Appeal advice needed

[tinachambers]

Hi, need some advice on appeals. Am appealing transport and school. My son who is nine currently gets free transport to school which is out of catchment, come september he will no longer get transport due to being nine and not living three miles from the school. We had to send him to this school as the catchment school was full. The problem is his has two younger silbings attending the same school who will get free transport resulting in me not being able to be in two places at once. He has no way of getting to school!
The school appeal is not so straight forward, we live about two mins from catchment school, a place in his year group came up the same time as the transport issue so we appealed for an in year transfer to this school but was refused and given to another child, really dont know what grounds i have to appeal the school!! Please can someone offer advice.
Sorry for the epic post.

I'm afraid the LA is correct on free transport. Your son is no longer entitled to free transport. The fact it causes problems for you doesn't change that. You are expected to find ways of coping. Sorry.

Regarding the transfer, you would have a good case for appeal if you could show that, under the admission criteria for the school, your son should have got the place ahead of the other child. Apart from that, you need to show that the catchment school can meet your child's needs better than his current school. Does it have facilities that are missing at his current school and that would be particularly useful to him, for example. Simply wanting a transfer to resolve a transport problem won't win an appeal, I'm afraid.

Thanks for your reply, not sure the catchment school can benefit him more than his current school to be honest, we just needed to move him due to the transport issue. His current school has been placed in to special measures and he is about two years behind his peers and the catchment school has an outstanding ofsted but i doubt i can use that in an appeal.The other child was given the place as she had a silbing already at the school, i have since heard that was not the case and her and her silbing started together but how do i prove that!

The admission of the child you refer to may not have been a mistake, did the sibling of the child enter a year where there were places or did the sibling win an appeal. Either would mean that, depending upon the schools admission criteria that the child would gain precedent for any spaces over non sibling children and both could have started on the same day. I am afraid your appeal is only going to work if you can prove an error really was made or you can can argue a strong case. You will need proof re transport problems , you will need to persuade the panel there are no family/friends that can help out , do not refer to Ofsted measures or ratings but you can use the argument that the school you want has some sort of program to help your son catch up - try and find out if they would give additional help etc, what does your son struggle at ? How does the school you want cope with that etc, try and think about those sorts of things and the more evidence the better.

No, I'm afraid the special measures stuff and the catchment school's OFSTED don't help your appeal.

Whether or not the other child was admitted correctly depends on the sequence of events and the wording of the admission criteria. For example, if the sibling was offered a place and accepted it before the other place became available, the LA was probably right to give sibling priority to the other child.

If you think the LA has made a mistake you should raise that in part 1 of your appeal by asking the authority's representative questions. They have to show that they got it right.

You are right, i did not take in to account that the child in question could have won an appeal, which she probably did, as that year group had no spaces. I am going to go down the transport appeal route as i am sure i have no grounds for appeal with the school. My son struggles with many aspects of school , he finds it very hard to retain information, to be honest we think he may have adhd but thats a whole other thread.
We can prove that we have no family/ friends to help, all familys members live 200 miles away and all our friends who attend the school live within the school village. Thank you for your help and advice .

Hi, i had my sons school appeal today and am happy to report we won. Thank you for your helpful advice.

Well done!