school appeal based on distance

[AgaBe]

The admissions authority made an error calculating our distance from school and admitted it. Should they have it calculated correctly we would be admitted from the waiting list by now.

Do we have any chances?
Will the appeal panel take account of the position on the waiting list?

Free transport is for the child only. A journey of an hour is usually considered reasonable.

they tried several times to hijack the application to another council

This comment plus the fact you say you applied for 8 schools suggests you applied to both Barnet and Haringey. Barnet cannot accept your application as you don't live there. They would therefore have referred your application back to Haringey. You can apply for schools in Barnet but you do so by naming them as preferences when you apply to Haringey. So Haringey haven't "tried to hijack" your application to Barnet. They have followed the process correctly.

I'm going to contact legal advisors

You are entitled to do so but I would strongly recommend saving your money. Most lawyers know little or nothing about school admissions. I know of many cases where solicitors representing parents have managed to upset the appeal panel by inappropriate behaviour. And even if you win you won't get your money back - costs are not awarded in admission appeals.

Do you think I have a case for appeal

I'm afraid not. Taking your points in order:

• I cannot see any negligence

• Things do change quickly in admissions sometimes. The fact you were told you would have to wait and later the same day they sent you an offer does not mean anyone lied. Even if they did you cannot win an appeal on that basis

• I see no evidence that any rules have been overlooked

• Given that your application was just before the start of the summer holidays I am not surprised it has taken a while to sort out a place for you. In any case you cannot win an appeal on the basis of delays by the LA unless the delay was unreasonable and cost you a place at your preferred school. An unreasonable delay on its own won't be enough to win a case

• They were absolutely correct to treat you as an in year application, the same as someone who is unhappy with their current school. That is the way the system works

• Whilst you consider 6 miles to be unreasonable an appeal panel probably wouldn't. A journey of up to one hour each way is normally regarded as acceptable

The published statistics on admission distances to which you refer only covers the initial round. There may be other children admitted in year travelling as far as, or even further than, your child. In any event, I suspect you will find that the only way your child can be admitted to one of your preferred schools would be to break the law on infant class sizes. If that is the case the LA cannot compromise with you. It has no choice. And if they were going to compromise they would have done so already.

It is likely that any appeal will be an infant class size case. That means you can only win if:

• the admission arrangements did not comply with the law or the Admissions Code and the non-compliance cost your child a place. On the information you have posted Haringey appear to have complied fully with the law and the Code.

• the arrangements were not applied correctly and impartially, and this cost your child a place. As this is an in year admission it is very unlikely you would win on this basis. On the information you have posted Haringey appear to have applied their admission arrangements correctly.

• the decision to refuse admission was unreasonable. The standard for a decision to be unreasonable is very high. I know you consider Haringey's decision to be unreasonable but I would be very surprised if an appeal panel agreed.

You are, of course, entitled to appeal and you may strike it lucky. But on the information you have posted I would regard an appeal as a very long shot.

Dear Prh47 thanks for advice.
Concerning the application procedure though you aew wrong. Rules have changed and each council is dealing with their own in year applications. Haringey just tried to push me to have a reply from barnet in order to avoid the problem although it was Haringey who was responsible to find me a place.
Unfortunately not even the officeds in Haringey knew that and made apply to schools in barnet through the same application and the schools of barnet just sent it back because the application had to be made through barnet and the procedure in barnet wasn't ready. A big mess in july

I know that this is not what you want to hear, but assuming that you have moved into rented property, might you consider moving house so that you don't have to travel so far?

Also investigated getting both of your children into the same school - even if it is the further one? Sibling priority will get you higher up the waiting list for a place and you can improve that further by living very very close to the school. If a place comes up.......

We looked into moving across London this year and when speaking to the school secretary in the area we were considering she revealed that the population was stable so places rarely came up. The LEA admissions officer revealed that there were over 50 on the waiting list for Reception in September 2013. When I searched on mumsnet I found families who had moved in-year and were still waiting for a place after 2 years. So do call around the schools as their "churn" rates will vary.

