Not accepting school offer

[SwissyTony]

We've been unsuccessful with all 3 choices for primary school, and therefore handed a poor school in our catchment area.

Although we do intend to appeal, what are our options if we not not accept what has been offered?

Not, those hundred may also be following sensible advice, accepting a place and then attempting to secure an alternative place by waiting list or appeal.

Your place on the waiting list is determined by how well you fit the entrance criteria. If you move, your place on the waiting list in your new area will be decided by how well you fit the criteria there. You may have to settle for a second-best school at destination too, at lease initially, unless one of your preferred schools is undersubscribed.

The 150 applicants will not all have made this school their first choice. Some of them will have been offered places at schools they named as higher preferences. They will not be on the waiting list unless they have changed their mind and now prefer this school. However, anyone who got offered one of their lower preferences or a school that wasn't on their list at all will be on the waiting list for this school and will stay there even if they accept the offered school.

You say "we've not received our place on the waiting lists". The LA should be able to confirm that you are on the waiting lists and may tell you your current position. However, you need to be aware that you can go down the list as well as up. If late applicants come along who rank higher in the admission criteria, e.g. because they live nearer the school, they will go ahead of you on the waiting list. Equally if you move nearer your preferred school it may move you up the waiting list.

Personally I would strongly recommend accepting the offered place however certain you are that you don't want your daughter to go there, particularly if you intend to appeal. Accepting will not affect your position on the waiting list for your preferred schools. Rejecting may make it harder to win any appeal. Appeal panels regularly come across parents who think that they can force the panel to admit their child to their preferred school by rejecting the offered school. If an appeal panel thinks you are doing that they may be less inclined to give you the benefit of any doubt. Even after you have accepted the place you can still go back later and reject it.

Have you taken a look at the allocated school? If not I would recommend that you do so. It may confirm your determination not to send your daughter there but equally you may be pleasantly surprised.

Agree with the other posters that the LEA have fulfilled their obligations by offering your child a place at their catchment school.
The school we've been offered is the only school within our catchment area, and is one of the worst in the county, we must refuse it. This may be true if you look at the league tables, but it is still possible for well-motivated children to do well at any school, particularly in reception/KS1. It's KS2 provision that makes the biggest difference (class sizes are not limited to 30 pupils in KS2). I am afraid that you won't win a place on Appeal with this type of argument and may well alienate the Appeals Panel.
Yes Home Education may be an option, but you may find yourself having to do this for a long time. In my LEA there are stories in the local press about some children who turned down the place offered last year and are still without a place now. Moving house may help, but unless you are moving to an area with under-subscribed schools, you could still end up on a waiting list or being offered a place at the "worst" school in the new area.

I really agree with accepting the place, as I don't think it will go in your favor to simply refuse in the hope you will get a better school place.

I'm a bit confused tbh, in terms of an appeal, can you just appeal because you don't like the school? I thought you had to be able to show why it would be detrimental for your child not to attend a particular school, that's what we were told anyway.
We were offered a school 5 miles away for ds2 as we were late admission due to moving, I was not happy but didn't think I had grounds to appeal as the LEA said I had to have a specific reason, not just I didn't like the school.

As it turned out, we accepted the place but went on waiting list for our preferred school and a place came up really quickly so he was able to go to the school 4 minutes away, that was probably just luck though!

ARE you going to appeal OP and if you don't mind me asking, what would be your grounds?
Is it distance?

Oh and I forgot to ask- is this school the ONLY one in the area at all?
I didn't really understand?

tantrumsandballoons - You are right. You are appealing for your preferred school. You are not appealing against the allocated school. That is why arguments as to why the allocated school is useless don't help at appeal. You need to have positive reasons for wanting your preferred school.

Appellants also need to be aware that if they attempt to argue (as some do) that "the allocated school is useless and my child is too bright to go there", they may well be disparaging the school that the panel members' children attend!

if there's only 1 school in your area, and you would never send your child there... why have you left it untl now to move?

