Admission question...prh47bridge, Admission, tiggytape and all other admission experts

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Hi
I have seen that prh47bridge, Admission, tiggytape and others have been able to offer advise regarding admission so I am hoping you might be able to help me.
My child is due to start school in Sept 2013 and we have seen 2 amazing schools that we would be equally happy with. They are both in a neighbouring local authority and but we plan to put them as our first and second preference. Is it sensible then to put our local catchment school as our third preference (where we would most definitely get a place as their PAN is 90 from September)? My reasoning for this is that at least we would have a school place and not be given a school miles away as it is the only school with a place etc.
My other question is then if we do not get our first or second choice but are given our local catchment school can we accept the third choice but still make an appeal for our first or second choice?
many thanks for any advice / comments

Your reasoning is completely sound, by putting your catchment school as third preference you are giving yourself maximum chance of getting the local school, if neither of your preferred schools come off.
You should always accept the offered school, in my opinion, as it is the fall back position. If you do not then you may be left with no school for a long period of time and then get the offer of a worst school, further away than the rejected school. Accepting a school has no effect on the ability to appeal.
You can appeal for any school you want to. Some authorities seem to be of the opinion you can only appeal for schools that you expressed a preference for, but my belief is you can apply to appeal for any school.
The difference is that you will make the application for the three preferred schools on the Common Application Form for the LA in which you live. When it comes to appeals you should be applying directly to the LA in which the school is situated, as it is them who rejected your application.

Yes, a very sensible and well-informed plan.

Just be aware that if you don't get a place in your first or second choice school, there's unlikely to be much prospect of then getting a place via the appeal route. Infant Class Size appeals are hard to win and a general feeling of preferring that school or wanting one with a better Ofsted rating (or whatever) is never enough.

I agree completely with the advice you've already been given. You are approaching this in exactly the right way.

Many thanks for all your comments.
Our first and second choice schools have PAN of 15 but 3 teachers in KS1. I guess all heads encourage as many applications as possible (she is head of both schools) but she was quite positive about our chances of getting in one or the other and she was the one who said we could always appeal. I'm not really sure on what grounds that would be.

I was wondering if we put about our child's ongoing hearing/glue ear/grommets issues on our application as obviously a class of 15 would make things a lot easier in terms of her hearing/learning etc.
Thanks again.

I meant 3 teachers for FS2 and KS1.

Hmm. A medical-social appeal on the basis of hearing/grommets in an ICS case is unlikely to succeed unless the school offers specialist provision for hearing impairment. Also, I would be very surprised if the school actually had classes of 15 or 1 teacher to 15 pupils in KS1, simply because it is so expensive - most schools with a PAN of 15 combine year groups to make classes of 30. If that is the case here, the class size of 15 becomes a red herring.

Am not an expert but with a PAN of 15 I would check very carefully how the smaller schools arrange their classes. You state that there are 3 teachers for Foundation stage (reception) and KS1 but I would check that this is 3 full-time teachers or whether one or more is part-time.
The medical condition may help but not always, as for some conditions the people deciding on whether your child is in this admissions category may have the view that this need may be met in any school. It is not always true that a child would be better supported in a small school. If the class size is small the only adult in the classroom would be the teacher. However in larger schools, there may be teaching assistants present to provide extra support for children who need it or this could enable the teacher to provide additional support for some children.
Have you mentioned your child's condition when visiting your preferred schools? when we tried this on looking round primary schools the result was very revealing!

Given the funding to schools, if the PAN is 15 I would be amazed if there is not mixed year teaching in the school. A reception class of 15 plus a year1 / year2 class of 30 is normal.

Yes, I'd be amazed if in the current financial climate any school could afford to run classes of 15 all the way through infants.

Sorry to thread hijack but I was interested because of the glue ear/grommets issue. Our dd has glue ear and the number of children in the classroom is more important to her than the staff ratio - out catchment area school has infant classes of 30 in really quite small rooms. When we looke around you couldn't hear yourself think in the reception classes - no way she will cope with that much background noise. 15 children make much less noise than 30. So we are looking at village schools nearby which have class sizes of less than 20, and have a private school as our fallback.

Sorry dreadful iPhone typing!