Infant class appeals

[Blazingangel]

We needed to change out sons choice of schools as due to unforseen circumstances we can't get him to the original school as too far away, it would mean a 10 mile approx walk a day for myself, and my youngest son (inc nursery in opp direction). There are no buses on school times.
Anyway to cut a long story short we wanted a place at the catchment school and have been told we'd have to appeal as we won't get one for the reception class, though there would be no problem for out Yr4 son.
Does anyone have any advice on appeals, we really are going to be stuck and apart from homeschooling which we don't want to do we have no other way of sorting the situation out.

I moved from aberdeen to north east same time last year.I was late for my son school application for reception.When I applied I was denied place in the school I am near to.I then appealed,fortunately My son got a place in nursery when we moved in May in the same school.We got his reception place in the same school.I think it depends on the reason and how many kids a class can hold.

Good Luck

Do you want a Reception place for now, or to start in September?

How far away is the school that you have places in not including the walk to nursery (finding a closer nursery might be a possibility?)? Catchment for my DS's school is 2+ miles at its furthest and plenty of parents walk there and back twice a day, so not sure the distance alone will win you an appeal.

A lot depends on whether or not this is an infant class size appeal. If the school when full will have classes of 30 children in Reception, Y1 or Y2 it will be infant class size. That means you should only win if you can show that a mistake has been made and your son should have been admitted. On the details you have posted that is unlikely. You should still try as you never know what will happen but be realistic about your chances.

If it is not an infant class size appeal you have a better chance of success. However, as redskyatnight says, distance will not win an appeal. At best it will get you free transport to take your son to and from school if it is over 2 miles by the shortest safe walking route from your home. To win an appeal you need to show why the appeal school is the right one for him. Are there any features of this school that are missing from the allocated school and which would be particularly beneficial for him?

You need to probably work on the basis if this being a long drawn out affair to get the reception child into the catchment school. I am assuming here that you actually need a reception place from September onwards.
The first priority is to grab the year4 place and transfer this child to the school. Most schools will have sibling priority as one of their admission criteria and this will start to get you up the waiting list. I am not sure when the reception year places will be allocated but it is usually in April. If you ask for a change of school before the initial allocation date then you will automatically be considered a late application and go to the bottom of the pile, so you have a choice. You can simply accept whatever school is offered and then start to work towards getting a place at the local school or you can ask for the change now. It is a toss up which will be better.
You need to formally ask for a place, which presumably will be rejected because they will be full. If you take the option of waiting till after the allocation date then you need to confirm acceptance of the offered school place and also ask for the new place on the day that the initial allocations are given out (and hopefully have secured the year 4 place). That means that you are on the waiting list, you should be both in catchment and have a sibling which should put you near the top of the waiting list.
You also need to appeal for a place, more in hope than expectation but it is something that you should do to make sure that no mistakes have been made in the time from initial allocation to the time of appeal.
I have no idea when your child was born but it could well be that you do not need to send your child to school in September, so you can tell the school that you have secured the original place from that you wish to defer them starting till after Christmas, which in effect gives you an extra 3 months in which hopefully a space becomes available for your reception age child. If all else fails I am afraid that at some stage you will need to send your child to a school but hopefully it will be sorted before then.