Advice on appealing a Primary School place after moving house during admissions

[nosskibird]

Hi there. Unfortunately we moved house from one LA to another between the cutoff date for Reception applications and the offer date. We called the new LA to tell them we had moved on 24/02 but they said it was too late and the criteria would be based on our old address and we would have to wait for re-offers, they even sent our offer letter there after we told them we had moved! We were refused the 2 schools we chose here and offered one between the old house and the new one that is 13 miles away! So DD has been waitlisted for our local school which is 0.4 miles away and outstanding. She is first on the list but all of the 50 places have now been accepted so we are having to go to appeal.

Do these reasons sound like a good case?:
-We feel we were disadvantaged by the admissions process as we informed the LA of the move but it was ignored.
-We need the before and after school club offered by the local school as we are both working parents and have no support network here.
-Our daughter has achieved Early Years Foundation Stage targets higher than expected of a nursery age pupil and as an outstanding school in all areas we feel this will continue to develop her to her full potential.
-The house move has caused alot of stress to our daughter as she doesn't know any friends or family here. The few friends she has made in this street and area have places confirmed at the school already.

Whaddya think peeps?? Advice is most appreciated :)

I'm not on any others and I know I should be really. There are places available at 2 other schools which they are going to re-offer but im not happy with them they have appauling reputations and ofsted reports. They seem more geared to supporting the more vulnerable children in the neighbouring areas. IT may be that she has to go there until a place comes up at the one we want. From reading other threads it doesn't seem so pie in the sky now.
As for the class sizes i'm not sure but the admissions office told me the 2011 Reception intake has 52 children so 2 must have got in on appeal...

It sounds as if the LEA has followed the usual procedure where people move between application and offer dates, by treating you as a late application. It is quite usual to 'freeze' applications in that way, as otherwise the process would be in constant upheaval as people changed addresses. It isn't about 'ignoring' you.

It's all going to hinge on whether this is an infant class size appeal. How is the school organised? Are there classes of 30 in the infants (there might be, with a PAN of 50, but maybe not)? What does the letter refusing the place say about whether it's an ICS appeal?

If this is an ICS appeal, you will only win if (a) you can demonstrate a mistake which cost your child their place or (b) the admission arrangements are not compliant with the law or admissions code or (c) the decision is so unreasonable as to be perverse. From what you say, none of those apply. The things you list are clearly important to you but they're not the things that win ICS appeals.

If, though, this isn't an ICS appeal, your odds are better. You need to convince the panel that your child needs the school place more than the school needs to keep numbers down. Your first three arguments probably aren't going to carry much weight (and do beware of seeming to argue that your child is too bright to go to anything less than an outstanding school) so don't dwell too much on those, but the argument about needing a place in a local school in order to integrate into the community may be more persuasive.

What do I think:

1. late applicants who apply after the cut-off date are always considered after everybody who applied on time so this appears to be correct.
2. There may be a case for after school clubs being needed, yes.
3. state schools do not admit children according to academic ability so this will not work.
4. unlikely to work.

Agree with Schoolsnightmare though that a year group of 50 seems a strange number. Is it possible to get more information on how the school organises the year groups as this may help your case.

If they had taken your new address into account you would have been treated as a late applicant which means you would have been unlikely to get into any of your preferred schools. However, you may well have been allocated a place closer to your new home.

The big question is whether this is an ICS case. It would not normally be ICS with an admission number of 50 but it depends how the classes are arranged in Infants, Y1 and Y2. Do you know how many classes they have in those years? If it is an ICS case you will have to show that a mistake has been made (unlikely in the circumstances) or that the LA was unreasonable in refusing to use your new address. Did they completely refuse to use your new address or did they just say you would be treated as a late applicant if you changed your address?

If it is not an ICS case you have a better chance but your second and third points won't help you. In general appeal panels will not consider childcare difficulties. You are expected to cope. Similarly the fact that your child is bright and the school is outstanding is irrelevant. Your fourth point is better. I would frame that as your daughter's social development being damaged as she will not be mixing with local children at school and her opportunities to meet school friends outside school will be limited.

As the allocated school is so far away from your new home you are entitled to free school transport for your daughter.

Crossed with SchoolsNightmare!

The refusal to accept a change of address within the window between applications and offers would only be unreasonable if the LEA's actions were at odds with what it says about changes of address/late applications in its admissions booklet. Otherwise, as I said, it's a routine part of the admissions process.

