in categories B to F and H based on the length of time the child has attended church. On the other hand siblings in categories A to H get priority over other children in the same category. Distance is used as a tie breaker but only where the children have attended church for the same length of time.

I presume they mean that siblings in category B, say, get priority over non-siblings, siblings are then sorted according to the length of time the child has attended church and that distance is then used to split siblings who have attended church for the same length of time. But where does all this information they want from the minister about the parents' involvement come into it? I think the average parent would be thoroughly confused by this.

Another problem is how they determine the length of time the child has attended church. If the child has only ever attended one church the minister may be able to confirm, but what if the parents have moved churches? Are they expected to get letters from every church the child has ever attended? Or do the school just take the parents' word for it? It isn't at all clear from their admission criteria. And the relevant sentence refers to the "length of time the child has been going to church" without defining what that means in terms of frequency. Does a child who has gone to church once a year for five years get priority over a child who has gone to church every week for six months? I would guess they don't but they haven't stated the level of attendance required to qualify.

I am not at all happy with these admission criteria. I think they need to be referred to the Schools Adjudicator.

Thanks for advice everyone. I was feeling confused and anxious before. But now I know what to do, I will contact Schools Adjudicator before results will come out. HG school should stay on their initial published rule, that was more clear. Now they messed up everything and it is very confusing. I am sure I am not the only person who is worry about this. I think they will have really big problem over this when they will announce the results. I think this is really stupid to count length of attendance by child, if your child is born in August, parents with children who was born in September will have the advantage.

Hi Dee Biron. I live in Westminster and my DS will be going to school this year. I believe that school that you have mentioned is one of our choices too. We live not far from HG and we attend the church. I received the letter from the school with changing admission criteria. I thought that I can?t do anything about it. Before reading this topic I didn?t know even what a School Adjudicator is. I think we should contact them.

The Schools Adjudicator's website has recently been rejigged. I don't think the new design is very easy to follow. It took me a while to find the form for submitting objections. You can find the form here.

Your child has been going longer, he has been going 100% of his life, in fact if you have attended then he also attended as a foetus too.

Ask the school what % of attendance they require - after all school attendance is done on a % so why shouldn't church attendance?

DeeBiron:

Please listen to BetsyBoop & ph47bridge - the year date in the letter was a clerical error and the changes apply to next year's admission (not yours).

Also - don't complain until you get a result (you may well be accepted - you just don't know yet).

Your child has attended church all it's life - but there will be people who've been going to church for less than 2 years & are claiming entry on faith grounds. [there are a lot of people who suddenly go to church the year before applying for a school place].

I realise your concern is that you want your DC to go to this school & you fear that you have either gone to church for too short a time or live too far away. But wait and see what happens. The adjudicators can't adjudicate until a decision has been made.

First - relax. Even if you are not accepted - you may be wait listed. Ring the school and find out roughly where you are on the waitlist and what the possibility of getting in might be.

Second - about siblings - please bear in mind that every school gives priority to younger siblings. It just is how it works. Some years there are very few and other years there are tons.

Finally - bear in mind that there are changes in the air regarding entry to faith schools on faith grounds: www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13158380. I know around our school (which is CofE) there is a lot of bad feeling that children living literally a stone's throw away are having to travel 2 miles to the next school because they're not practicising Christians or have a different faith (we're in a very multicultural area of a large city). So if your DC does have siblings - you'll be very greatful for the sibling rule next time around.

PastSellByDate - I'm sorry but you are wrong.

I don't know how you have concluded that the date in the letter was a clerical error.

If you read HG's admission arrangements carefully they say they are for admissions to the 2012/3 Reception class. That means they apply to this year's admission. There would be absolutely no need to write to parents applying for Reception this year about changes being introduced next year. In any case, the school's admission arrangements for next year won't be finalised for another three months.

You have confused the role of the adjudicator with that of appeal panels. An appeal panel cannot rule until a child has been refused entry. However, the Schools Adjudicator can rule on the legality of a school's Admission Arrangements before any children have been admitted - indeed, they can get involved before any children have applied for admission.

DeeBiron and frida78 should refer this matter to the Schools Adjudicator NOW. If they wait until they have been refused admission it will be too late.

These changes are for 2012/2013 admissions , in the letter they say they
will now give parents until 30th January to supply any additional
information. In the letter they highlighted the new section regarding
length of child's attendendance to church. When I looked at the new rules
, I noticed they also added sibling links as another tie-breaker rule
which wasn't there before.

Feel free to PM me if you want any help with putting this forward to the Schools Adjudicator.

prh47bridge:

Sorry folks I was going by this (posted above) but see below:

DeeBiron Tue 24-Jan-12 00:51:10
BetsyBoop, This changes for 2012-2013. In the letter they said that it was clerical mistake, they forgot to update the admissions criteria with these new changes. I noticed they updated their website recently.

However I have yet to absorb that we're now in 2012 - and that means next school year is 2012/ 2013. Sounds to me like this school (which I hasten to add is not my DDs school) is seriously oversubscribed.

However, DeeBiron says: These changes are for 2012/2013 admissions , in the letter they say they will now give parents until 30th January to supply any additional information.. So hopefully DeeBiron you can establish that you presonally are a church goer of long standing - and that your DC has gone to church all her life.

Apologies all for misunderstanding - but glad to hear that DeeBiron does have the option of sending in additional supporting information regarding faith application.

I have Pm'd DeeBiron, but the bottom line is that this is for admission in September 2012, it has been changed incredibly late with no apparent permission of the Schools Adjudicator and is making a very complicated admission criteria even more complicated and is probably illegal.
Also having looked at the supplementary forms and other information that has to be submitted I think there are three other things that are not allowed by the current regulations. This school appears to be doing what they want, not what are the legal requirements.

admiision, thanks a lot for your PM. All this discussion helped me a lot!
How long does the School Adjudicator take to investigate and reach a deccission? Should I contact with anybody else?
Thanks

The Schools Adjudicator is the right person to contact. I would also contact the LA as they really should have picked this up and referred the school's admission arrangements themselves. The time the Adjudicator takes to investigate varies but 2-3 months is fairly typical. I would expect them to want to move as quickly as possible for an objection to admission arrangements at this time of year.

I hadn't looked at the forms. Having done so, I agree with Admission. Appalling. It is clearly too late in the day for the Schools Adjudicator to order them to change the forms this year but the school can be told to change them in future.

PRH,
Westminster Council have the "old" agreed version in the admission book but on the email site on school admissions have changed to the new one, even acknowledging that it was late and changed on the 10th Jan 2012.

It is possible that Westminster will have referred it to the School Adjudicator as they are legally obliged to do as a late and possibly illegal change. But having said that as Westminster have not previously picked up the other illegal aspects of the admission criteria and supplementary forms, probably they do not intend to do anything about it.

Indeed but you never know. Maybe a parent complaining will prompt them to take a look and actually do their job!