appeal on reception admissions

[megangrace1]

so upset...my child has not been accepted into her reception class...she has been attending this schools nursery since jan 2012..head teacher has xplained its purely and simply down to our postcode...and a babyboom.....we live in a rural location with no children 4 our child to socialize with...we are older parents all our friends n families children are in higher education or working..her teachers reports say she is so far and beyond any expectations of a child of her age....what are our chances of appeal....we have only two schools within a 5 minute drive prob 90 seconds apart we chose the one slightly furthest....head teacher stressed we needed to appeal....is this for our childs benefit??? or theres..???any advice would be helpful.....

The school don't get anything out of an appeal. It is for your benefit. Whether or not it is worth it depends on the sizes of classes in Reception, Y1 and Y2. If they have 30 per class in any of these years your appeal would be an infant class size case which means you would need to show a mistake had been made in order to win. If all classes are less than 30 you have a better chance. You would need to show why the appeal school is the right school for your child.

If you would like to post more details you will get better advice. If you don't want to post information publicly feel free to PM me.

Assuming the appeal is under infant class size rules (30 per teacher), an appeal can only be won if;

• the LEA made a mistake that cost your child her place (e.g missmeasured your distance)
• they failed to administer the admittance rules correctly
• the decision not to admit is so perverse no sensible person would have made it

These appeals are very hard to win, I'm afraid; it basically comes down to proving the LEA made a mistake, which happens, but not often.

if it isn't ICS, you need to prove the prejudice to your daughter through not being admitted to the school outweighs the prejudice to the school through being forced to admit another pupil. This is also hard, but not impossible.

It is as prh47bridge says.

You also need to remember that attending the nursery doesn't usually give you any additional priority for a place in the school and isn't the basis of a winnable appeal.

Is there a good website/ thread on here with advice for gathering evidence for an appeal?

If you start your own thread, outlining your situation - why you did not get a place, what you think your grounds of appeal might be - you will get advice on how you might construct your appeal and what sort of evidence would be most relevant.

Ask the Head how much movement there usually is between initial offers and the first day of term? I'm in a vaguely similar (but less distressing) situation myself and I have found out that most years at least 3 or 4 children who were initially offered places don't take them (either they move house or they go to a private school instead) so if you only missed out by a short distance then just ask to go on the waiting list and hope for the best.

If your child was born between December and August you can boost your chances of succeeding at this tactic by deferring entry till after christmas or after easter - with any luck someone's daddy or mummy will succeed in getting a job far away necessitating a house move and a place will come free.

Megan, did you get a place at the slightly nearer school?

Thank you, I've found some good generic advice by trawling through a couple of threads and if I need it I will ask for more. (smile)