Still no reception place for September.....

[OzBrit]

I posted back in April about our situation and wanted to give an update to make sure I have done everything I should/could have done. This is the story so far:

• 27th April - found out our DS had been offered no reception place. Were informed we would hear more by 8th June
• 8th June - no letter so rang Admissions (letters were sent out late and it di arrive a day later) - still no place and they "anticipate" a place will be offered at the end of June

In the meantime:

• We are on the waiting lists for all 5 local schools
• The 3 closest schools, we are 12th, 13th & 13th - so no chance of getting a place from the waiting list
• We have put in an appeal for these 3 schools (we don't meet faith criteria on other 2). Appeals had to be in by 29th May. We are appealing on the grounds that the LA have acted "unreasonably" by not offering any school place (this will all fall apart once we are offered something however)
• I rang appeals last week - we have 3 appeal dates for mid-late July. We still don't have this in writing.
• We have explored the private school route in order to get some control back
• We did a FOI and found out there were 8 others in our area in the same situation. I have heard along the grapevine that 2 have since been offered a place
• I have used contracts to dig some more and they are unaware of any schools in our area taking "bulge" classes. I did ask this in a FOI and was told that because it was still in negotiation with schools & governors they weren't able to provide this information at the time.

I ring Admissions regularly to see if there is any movement on the waiting lists......hardly any since end of April.

Is there something else that can be done or is it a case of waiting for the "letter"? It has obviously been a very stressful few months.

Any advice appreciated.....

Just to throw some other rather incredible statistics into the mix. I live in SE London (Croydon borough) and we don't have a primary school place for our DD1 as the place we were offered (and refused) was 3 miles away (so a London commute of 40mins) at a school that in April had no building/no head teacher/no wrap around care for working parents/no nursery provision for siblings and no information supplied upon which we could make a judgement.

I found out yesterday that there are up to 500 children without a place in Croydon. The Council freely admit they need an additional 15 NEW classrooms to take on the Sept intake. Every school has been asked to take on a bulge year and most refuse (as they have already done so previously - or do not have room) only 2 schools so far are taking bulge years locally to us - that's only 60 new places.

As of this year's figures we are now not in the catchment for ANY school locally. Our nearest school is 0.393m away !

What's more the Govt turned down an application for a free school academy in our area last year...

Beggars belief.

Agh, Vangough. What an awful situation to be in. For better or worse, LEAs can be stymied in their plans to provide bulge classes if the schools say no. And even a primary academy wouldn't have provided 500 Reception places.

No PanelChair I agree it would not entirely solve the bigger issue here, however an Academy would have eased the school over-crowding problem locally. The primary catchments in the 5 yrs we've lived here have shrunk on an annual basis. Every single school in Croydon borough last year was over-subscribed bar one. Many have up to 400 applicants for 3FE. The warning signs have been there.
Schools can't take on bulge years if the facilities (like the hall/catering/toilets) can't cope with them. Also over previous years many have agreed to bulge years anyway. This causes problems with the subsequent years intakes as so many places are then taken up with siblings it becomes impossible for new children to get places, compounding the problem. Creating bulge years is the tip of the iceberg, Croydon need to stop building new flats without supporting local infrastructure with important services such as new schools.

Hey ho, a very stressful time for us as parents and the many other parents in this country still without a reception place.:(

The infant school our LEA tried to close down 4 years ago is oversubscribed in September, every reception class in the area is full. Not sure what is going to happy to the 2 reception classes locally for which there are no junior school provision...

Can't even see them looking 3 years ahead and realise they need to start planning now for the Sept 12 intake having a junior place!

kat1885 - I am sorry to hear about your situation. I hope the appeal goes well on the 3rd July. I look forward to reading your feedback about the appeal as it seems you may get to it without a place?

peacypops - thanks for the update. I will send you a PM later
Vangough - sorry to read about your situation too. Croydon have a huge job on their hands! I would love to be a fly on the wall in that Admissions office

It would be good to keep the thread going just to share how things are progressing with everyone......and to keep getting the wonderful expert opinions/advice. A big thank you!