I'm more positive than SchoolsNightmare about the 'needs a local school to make local friends' argument. Yes, it is a social argument, but it does go to the heart of what prejudice (ie disadvantage) a child might suffer if not admitted (and it's not quite the same as the 'wanting to stay with friends from pre-school' argument). Of course, whether this and any other arguments win the appeal depends too on the strength of the LEA's arguments against admission.

I just called the school it is 2 classes of 25 and 2 got in on appeal last year. She did stress that logistically it stretches them to have any more on the role!

The question that worries me is whether you were treated as a late applicant and the school 12 miles away happened to be the nearest with places available, or treated you as an on time applicant from your old address. Some other posters are assuming you were treated as a late applicant. However, the fact that the offer letter went to your old address suggests they used your old address. That would, in my view, be unreasonable. They should have used your new address. You still wouldn't have got into one of your preferred schools but you may have been allocated a place closer to home than the one offered.

With 2 classes in Reception it is very unlikely to be an ICS appeal. I expect they have 2 classes in Y1 and Y2 as well.

For point 2 - many schools now have after school clubs. If you are already using child-care now - couldn't this be continued after September ?

Agree with prh47bridge that it would be helpful to clarify with the LEA whether you were treated as an ontime application from your old address or a late application from new address. My first reaction was that it was the latter, but as prh47bridge points out, it is actually more likely to have been the former, which is why you got a place at a school near the old address.

Either way, the reasonableness (or not) still depends on whether the LEA followed its own guidelines.

If you would like to identify the LA involved I will have a look and see what, if anything, they say in their admission arrangements about what should happen in your situation. PM me if you don't want to post that information publicly.

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply this has been really good. I feel they have been unreasonable as they have completely disregarded the new address and there has been no mention anywhere by the LEA of a 'late' application.

PanelChair - I'm more inclined to say this is unreasonable as there are two LAs involved. If the OP had moved within an LA it would generally be reasonable to use the old address if that is what it says in their admission arrangements (although even then I would question it if the OP had moved 40 or 50 miles and they therefore allocated a school that far away from her new home). But in this situation it sounds like her new home LA has effectively refused to accept a late application from someone moving into the area on the basis that she had already applied for schools in their area through another LA. I don't think that is reasonable.

You've got lots of good advice here from folk in the know. Just wanted to say that we moved during admissions too and knew it would be a nightmare so only went ahead with a private school back-up plan in place (we're not well-off, praying to get into local state school via waiting list). But my point is that although you make some good points, it does piss me off when people cite all the reasons why the admissions people are being unfair to the dc who have moved, when the parents (like us) knew all the dates and the rules and that moving then would inevitably disadvantage the dcs. I guess it's a tone thing - listing all these ways in which the kids will suffer as if it's not partly our fault. Obviously some moves at this time are unavoidable, but still...

Sorry, rant over. Good luck with your appeal anyway.

I've now looked at the policies of the new LA. They say that if you are moving into the area you must provide proof of your new address by mid-February or they will use your original address.

I am not convinced this is a reasonable policy. Taken at face value, someone moving into the area from Penzance (which is hundreds of miles away) and applying in, say, mid-March will have their Penzance address used. Even worse, if they applied to the LA in Penzance for schools in this LA, knowing they were intending to move, the parents would, apparently, end up with an offer of a school in Penzance because this LA would insist on using their Penzance address and treating the LA in Penzance as the home LA.

I think they are saying that if you move by mid-February you will be treated as an on-time applicant. That is fine. And there would be no problem with saying that a change of address after this date would be treated as a late application. Refusing to accept the change of address at all seems unreasonable to me.

I agree prh thanks again xx

Prh47bridge - I see the logic of what you say, but have some lingering reservations about whether it would be reasonable for people moving into the LEA to have new addresses accepted after the cut-off date when people moving within the LEA would not. As you say, the effects of not accepting the new address may be more severe where people have moved hundreds of miles, but I still think there is a difficulty in suggesting or implying that there ought to be a distinction.

Anyway, it's certainly worth arguing at appeal.

Got the appeal date through for three weeks time eeek! DD is still top of the waiting list for preferred school and we have accepted a place at another school in the next village as a failsafe as noones budged all 50 places were accepted. I'm not sure if to write them a letter or how to word it so I don't sound like a stroppy demanding Kevin ! xx