Please help- place withdrawn!

[StellarforStarofAfrica]

DD has had her place withdrawn for our 1st choice school, on the basis that her foster sibling won't be starting in their nursery until January, and not September.

They have just picked this up now due to an internal audit, and for the last 6 weeks, we've been telling her she's going to the school attached to the nursery she's been attending.

I am devastated. Not only has she missed the first appeals date, she is now probably at the bottom of the waiting list, all because of an admin issue at the admissions office.

The admin officer I have spoken to was very lovely, and explained all the protocol to me, but I am still fuming! Ther is NO WAY she is going to go to the school they have allocated her, she wouldn't last a week there, so it's either get through to first choice on appeal (I have no idea how likely this is) or home ed (gulp) which I have no idea of how to do.

Has this happened to anyone else? If so, how did you get through it?

Sorry this is a bit of a stream of consciousness, but I am really shocked and upset.

Her birthday is early September, which is why I asked the school secretary.

Do I have any recourse here? I was acting on the information I'd been given at the time, which whilst it was wrong, I thought was accurate?

The lady on the phone today didn't say I'd made a fraudulent application.

Yeah, some LEAs only have the older sibling as counting. Not sure why it makes a difference but there must be a reason.

If it's early September, why is she starting in January? (And what's funny about that?)

clam I only put DFD down for there as that's where dd goes!

I did wonder why dd got in as a lot were refused, but I took the offer on face value.

So..... Nope, can't work this out!

The LA have just started doing the January start, or changed it or something.

This is the first time I've applied for school places, so I just did what it said on the website, and filled the form out.

I thought that children born between September and end of Feb started in September, and those born March to end August started in January, unless you defer or make special arrangements.
But my kids are old now, so am probably out of date.

I'm sure that this came up on here not long ago with twins, and whether one twin could bump the other one up the waiting list. Or something.

I think it's almost a round robin situation- DD has nursery place, applies for reception, gets in on the strength of the fact that DFD has a nursery place due to start (which I have not had official confirmation of) which bolsters her application for a reception place.

I think the issue is that DFD wouldn't start sept 12 (as I was advised), but jan 13 (as they have now just realised).

I can't believe the place has been withdrawn though, do you think they think I've lied?

clam I have pm'd you. Hope you don't mind!

Im officially confused - but look forward to hearing good news from you op

Just to clarify what i was saying, i understood that the very short window to withdraw a place is applicable only when the offer was made in error, a clerical error or something. But an offer made correctly based on the info on application can be withdrawn at any point if the application was misleading.

For instance, there was a thread yesterday about temporarily renting in a catchment area for admission purpose and there was mention of a place being withdrawn in the december after a september start!

If the 48 hour rule applied to checking out ALL the given info on an application it would be impossible.

Well, they're supposed to check out the info before offering the place, not in that 48 hour window.

X-post tiggytape far more eloquent!

I didn't tick a sibling box saying that one already attended as that wasn't true.

I don't think there was a box asking for declaration of the sibling link, because I would have read the decleration first.

I clearly stated that DD had a foster sibling who had applied for and would hopefully attend the nursery in September in the information box (at this point I didn't and still don't know if DD has been offered a nursery place) I think I put her name and date of birth (which clearly identified her as nursery age) in a box on the form somewhere.

I decided there was a sibling link, as she's DD's foster sister; it didn't occur to me that it would be otherwise (this is my first placement)

I am trying to get hold of the form but the website is still down.

So frustrating that you cant get into the application at the moment! Id have bitten my fingernails to the knuckles by now
but it really does sound like the error was theirs, they assumed the sibling link in error, not based on anything you did.

Tiggy I mentioned it in additional info because I was waxing lyrical about the nursery and how much DD loved it, so much so that I had put DFD down for it as well, and that's why it was my 1st choice school, not the closer one.

I was naively confident that DD would get a place as next door's little girl got one last year (I was enlightened as to the fact that numbers were low last year this afternoon).

TDF I'm about dying here. I wonder if it's closed because the staff are using it. I reckon they close the offices at 7 so it might be up and running then.

I used to work at the Benefits Agency, so I'm usually brilliant at filling in forms. I can't believe I've fouled this one, the most important one ever, up.

I Found out ds's place had been withdrawn the day before he was due to start reception
Can still remember how awful that was, the lovely admissions lady was so kind as i sobbed down the phone. All sorted out fairly painlessly though, hope its the same for you.