Vangough - thank you for the Croydon statistics, we have been lead to believe by Lambeth that neighbouring boroughs will pick up the slack for the shortfall in Lambeth primary places (we are also outside of all catchment areas). So which London boroughs have reception availability?! And importantly, what are the quality of these schools? Just because we live 700m away from our nearest school, will we be forced into a special measures school 7.5 miles away? Moving house or private school is not an option for us.

(btw, we are not 2012 intake, just very worried in advance - i really have every sympathy for everyone struggling with a place for this September)

I'm already worried about 16mo DS3's year group. Ours is an LEA that has done a bit of forward planning, and already knows that they will be 157+ places short ON ONE ESTATE for his year.

They were intending to open a brand new, 3FE school that was 4-18. However, they have now admitted that due to delays from developers, it will be at least a year late, and won't take that intake at all!

One school out of the six local ones CAN take a bulge class, as their current bulge class will have left that July - but the school is becoming an Academy this September, and the HT is adamant that he then can't be forced to take a bulge class...

Even if they do, there will still be 127+ places short, and no other local schools can expand. They are already talking about putting DC in schools across town, but if you don't drive, it is a 40 minute bus journey to town (1hr20 min in morning rush hour), then another 35 mins to the other side of town (1 hr in rush hour). So that's a journey of between 1hr15 mins and 2hr20 mins.

I won't be accepting a place I have to travel to like that, and not will any of the non-drivers I know!

And the info is reliable, it's from the LA's Strategic Planning Document for Education.

They might be able to ship 30-60 across town like that, but they are talking about Allocating the rest to schools in the next town over. 30 fucking miles away. AND my LEA will only pay transport costs if the school allocated is between 2 and 6 miles away. Anything over that and you have to find the cost yourself. Which is not going to happen on a 30 mile school run when you don't drive!

Seeing that there are DC with no school place offered is filling me with dread...

An update on the lack of school place:

After a heated discussion with admissions on Fri (we were 6th on the waiting list for preferred school on Monday and then 9th on Friday.....yes I was a little irate!) I then got to speak to a manager! (stupid person I spoke to on Monday omitted the 3 siblings at the top of the list....grrr)

I was informed in this telephone conversation that we would not be getting a school before our appeals. Further discussion revealed that they are not able to offer us any school within a 2 mile radius. Admissions stated that they are awaiting outcomes of appeals before a school offer will be made.

I pointed out that we may not win our appeal - their reply was they felt we had a good case. I am not sure whether this meant other people have already had appeals and won when they didn't have a school? I was then told that if we didn't win then we would be offered a school outside the 2 mile radius and that our DS would be given a free bas pass!!!

We have withdrawn from 1 appeal this week and have 2 appeals next week. The feeling is that we should just go to the appeal of the school we really want.

Has anyone else been in this situation?

You do need to appeal. It could be that the LA are playing a sneaky game here. If they have asked schools to take bulge classes and failed, then the LA can go to the appeal and say yes we accept that we have not offered any place because we do not have any to offer within a two mile radius. All we can offer is a school 10 miles away.
That drops the appeal panel right into the problem of what to do. They cannot say that the admission arrangements have been correctly carried out because one of the basic tenants is that a place is offered and secondly potentially that is not a decision that any reasonable admission authority should make.
If there were only two or three pupils appealing my temptation is to say blow it the school can operate with 33 in a class at a squeeze, admit as excepted pupils. The problem is that if it is 9 or more then there is no way that they can do that, they could only realistically offer places to increase infant class size to 33. So you will not solve the problem but you might reduce it!
I would also not rely on your preference school, go to both appeals and argue for a place.
I actually feel really sorry for the panel because they are being put into an impossible situation.

Tiggy, no sibling link would be counted due to the age gap - DS2 leaves the school in July 2015 to start Y7 at Secondary which will ALSO be nearly 200 places short in our town due to the Academy not opening on time, it would have 'become' my closest Secondary, as it would have only been 0.06 miles away, whereas the 'current' closest is 0.3 miles away, I will see the new one from my house!)

So no sibling link due to an age gap of over 7 years.

So DS3 will be one of the ones who gets shipped God-only-knows where.

And my LEA don't take medical issues of the PARENTS into account, so the fact that a long journey time will exacerbate my disability will count for nothing!

