Do we have a reason to appeal?

[37jonsialex]

Just wondering if anyone could give me some advice.
We're moving to a new area in Feb and have just found out that the two places that were available in our chosen school three weeks ago (when we sent off the in year admission form) are now gone.
This leaves us in a bit of a pickle as there are only four other schools in the area, all but the furthest are CofE or Catholic schools. The furthest one has no bus route, and as i don't drive and DP has to set off early for work, would be a 45 min walk for us there and then back for me, so i could get the bus to be in work for 9.

My DM (ex primary teacher) suggested we appeal- do we have any grounds for an appeal?

DS currently goes to a CofE in our current town and as parents, we're not happy with religion being taught outside of RE (the town we live in is VERY oversubscribed and out of about 12 schools, only 3 are non religious. We're moving as we hoped we could get him into a school that suited us better as a family). We don't really want to send him to another CofE.

Is there anything we can do about the decision?
Please help!

Have you looked at the C of E schools? I would suggest you do so as C of E schools vary massively in how "religious" they are, some community schools are more religious than some C of E. So do check this first.
You need to look at the school you want, and come up with reasons you want your DS to go there. Difficulty of you getting him there, and religious nature are not grounds (especially for C of E) as all schools are supposed to be "broadly Christian". But special educational provision, people he already knows there, and so on are good reasons. If he is going into year 3 or above it is worth appealing, if it is year 2 or lower then there is little chance.

37jonsialex

Agree with mummytime - don't judge the schools by their label.

I would suggest you contact the LEA and find out which schools are possibilities for you and then go visit them. You may be surprised.

Also - there's nothing stopping you joining the waitlist for your preferred school. So you may attend the second choice at first, but if someone leaves you may be able to take the available place. The LEA or indeed the school your interested in should be able to help with this.

My sympathies 37joinsialex - we're hoping to move this year as well - so soon may well be facing the same situation.

Best of luck with everything.

This is all around the rules that are in place around availability of school places. Many LAs say that you must take up any free places within a certain period of time, so do you know whether this applied where you were moving too?
When you asked and then completed the form there were two places but they can go at any time. What should have happened is that once the LA received your request (and it was within any time limit that the LA wanted to impose) they should have checked with the school to see whether there were any free places and then made you a formal offer of the school places. If somebody else asked about the two school places before you and they gave them the places before they received your form then I am afraid that is really bad luck on timings. However what you need to know is when these two school places were actually allocated. Was it before your form was sent (no concerns if that was the case)? If however it was at the same time then the LA would then have considered who had priority in terms of the admission criteria of the school and again you seem to have lost out.
One possibility is that there was a delay in the LA dealing with your request - three weeks does seem a long time to make a simple decision on whether a school place was available. That should not happen.
I think that the only way that you are going to establish the facts is by going to appeal. The panel will want to make sure that the LA did carry out their duties correctly. If a mistake was made then you will get a place, if no mistake was made then you try and make the best possible case for your children going to the school and hope the panel see the sense in your argument.

As a previous OP said check the CofE schools as they vary.My children were at a community school which was more religious than the local CofE. Community schools still have to follow the law and have assemblies "of a broadly Christian nature" . My children have been 3 schools between them and all of them had Christian hymns etc so even though they are not teaching religion per se, they come home singing songs about God and so on which in my view is the same as teaching religion.

I would find out what date the places went and what date those people applied. If the places went to people who applied later then I would appeal on those grounds.

In the mean time I'd get your child on waiting lists for all of the local schools.

How old is your ds? If he in Y3 or above I would lodge an appeal for all the local schools and hope that you get lucky.