Reception Appeal

[ArabSpring2011]

I have read a lot of threads regarding reception appeal however im abit confused. My situation is; I have applied for a primary school that is local to my parents and to my nan. This is because i care for my nan and i work in that area and currently my child attends nursery in the same area too.
I explained when i applied for that particular primary school that i was waiting for a housing transfer from my area to a diff area and thats why i have applied for a place in that school. The Lea decided to give my child a school that is local to my previous house because at the time i havent yet moved out. it'll be very difficult for my child to attend a different school due to my work i start at 7:30 and finish at 4pm. My mother will be helping with taking my child to and from school. I contacted the school they confirmed that they have no places left and theyre only allowed (30) per class. i literally live 5mins away from the school. I spoke to the LEA they said i shouldv put my mothers address on the application instead of my own and i now have to accpt a school that is miles away from my current address. Apparently they dont read what reasons ive put down on the form they just place children according to their home address :(

Please help..

So, have you actually moved house now?

When did you move?

Did you send the LEA evidence of your new address? When?

The advice from the LEA to put your mother's address on the application form is very odd - if you haven't actually been living with your mother, in most LEAs that would be regarded as fraud!

It is true, as you say, that most school places (apart from looked after children, social and medical need and siblings) are allocated according to distance to school from the parent's address. Parents' work and family situation aren't taken into account. The LEA can only use the information that they have - if you moved some time ago, it would have been better to have told the LEA immediately, because there might have been the option of making a late application from the new address.

You will have seen from the other threads that in infant class size appeals - which yours will be because there are 30 pupils in the class - you can win only if you show that the LEA made some kind of mistake. It doesn't sound as if there has been any mistake here unless they ignored evidence of your new address after you moved nearer the school (and even this is complicated because there are fixed dates after which changes of address can't be registered, so we would need to know more about when you moved and when (if at all) you notified the LEA).

At the appeal, you can try to persuade the panel that the decision to refuse you a place in this school is unreasonable - but unreasonable means so unreasonable that no other LEA would have made the same decision, so the general inconvenience of not having a place at this cool school won't be enough.

What should happen now is that, once you submit evidence of your new address close to the school, you should move up the waiting list, as it is held in distance order in line with the admissions criteria.

From your post i believe that the LA have done what they needed to do. Whilst I accept that it is always best if the LA do actually read what is said on the application forms, the LA have to work within the regulations.
When you applied your address was your original one and that is what everything is based on, your address on the cutoff date which is the 15th Jan. They will have considered you for all the schools that you listed but as they are out of catchment from your home address and presumably a reasonable distance away you would have been too far down the lists to gain a place. The LA has therefore quite rightly allocated you a place at the nearest school to your home address that has places. The only time your mums address becomes the main address is if you permanently move to that address.
Sorry but you are like many,many other families that rely on parents and grand parents to take to school and many of them have the same issue as you have, wanting a school too far away from your place of abode to get a school place.
The LA are incorrect or have misunderstood what you have said, in suggesting you should have used your mums address. This would have been a false application and you would have had the place taken off you when the incorrect address was established.

Are you on the waiting list for the school you now live near? Do they now have your correct address? Would you have got a place if you had applied on time? I know you only live 5 mins away, but some schools are so full of siblings that there are very few other places. Are you on the waiting list for other nearby schools which are more convienient than the allocated school? Have you accepted the offered school?

The answer to all my questions is hopefully yes, if not get yourself on waiting lists etc today. You can defer the start date until the term after they turn 5, as long as they start during reception at some point, and funding at nursery should be extended until this time, it might buy you a few months in which a place could come up in a nearby school.

i have moved house and sent them the proof of address back in April however they took too long to change it. I was literally calling them every few days to ckeck whether theyve updated it onto the system.. it took almost a month for them to change it and it was until i rang them up and actually had ago at them and the lady who i was speaking to changed it there and then whilst i was on the phone??? she also said that day a few days ago the school took three kids of the waiting list, i was actually gutted cos my daughter wouldve deffinately got a place.. she is currently 2nd on the waiting list.

Our appeal will be heard on thursday..

If she is 2nd how do you know that she would have goot a place? It still goees on the original application categories. You need to find out which category the last child was accepted from (i.e. Were they siblings or not), and how far away they are compared to you. If they were in the same category as your dc and they lived further, then yes the LEA have made a mistake. As long as you can demonstrate that you told them in April and their failure to act lost you the place, then you should win your appeal (fingers crossed)

Thanks Tiggytape

Change of address was updated on 21st May 12. I'll have to findout about the other things youve mentioned.

So if they refuse the appeal which is MOST likely they will what will happen next, theres no way that i'll be able to take my daughter to a diff school/out of the area unless i leave my job and go back to claiming income support.

If you can prove maladministration you shoudl NOT lose the appeal. If you do you can write to the LGO who may order a fresh appeal.

Otherwise keep your dd on the waitling list and look for childcare until you have a place at your chosen school.

As Tiggytape says, you need to check whether - if the LEA had updated the waiting lists immediately - you would have been in the top 3 when the other places were offered. If the 3 children who got places had siblings or lived nearer than you, you still might only have been number 4 or lower on the list.

Some LEAs have a 'window' in which they freeze addresses and don't accept notifications of change of address. You therefore need to check whether your LEA does that - if they do and you provided details of your house move during the 'window', you need to check whether they updated your address as soon as it had passed or whether they caused further delay.

If there has been an error which deprived your child of the place, you should win the appeal. If you lose the appeal, your options are to find some way of getting your child to the allocated school (breakfast and after-school clubs, childminder, finding another parent to share the school run etc); find another more convenient school with a place; or home educate. Many parents find themselves in this situation when they don't get a place in their nearest school.

The appeal panel have to agree that the admission arrangements have been correctly implemented. That must include establishing what places were offered originally, what places were declined and how the places were then filled and when. Normally they would ask under what admission criteria they were filled.
During stage 1 of the appeal you will have the opportunity to ask question of the school presenting officer. Ask about how places have been filled that were declined and ask when this happened. Assuming this was after the address change date was notified to the admission office you should then ask the Chair of the Panel whether your own personal circumstances in relation to these places should be discussed now or in stage 2. It is important that the panel understand that you believe a mistake has been made in stage 1, though it is most likely the chair of the panel will say they will deal with it in stage 2.
Just to be clear the important date is not when the LA got around to doing it, it was when you informed the LA. The other critical date is that the places were filled after the date you informed the LA.

We've just won our ICS appeal on very similiar reasons! Ours was won on 3 places being given to other kids when we had given evidence of change of address in April, we had evidence we show we had before second round offers - do you have any with dates etc?! Fingers crossed for you, I know exactly how you feel! Xx

Had our appeal today went for the meeting and omg it was nerve wracking, i felt sick.. should get a reply within five days and it just seems ages away :( I think ive done rather well, i think they felt sorry for me.. anyway guys pray for me please xxx

glitterGlitter - congrats!!! awww youre so lucky and well done

Good luck.