Thanks admissions - our preference school is a 3 form and if the FOI information I got about 6 weeks ago is still correct, there are 5 in this area without a school place who I assume will want the same school as us......perhaps this may make the panel decision a little easier? Am I allowed to ring the appeals office and ask whether any other people without a school have won a place on appeal? Or is that considered another FOI?

It really is a ridiculous situation for both us and the panel......if one panel has given a place on appeal because they didn't have a place, does these mean all appeal panels follow this decision?

I have heard of a few people now who have won appeals based on issues that I was told were not relevant (i.e. childcare situations or parent's health). It would appear that some panels are taking into consideration the fact that people have no school place offer.

I didn't appeal because I was told that I had no grounds by people who seemed to know the system better than I do. However, now it seems I should have. I am filling out the form now, but:

1. I don't know what my grounds are other than the fact that my child has no offer (and we live somewhere where an offer at a local school is now impossible)? Does anyone have a suggestion?
2. I don't understand when the appeal will be heard? I was told I "missed the deadline". But I understand that just means the deadline for this round of appeals. If it is a while from now, say September, does that affect the outcome?

I'd be grateful for any help.

Good luck with your appeal OzBrit!

You should appeal for all the schools that you were happy with on the basis that you expressed a preference for the school and have not got an place allocation. You can also talk about all the reasons why the school was one of your preferences.
The LA is legally obliged to offer you a place and by appealing you may well force them to give you a place. If that is at one of your preferred schools all well and good, if it is not an acceptable school then the LA have carried out their legal requirements and I would advice to accept this as they do not need to give you any other school.
The missed deadline is just an LA deadline for all appeals for any one school, so that they are all heard together. The appeal has to be heard within30 school days of receipt which in effect means that it will be sometime in September, unless they can squeeze it in over the next couple of weeks. The problem is that as soon as the schools break up getting the information for an appeal becomes a problem, so many LAs do not hold appeals during August.

thanks admissions. Helpful as always.

Hodel - we found writing the appeal really hard given at the time of writing the appeal we weren't sure what we were actually appealing against (apart from not having a school place) as we thought that by the time we got to appeal we would have been offered a place.

We picked up on a few things the LA did wrong, but this wouldn't have got us a place but we thought it added a little bit of weight towards the "unreasonable" argument. PM me if you like - who knows whether our argument will win or not though?! Have you got an alternative solution? (i.e. independent school?)

Great! Just sent you a PM

Any update??
We are moving to south Croydon area this summer. 1 of my son will start Year R this September.But LEA said no place for him at the moment.
So I am quite worried ....

The LA must come up with a place for your child. Keep chasing them. Remind them that if there are no places within a reasonable distance they are required to find a place using their Fair Access Protocol.

It's all gone a little pear shaped.....we have been offered a school. We only found this out in the appeal documentation for our appeal which arrived Friday (appeal is this Friday). The letter from the LA arrived today....with an answer having to be given today (letter dated 11th & sent 2nd class). If my DH hadn't have been home today we would not have been able to give an answer within the deadline.....

We have rejected the offer, but when I rang the school to do this they weren't even aware that our DS had been made an offer at the school. We were offered a sink school, within the 2 mile radius, which given we have waited 11 weeks, is all we could have realistically expected. I know we now have no chance of winning the appeal on Friday, but we are still going just so that we can close the door on the whole wretched, stressful experience that has been the last 3 months. A very long complaint letter will then be written about the shoddy communication by the LA and category of misinformation we have received along the way. I would hate for anyone else to have to go through this.

Good luck for everyone else's appeals this week.

Thanks tiggytape - I am not sure about the other 5 and whether they are still without a place. I know one other still didn't have a place on Friday.....will be interested to see who is at the appeal on Friday and what the outcome is for everyone!

Probably not what any of you want to hear but I appealed when one dc had no school place.....

The basis of my appeal was something else entirely

I lost my appeal, the panel were totally unconcerned about no school place at all, (as I said it was not mentioned by us as part of the reason why we were appealing) at that time the LA was in crisis with loads of children with no school place (over 60% of dcs nursery class had no place in July!!)

(Off topic a bit I never really mentioned it on here but my appeal was a complete joke)