Please can I ask for your support and advice for a distraught family?

[fluffyanimal]

Hello MNers,
I'm hoping you can help. Long story first of all:

I live in rural Yorkshire. The catchment area for our village primary school (a Community School) comprises the majority of our village and large swathes of open countryside to the east, west and south of the village. It cuts off a small sliver of the north side of the village, primarily late 20th century housing developments (70s onwards), but these are quite clearly part of the village in terms of their immediate proximity to the rest of it, i.e. it is a natural spreading out of the village rather than an outcrop or an adjoining hamlet.
For many years there has not been a problem accommodating all the children who applied to our local school. However, recently there have been housing developments within the catchment area, and the year eligible for school entry in 2012 was a high birth year. Consequently, our school was oversubscribed for 2012.
Several families, some within catchment, some outwith catchment, some with siblings already in the school, did not get in straight away, but most of those have now got in as many on the waiting list accepted places at other schools. Until this happened, nobody realised that the catchment area for the school is how it is (it follows an archaic parish boundary).

There is now only one family in the village but in the small area that falls out of catchment whose child has not got into the school. They have gone to appeal and were not successful. This child attended the village pre-school, who took her on settling-in visits to the school. Her father is a parish councillor and school governor. The child has in the past been selectively mute and it is felt that she will regress if taken out of a familiar enviroment with children that she knows and that she had been led to expect through the pre-school. This is the main reason for wanting her to go to the village school; the neighbouring school where she has been given a place is a perfectly good school - it is the impact on her development that the family are concerned about.

I should add as well that although there have been housing developments within the school catchment area, there has not been the accompanying funding to enable the school to expand. The development stopped one house short of the number that would have triggered extra funding. The LA are targetting funding towards other schools in the area and appear to want to allocate places to those schools instead. We have been told by local councillors that if the headmistress with the support of the governors petitioned for more funding, this might make a difference, but they do not appear to want to do this.

My personal involvement is that the family concerned are my neighbours and because I also live in this part of the village that is out of catchment, my DS2 who is due to start school in 2013 may also be affected, even though DS1 already goes to the school.

The whole village has been conducting a campaign ever since the issue of oversubscription became known, not just since this family lost their appeal. Letters have been written to the LA, to the local MP, there have been meetings with parish councillors and school governors. One district councillor has been particularly active, acting as advocate during the appeal process. We have found a precedent with another school in the same LA that had to accept extra children this September when catchment was the objection. The next plan is to send objections to the Schools Adjudicator that there is a breach of admissions policy. This states that the catchment area must be reasonable and clearly defined (the northern boundary that cuts us off follows a beck whose course was moved when some houses were built and nobody knows if it follows the old course or the new course). It also states that there should be consultation on admissions policy once every 7 years and as far as we know this has not happened.

The issue has triggered a review of catchment, but the change to the area will not come into force until 2014 - too late for this family, who was one of the cases that brought it to light, and too late for my DS2.

The media is involved; the local papers have run stories, and we are now awaiting TV coverage from ITV's Daybreak, pending release of figures from the DfE on rejected appeals.

In the mean time we are trying to raise awareness on Twitter. If this story has interested you and you wouldn't mind supporting us, please tweet #supportthemilford1

Otherwise, if you have any more ideas on what could be done to help this little girl, whose family is on their knees with stress, please reply to this post.
Thank you.

If the school pupil number raise by I think 7% during the year (number set in Jan) the school can get more funding. Unfortunately it is down to the school to fill out the form and approach the LA. Also see if the father as a school governor can get hold of the LA finance guide line from the governor net the passwords should be held at the school.

One last thing what has the school said about this particular child. The Headteacher may need to grow a set openly support or make her feelings known. She may just feel that the school is bursting at the seems and that children will suffer.

Good luck and don't stop at the local papers go national. The developer did accidental stop 1 house from funding.

Thanks Nonio. Our feeling is that the headmistress and governors generally make placating noises to the family but don't follow through with anything practical. There is a lot of shifting blame - the LA say the school won't budge, the school say the LA won't budge.