That's what I thought, you have to say why your child needs to go to a specific school.

So now I am curious, what reasons, other than having a sibling at the school, would be a valid reason to win?

Our LEA advised my that at our preferred school no one had won an appeal for 3 years.
I suppose the school have to have really good reasons to extend the size of the class, not just the school is crap!

The LEA should not have said that - it is not for them to discourage people from appealing, as is their right!

As you say, Tantrums, the appeal has to be about the balance of the detriment to your child in not attending the school, against the detriment to the school in taking another pupil. Generally, this is about whether the child has a need which the other school is better able to meet - school with a maths programme for children who are gifted in maths, an orchestra for a child who plays an instrument at an advanced level etc etc (statements of SEN naming the school would be dealt with separately). Special considerations apply, though, when it is an infant class size appeal, where the only winnable grounds are a serious error which has deprived the child of a place, admission arrangements which are contrary to law or the admissions code or a decision to refuse a place which is so unreasonable that it cannot be allowed to stand.

There are lots of threads at the moment discussing ICS appeals.

Has it got a poor ofsted? I agree with someone higher up thread re bottom line SATs 'results'- they are a blunt instrument. They often don't give a full picture. Also if it is because of catchment area worries be careful not to dismiss a school without visiting/ using properly informed judgement. You need to tell us more about the school you have dismissed out of hand!!

Panelchair, im glad tbh that they gave us the facts, there was no major reason for me to appeal the place, it had a slightly lower ofsted and was further away, and I didnt love the head, but that all seems a bit trivial, I would have sent him there even though I wasn't overjoyed with it. Tbh if the LEA hadn't explained it all to me, I may have appealed, luckily enough they gave me good advice about the wait list so it worked out for the best.

We actually moved areas as there were 2 schools I hated in our catchment and only 1 we liked and I didn't want to have to accept a place some where I truly hated.

Yes, they should certainly provide information. My worry, though, is that, whenever I have heard of schools or LEAs saying "nobody has won an appeal in the last x years", it seems to carry the implication of "and you won't either, so don't bother". Hence my concern about people being deterred from appealing.

Firstly you need to understand that 150 applicants is not as bad as it looks. You will have had the opportunity to put down at least 3 preferences as will everybody else. So potentially 2/3rds of the applicants are actually wanting another school but put your preference as either 2nd or 3rd preference. Hence they may have got their first preference and therefore have absolutely no wish to consider your preference school. However at the other end of the scale, it could possibly be that that the school is absolutely the most desired school in the country and all 150 are first preferences.
Usually it is somewhere in between, so it could be that there are 10 to 20 on the waiting list, the maximum it should be is 100.
I would email the LA and ask them where you currently stand on the waiting list, it is actually not important how many are on the waiting list, it is where you are on the waiting list.

Again, SchoolsNightmare, that could be interpreted in two ways. It might be helpful and constructive (ie "don't waste time on arguments that won't get you anywhere but concentrate on arguments that connect with the admissions appeal code and the grounds on which a panel may order a school to admit") or it could be the opposite. Anyway, it is ultimately for the appeal panel to decide what is an acceptable reason and what is irrelevant!

No, if they have a place, elsewhere, they children stay on the waiting list. Only when they have turned a place down at the school (they are waiting for) will the place be offered to someone further down the list.

If you accept the place at the school you do not want, you do not have to go there. You can defer entry til the term after your child is 5. Even then, you can give up the place the day before you are due to start.

Frankly, moving into a catchment is not going to guarantee you a place in a good reception class - or any infant place at all. If you move right next door to the school you want, you will go to the top of the waiting list - but you need to wait for a place to appear. In the meantime, you'll be in the same position but in a different location. The LA will offer you a place at a school that is not full.

Where I work, my class is full, has been all year, no movement whatsoever and there are 11 children on the waiting list all in other schools. My class coming in next year is full and there are over 30 children on the waiting list. Things do seem therefore to be getting worse.