Is it possible to appeal against the offered primary VA school?

[Waspie]

We didn't get any of our 4 preferred schools (the catchment school and three closest in distance to the house) and my son has been allocated a place at a VA Church of England school on the other side of town.

On what grounds can the council allocate a VA church school to my son? Can I appeal on the grounds that we are not Church of England?

Obviously we are going to go on the waiting lists for the other 4 schools plus another 2 others in the area but there is no point appealing on any of these as they are over subscribed and the criteria appears to be applied correctly.

Is there anything I can do on religious grounds, or any other, to reject this school?

Any advice? Thanks.

I agree with accountants that advice to give up the only school place your child has been offered is poor advice.

There is information on the DfE website and in the model funding agreement (which you will find on the website but wouldn't recommend reading unless you understand legalese) about things that are specifically different from other types of schools, specific freedoms they have and things that are banned. But I wouldn't class that as a definitive list. People will always come up with ideas that hadn't been thought of when the documents were drafted. Ultimately the courts will decide what is and isn't allowed if necessary.

Just to be clear on creationism, they cannot teach it as fact. They are, of course, allowed to cover it in RE as a "some people believe" item.

Free schools have to have a daily act of collective worship which should be wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character. Non-faith free schools can apply to be relieved of the requirement for the worship to be Christian.

Separating boys and girls and teaching them different things may be a breach of the Equality Act.

"Non-faith free schools can apply to be relieved of the requirement for the worship to be Christian."

It would still have to be "a religion" though? At the moment schools can apply to have the worship non-christian and many do - which makes sense if it is a school of a religion other than christianity! They ought to be able to opt out of the worship requirement entirely IMO.

The separation thing - there is a lot of leeway for schools within the state system to teach things that are not in line with mainstream Uk culture and so I suspect that as long as the results were OK and there were no complaints anything coming under the banner of beliefs would get by.

I may be a bit cynical!

but if she doesn't keep that place is she going to home school? Just because she may not want her child to go there it may be the only option until another place becomes available.

sorry, just seen she is considering home schooling - in that case then maybe this is the best option. There is lots of advice on home schooling on here - depends how likely you are to get another place soon.

I can see accountants point about keeping the space open but if there is no way on earth the OP would send her child there then maybe they should just decline, I am not sure this would have any affect on getting a waiting list place. On the forms when you decline you do have to state what alternative you are going to do though.

lou2321 - I certainly won't be giving up the place my son has been offered by the LA. I can't realistically home school because I work full time and I can't afford private school without selling a kidney (joke) but I can explore every option that is available. Whilst I do this I will be accepting the offered place. In fact it's in the office recorded post tray to be sent tonight. Until I know what position my son is in on each waiting list there are a lot of ifs, ands and buts.

I've been reading with interest the discussion about free schools and religion in schools, thanks SardineQueen and PRH47bridge.

I really hope you get the place you want evenutally. You never know that it may come up before September. I would do the same in your position as would not have been able to home school either. Your son may get on ok there for the short term and you may feel ok knowing he will be able to move eventually.

It is awful that so many people can't even get nito their catchment school.

Re non-faith free schools, if they get the requirement removed they would have to hold a daily act of collective worship but the content could be absolutely anything. It would not have to be related to any religion at all.

To be honest, I expect the requirement for a daily act of collective worship will be as widely ignored in free schools as it is in all other types of school.

Absolutely what you have both just said SchoolsNightmare and lou2321 - home schooling or prep school would only be feasible for a finite time period and I'm at the mercy of the LA's waiting lists. I'm really unsure what's best to do for my son. My own political and ethical posturing is secondary to this

I've now found out more now as the LA have just sent me the numbers and criteria for the offered places:

56 children have been accepted at our catchment school in 2 classes. So it's not the maximum 60. This is the case at one of our other preferred schools too where they have acccepted 50 children into two classes. Will this help our appeals given that the classes aren't technically full?

At the catchment school there are ten catchment children (criteria 4) who have missed out and 9 siblings of non-catchment children (crieria 5). That is 19 children even before starting to count the numbers in criteria 7 which is proximity of whom there are 56.

Is is possible to argue that the LA should be providing an additional class at the school to cater for these 19 (plus any others) as the school is clearly far too small for the catchment size?

No other school in the authority has this number of catchment/sibling non-catchment children missing out on a place. Is there a way of arguing that the LA have been incompetant in drawing up the catchment area?

Or is there anything else I could argue using the new information?

Thanks

My new 'religion' is a morning prayer to the waitlist gods.

prh47 is best placed to advise you, waspie, I know she is very knowledgeable about these things.

ljny - mine too.

SardineQueen - thanks, yes prh47bridge is the admissions guru .

Before I launch in to this, can you just confirm a few details for me.

Are you in England? Does the catchment school have an admission number of 60 or are you assuming that two classes should mean 60? Similarly with the other preferred school - is the admission number 50 or 60? If you are uncertain let me know the LA and schools involved (by PM if you prefer) and I will take a look.

I'm afraid you can't argue at appeal that the LA should be providing an additional class. The appeal panel has to work with the existing class organisation. They cannot make the school provide an additional class.

Similarly an argument that the LA has been incompetent drawing up the catchment area is unlikely to fly. You would have to show they had behaved so unreasonably in drawing up the catchment area that no rational person would have come up with their answer.

However, if they have not admitted up to PAN that definitely gives you a case. Even if they have admitted up to PAN the figures you give suggest that it won't be an infant class size appeal for at least one of the schools.

Thanks prh47bridge.

Yes I'm in England.

I was reading the appeals thread which has resurfaced this week which makes mention that a class size cannot exceed 30 so I took this on board (probably incorrectly).

The catchment school says that if more than 4 appeals are won then they will be in breech of class size limits. The other school which is accepting 50 doesn't mention this.

I will PM you my LA, and preferred school details if that's okay.

Thank you for taking so much time to offer me advice.

Old thread, but I wanted to update.

Good-ish news

We have managed to get my son a place at a state (non-VA) school which we're happy with. It's 4 miles away but three out of the four children in our road who are starting school in Sept (and were in the same position as us) have also accepted this school so my son will know at least 3 others

We are going to stay on waiting lists and are still considering appealing but I'm much much happier with this school than the VA school.

Thank you tiggytape you're very kind. You're so right, we are very relieved to have got this place and now the waiting lists are less critical.

When we visited the school last week the headteacher told us that there are only 2 spare school spaces for rising 5's in the entire borough. Goodness knows what they will do when/if more than 2 children in this year group move into the borough. It's effectively "dean man's boots"

I had no idea until recently that the situation in our borough was so bad. I appreciate that council funds are very strained but they are going to have to address the issue of school admissions soon as the situation is just going to get worse as more and more houses are being built on every spare scrap of land.

I was angered last night when reading the local paper that the council had allowed a large development to be built (in the 1980's) with the proviso that a primary school (plus a GP surgery, community centre etc) would also be built. However the plot of land assigned to be the primary school has never been developed and the council, in it's infinite wisdom, have now granted planning permission for 40 new dwellings to be built here instead! Insanity.

Also, a lot of new build developments have the requirement that a percentage must be sold as social housing. These tend to be given to people who have young families. These children will need school places. It really makes me mad that there is so little foresight, and it's the children who suffer

But I'm starting to rant again, so I'll shut up