Have you tried playing them off your other. Sound quite cut throat. Try direct if they wont. Do it in the local paper "school or la who is lying"

Hi Nonio, thanks for your reply, I've reposted this thread in AIBU to get a bit more traffic: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1505248-To-ask-for-your-support-and-advice-for-a-distraught-family

I would expect the LA to provide some way of determining whether or not you are in catchment for this school - a map on their website, say. As long as they have done this it is unlikely that the Schools Adjudicator will rule that they have done anything wrong. However, if the catchment area is defined in terms of a parish boundary, the position of the boundary is uncertain and the LA has not provided any way of telling whether or not you are in catchment, I would agree that you have a case. But you need to be aware that, even if the Adjudicator finds that the LA has got this wrong, that won't automatically result in a place at the school for this family. The Adjudicator does not have the power to tell them to admit this child. It will just mean that the LA has to change things for next year's admissions.

I would be very surprised if the consultations required have not taken place. Most parents are not aware of them unless they read the notices in the local newspaper carefully.

I hope getting the media involved works for this family. Unfortunately it can result in positions becoming entrenched, which does not help.

If I were advising this family I would be looking carefully at the way the appeal was conducted to see if there was any justification for referring the matter to the Local Government Ombudsman. That could lead to a new appeal with a different appeal panel. Alternatively they could consider taking the matter to judicial review but that costs money.

By the way, the school is not allowed to support a child at appeal.

Thanks bridge. The LA does provide a catchment map, but it is of such a small scale that it does not even show how many homes are excluded or where precisely this particular watercourse goes in relation to houses. I have just sent in an objection to the adjudicator, I only objected on the grounds of the catchment area not being reasonable or clearly defined in the end as I felt there probably was not enough evidence for non-consultation. I will pass on your advice re how the appeal was conducted to the family, they said to me they felt the decision was made before they walked in the room and that they were just going through with the process to show that procedure had been followed.

BBC Leeds coverage of my neighbour's story: www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/p00tcg75 scroll to 54 minutes in.

If the only thing the LA provides is this catchment map it sounds like it isn't clear enough, but obviously I haven't seen it myself.

Regarding the hearing, it depends on what they have to substantiate that feeling. As this was an infant class size case panel had little choice but to reject the appeal unless the parents had evidence of a mistake. However, if the panel didn't give them a proper hearing that is wrong. I would need to know more about what actually happened in the hearing to advise whether or not they have something worth taking to the LGO.

bridge it sounds like you work in this area and your perspective sounds very well informed. Would you be averse to my neighbour PMing you if I can get her to join MN?

Did the family mention the (previous) selective muteness and worry about her regressing on their original application, as a reason for needing to attend that particular school, and do they have medical evidence backing them up? If so, can they query whether the correct decision was taken?

If not (for example if it never occurred to them that they wouldn't get a place), could they have this taken into consideration now? (I'm not an expert, but if it was admissable as special circumstances it may mean she was at the top of the waiting list, and would stay there even if someone moved in within catchment? Places do come up over the next few months.)

I certainly know about admissions and have helped a lot of people with their appeals. I would be happy to answer a PM.

Thanks bridge. Parachute no, they didn't as, like you say, it never occurred to them that they would not get a place due to being out of catchment.

Surely an appeal needs to be made on Medical and Social grounds? has an actual appeal been made?
The usual advice is that there needs to be a case which demonstrates why this particular school is the best and most suitable school for the child, backed up by evidence from two health professionals, GP and speech therapst, or Ed Psych, or whoever has been helping with the selctive mutism. And should say why the school would enabl;e the child to function in a way that other schools would not. And say 'in my opinion this child needs to go to this school' NOT 'her parents are of the opinion that...'.

Is there still time for an appeal?

Schools need to respond to transparent and accountable procedures during the admissions process, not pressure from publicity! Though obviously if there is an issue that a village is left without adequate school provision then that is a wider lobbying cause. IMO (I am no expert)

The OP says there has been an appeal already and that is also what the radio item linked to says. This is an infant class size case so an appeal on medical and social grounds won't work unless the argument is that the LA was provided with the required information and unreasonably refused to place the child in that category.

oh, yes - sorry.

So in general, if admittance on medical and social grounds is necessary (irrespective of the chances of getting in anyway on distance) that case should be made in the original application?

Seems very hard that it can't be re-visited in cases like this.

