Catholic school appeals

[GetOutMyPub]

I was hoping to find a thread on this up & running already,

We have not got a place at either of our two local RC schools.

We are practicing Catholics, attend Mass every week and I go on my own on Holy Days. I also help/volunteer at the children's group during Sunday Mass and have been crb checked to do this.

I will phone the schools tomorrow to find out where we are on waiting list.

Any one with advice regarding the appeals process?

thanks

That's bad, are you local to the schools?

It's early days yet and some may not take up their places. I hope you are uppermost on the list. It's crap if you attend church and are part of the community.

Will keep my fingers crossed for you, are these schools especially oversubscribed?

distance to the school doesn't come into the admission criteria but you do have to live within one of two local Church Parish areas, which we do.

Can only assume that it is a large sibling year.

Our first choice yes it is always over-subscribed, second choice not always but only 1 form entry. I know it is large cohort this year, had same trouble getting DS into a Nursery last year.

Sory to hear you are going through this.

In the Catholic school that I have experience of the admissions are ranked according to the school's own admissions criteria. The places are then filled using each ranked category. If there are more applicants in a category than there are places then the tiebreak (siblings then distance) is applied.

I would ask each school

1. Where my application was ranked using their admissions criteria

1. What the calculated distance used was (if they used distance as a criteria/tiebreak)

1. About the last place allocated in respect to the points above ie to find out if they were in a higher category/were closer/had a sibling.

Point 3 will give you an indication of how you were considered in respect to other applicants. If your application was higher ranked/closer then you have a starting point for your appeal.

There are some fantastic experts on this subject who will no doubt have more information.

Good luck

Yes, you need to begin by checking

1. why you did not get a place (the letter from the LEA should tell you this)

1. whether your application was considered correctly - were you placed in the correct priority group, did they spot that you lived in the parish etc etc?

If there has been an error which has deprived your child of a place, the LEA should give you the place without demur (although many insist that you go through an appeal anyway). Otherwise, you can appeal. Generally at any admission appeal, parents have to convince the panel that the 'prejudice' (ie disadvantage) to their child in not attending the school is greater than the prejudice to the school in admitting one more pupil. Being a practising Catholic and wanting your child to receive a Catholic education is one thing that could be mentioned there.

However, if the school admits in multiples of 30 (ie 15, 30, 45, 60 etc etc) then it would be an infant class size appeal. Because infant classes are limited by law to 30 pupils, the only grounds for winning an ICS appeal are if there has been an error which deprived the child of the place, if the admission arrangements are contrary to law or the admissions code or if the decision to refuse a place was so unreasonable that it cannot be allowed to stand.

If yours is likely to be an ICS appeal, it would be rash to bank on winning it. You may get a place through the waiting list but you need to identify a fallback option (another school or home education).

It would also be worth checking any guidance produced by your RC Diocese. It may state an intentention for every Catholic child to have a place in a RC school (not necessarily one of your choice). Parents in my region used this to pressure the Diocese to put on an extra class where the town's RC schools could not accomodate all the children and it was a significant distance to the next nearest RC Primary. Could your Parish Priest help in getting in touch?

The appeals process is exactly the same for all schools, the main difference is that as a catholic school the school has the option of arranging its own appeals or can delegate the responsibility to the Local Authority. Follow the instructions on the admission letter to get your appeal underway.

The other main difference is that as a catholic school, they are their own admission authority, so they have to come and explain why they could not offer a place and why the school is full. That is usually the head teacher or the Chair of Governors who does it.

admission - does that mean that the appeal is done by the school e.g. not independent? or that school represents itself to an independent panel?

The panel must be independent. The school may ask the LA to provide an independent panel or they can provide their own. If they go down the latter course the panel members must be independent from the school, so the panel cannot consist of the head and a couple of governors, for example.

thanks!

thanks just waiting for the postie now (got results online but have to wait for official letter for reasons/appeal process)

I would speak to the parish priest who may be the chair of governors for advice too. Good luck. It always astounds me this round of applying for a school place as it never really happens where I live in Wales. I never had to apply for a secondary school place as both my children [ even my son with SN] just went to the local Catholic comp as we were in a feeder primary school. I am so glad I don`t have to do this as it must be very stressful. Hope you can get it sorted it soon.

It was down to distance :(

Which was the last tie-break critieria

Which is gutting because it puts the children from my parish at a disadvantage.

There is no local RC school in my area or attached to my Parish Church, the children from my Parish Church share the school with another Parish Church which happens to be next door to the school. All the other criteria give joint priority to children from both parishes, except the last tie-break which is on distance. Of course the children from the other parish are going to live closer to the school when the Church is next door to the school!

I don't quite understand how the admissions priorities here work - and obviously a lot depends on how exactly they are worded - but it seems to me that you could argue on the lines above, that the oversubscription criteria are unreasonable because they leave children attending your parish church without a Catholic school at which they are likely to get a place. That argument is far from watertight since (you say) at least some of the oversubscription criteria do treat children from your parish church on an equal basis to those from the other parish church, but you may be lucky and find a sympathetic panel that will stick its neck out for you.

Has this issue ever been raised with your diocese? I remember from other threads that some other areas have had similar issues which have been resolved by rewriting the admissions criteria.

Not sure re the Diocese, but we have newish Priest (well been here 4 yrs now) first thing he did was to get himself on Governing body at the school and push for admission criteria to change so less biased to other Church. Which he did. The distance from school criteria was much higher up before. I also know that the criteria will be changing again but not sure when, why or how.

I will go and speak to my Parish Priest next week and get his input.

When there is a catchment area, which in your case is the two parish boundaries, then the final criteria will normally be distance and regretably because very few schools are absolutely in the centre of the catchment area, some people will be potentially disadvantaged. There is no way around this I am afraid but to get on the waiting list and appeal.

Thank you for all your help. We are 10th on waiting list but will appeal.