Unfortunately dear tricot, moving is not an option due to lease expiring in one year and really not nice area to live in where my child found a place

I can only say again that I appreciate your frustration but that this is the situation that many families find themselves in in London. Some are lucky and live within the "furthest distance offered" when they apply for reception but this may not be their first or even second choice school. But they do get a school. Other people, who have lived in their house for a number of years and may even have been within "catchment" when they bought it, find that they are in a black hole for schools, I.e. they may have 8 schools within 2 miles but they don't live within the 500metres for any of them. Making an in-year application is even more difficult because most schools are oversubscribed and therefore full.
One of your earlier posts talked about the school being 3 miles from your home. I'm afraid you will need to find a way to take your DC to that school and either take your other DC with you or find breakfast clubs or childminder who can help you juggle the timings.
It is difficult but I think it is important you appreciate there are many families in the same position, including those who have lived at the same address for years, those that would prefer another school and those who have moved into the area recently. And all must be treated fairly according to the LEA guidelines, as you have been.

Concerning the application procedure though you are wrong

No I am not. The rules changed at the beginning of this month. You applied in July. At that time Haringey was still officially required to deal with your application even if you wanted a school in another borough. Barnet therefore should have accepted your application via Haringey. It does sound from your more recent post like someone messed up. However, I'm afraid that doesn't give you the basis for a successful appeal unless you missed out on a place at a school as a result.

One problem with saying that your children cannot possibly travel that far is that plenty of children in this country do travel that far to school every day, particularly if they live rurally, and LEA's know this.

Again, the problem with having two children at different schools and not being able to be in two places at once is a common one: most people solve it by employing someone to take one of the children. We got a childminder when I had to take ds to his junior school at the same time as getting dd on the disabled transport for secondary.

Yes, I can see that it is difficult, but it's one of those things that many parents just have to deal with. In your case, you can always stay on the waiting list and hope for a closer school later on.

It's like the language thing: in some schools, 80% of the children do not have English as their first language and many, many arrive at school not speaking a word of it: if this had to be taken into consideration on school allocation it would become absolutely unmanageable.

As for applying in July and getting a place allocated in early September, that is hardly a massive delay given how much is going on in school allocation at this time of year.

Hi titchy thanks a lot for your advice.
I was just checking the london transport planner, and with the different routes proposed by london transports, which include several changes and walking, in the morning, we are around 1 hour commuting in the morning. That probably means more than that with average traffic and changes. My child is 7 so can surely travel on her own and she goes free on the bus anyway.
Would that be considered "reasonable" in your opinion?

My children have to travel more than 5 miles to school - 2 children, 2 different schools, each school is over 5 miles from home in opposite directions. The child who gets dropped off second has a journey time of just over one hour.
One hour isn't unreasonable, you just take books, crayons, small toys etc to occupy them.

You might be confused with the priority given to children of service personnel returning from service overseas, they do get a priority and can I think apply before they arrive in the country. It is not a priority extended to British civilians or non-British people arriving in the country after living abroad. One of the experts will be able to explain the service personnel priority better than I can but it is certainly not the case that people moving into the country have priority over those currently living here.

One point you might be able to push on is knowing your place on the list. Certainly around here people do seem to know where they are on a waiting list. I don't know whether through a requirement to tell them or because they nicely ask and are told. If there are 20 children ahead on all the lists you might make different decisions than you would if you were 1st or 2nd on three lists. Also some schools will take more in ks2-from yr3. One school near us routinely offers and extra two spaces in yr 2, another has 35 per class. Not much help now but worth making sure you are on the waiting list for any such school in the hope that yr 3 will bring a greater chance. Once your youngest is in school your older one might get a sibling priority depending on the admission criteria of that school.

From your posts I would say that Haringey have done the minimum of what they are legally required to do and that is found you a school place. I accept it is not by any stretch of the imagination ideal and that this is frustrating to you.
As the rules changed on the 1st September for in-year admissions (which is what your situation would be) can I suggest that you approach directly each of the 8 schools that you suggested were within easy reach. There are two reasons for this. Firstly things can change very rapidly and it is just possible that a place has become available in one of these schools. My guess would be that between the school and Haringey council they are not going to moving very fast to transfer info. Secondly that by applying directly to the school now, if you are turned down you can establish whether the school is operating a waiting list and make sure that you are on the school waiting list.
Having been turned down, you are able to appeal for a place at schools. As others have said if it is an infant class size case then that will be very difficult to win as a year 2 pupil, so you need to check and see if any of the schools are not in that situation, that is the Published Admission Number (PAN) is not a multiple of 15. If any are that is the school to appeal for as you have a much stronger chance of winning at appeal as it will be around your own personal circumstances and that of your child, not just on the Infant class size regs.