But, Blu, the issue here, as it is in so many appeals, is that the class is full (and if the panel hadn't accepted that the class was full, the family would have won the appeal). Where an infant class is full - defined as 30 pupils with one teacher - the appeal panel has only very limited grounds on which to allow an appeal and order a child to be admitted. As rehearsed so many times on these threads, those grounds are an error depriving the child of a place, admission arrangements which don't comply with the law or the admissions code or a decision that is so unreasonable that it is perverse.

Reading between the lines here, the appeal panel was not persuaded that the admissions arrangements were incompatible with the code or that the decision to refuse the child a place was so unreasonable that no other admission authority would have made the same decision.

Of course it is hard for a family to be the only family in the village not to get a place in the school but, equally, it can be difficult for a school to accommodate 31 pupils in a classroom designed for 30. These are exactly the issues that appeal panels have to weigh up but appeal panels can't revisit medical-social decisions in the light of information that the LEA didn't have at the time. If LEAs ignore evidence of social and medical needs, that might provide winnable grounds of appeal but the LEA can't be criticised - and the appeal panel can't allow an appeal - if new evidence is presented at the appeal stage. The best that can happen then is that the child may be placed in a higher priority category on the waiting list.

As I said on another thread recently, when we write the MN Guide to School Admissions, my contribution will be always mention any medical or social reasons why your child needs a place at your preferred school when you apply for it.

Two things to say. Firstly I suspect strongly that there is no pupil funding that can be devolved to this school. School funding operates on a yearly basis, April to April and the funding formula is based around funding per pupil mainly which is based on a January pupil head count. Normally there is no changes to that funding. The only possibility is if there is a funding clause which allows extra funding if the pupil numbers in the school increase mid year by a significant amount. That would be unusual and anyway as of next April will not happen under the new funding formula being imposed.
Secondly the issue around the development being one house short of reaching funding level is not about funding for individual pupils it is for capital funding to develop more classrooms at the school. The problem is that with a PAN of 30 the next logical admission number is 45 and that would mean not 1 classroom but 4 classrooms and that is a significant capital investment, apart from the question of whether there is enough room in the school grounds to accommodate such an extension.
Having been on the wrong end of too many such cases that are infant class size cases but with really deserving reasons to admit I have great sympathy for the family concerned and for the appeal panel who may well have wanted to admit but were simply not able to legally. The culprit here is not the school or the appeal panel it is the government of both varieties who have kept the ICS regs in play when many people have advocated dropping them and letting appeal panels exercise sensible decision making on such cases.

Thanks for these very sensible contributions, it all helps to make the process much clearer. I tend to agree about the ICS regulations. It feels very hard when anecdotally we know of cases in previous years at this school, and in other schools for Sept 2012 in our region, where the ICS has been made to go over 30 - though obviously we don't know the details of how that has been made to happen.
I have sent my neighbour the link to my threads and she hopes to join up to MN soon, so thank you everyone for your replies.

Approach the HT and state that because the school will not apply for funding it leaves residents no alternative than to set up a free school and watch her/him squirm.

Maybe if you look at it from the other side, you would be glad of ICS regs. When I moved to this school, DD was moving into Y2. Her class was a mixed Y1/Y2 class. DD was the 37th pupil in that class. With one teacher, no TA, and 5 DC's sitting on the carpet all day as there was no more space for tables/chairs. All 7 of the 'overs' were through the Fair Access Protocol, as this was the only non VA controlled school in a massive area (still is 8 years later, hence changing to an Academy in Sept, leaving no local school subject to FAP but that's another thread...)

Due to the ICS regs, they had to hire a second teacher after a term (as they were over 34) and split the class.

And THAT is the reason for the ICS regs, as otherwise there could easily be 34+ DC crammed into classrooms where they don't even have a chair, with only one teacher, anyone stand up and tell me that's what they want for THEIR DC?

Well, exactly, Couthy.

The FAP is really a case apart - if the LEA judges that one school is the only one able to take 7 additional pupils, there's no alternative to that - but, at most appeals, the panel has to weigh up the prejudice to the child in not being admitted against the prejudice to the school and the children already in it in admitting another child. The possibility of children sitting on the carpet because there are no more chairs and tables might be part of that. And, as is much discussed on MN, the rules for ICS appeals are even tighter and, essentially, boil down to whether there has been some sort of mistake that needs to be put right.

As a chair of appeal panels, I am very much aware of how much parents may want their child to attend a particular school, but panels have to look at the situation in the round.