Help with Primary Admission Appeal!

[Kally38]

Apologies if you have already read this post today or answered to it but I can't seem to find where the post has gone!

In a nutshell, we have a primary admission appeal for our daughter to attend our local village school. She is currently in Year 2 and has been attending a school that is 30 minutes drive from where we live. We knew our first and second choice school were full so opted to send her to our third preference school which is where my sister in law teaches as a temporary measure until we bought a house in the village of our first choice school. We submitted the appeal in July as we due to complete in August. My son is currently attending the reception class of our local school.

The LA have not been forthcoming with information to help us with our appeal. I was told that all the information would be sent out prior to the hearing. After searching around on the Internet, I have found that the PAN for each year group is 21 and the net capacity is reported as 150 (with 30 temporary places within this figure). There are 6 teaching classes: reception, year 1, year 2, year 3/4, year 4/5 and year 5/6.

My question is that if the net capacity is reported as 150, shouldn't this equate to a PAN of 25 given there are 6 teaching groups? A PAN of 21 would only apply if there were 7 teaching groups?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I am no expert but went through appeal in July and picked up lots of info from the experts on here.
How many are in the year 2 class now? Is it full?
What is the basis of your appeal? i.e. are you thinking a mistake had been made in the original application?

Hello Jellyandjam. Thank you for your reply. There are 22 children in Year 2, 25 in Year 1 and 21 in reception. I think the mixed classes in the juniors range from 24-27 but need to confirm that with school. Our appeal as far as I know will not be an infant class sized appeal. Every year group and class is full. It is a small village school with 21 places in each year group. If you move into the village, you effectively never stand a chance of getting a place as there are no spaces!

I just feel so stressed with the appeal at the moment. The LA haven't been helpful which adds to the pressure!

Many thanks again for your reply

Your original post is in 'Education', not 'Primary Education'

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/education/1862632-Appeal-for-a-primary-place-at-our-local-school

I would say, though, that if the school is judged to be 'full' at under 30 in each classroom, then the classrooms must be seriously tiny.

You should be able to argue, with class sizes of under 30, that the 'balance of harm' in terms of them admitting another pupil is that your child is suffering the greater harm in not being admitted than they are in having to admit another child UNLESS there is no physical space e.g. no space for an extra chair in the classroom. Dimensions of the classrooms are critical to your argument, as is whether they have ever operated with more children in any class (with that PAN, you would expect that some KS2 classes would sometimes get very close to 30 as i pointed out on your other thread). If they ever HAVE operated at 30, then there is no reason why they can not do so again.

Yes thank you! Have just replied back to your post having found this original post! Am new to mumsnet so haven't figured my way around the site!

The net capacity of a school is a calculation of the total number of places that could be available in the school, having measured all appropriate rooms. There in fact three net capacity figures. What is deemed the maximum net capacity of the school, a figure which is 90% of the maximum figure and the actual quoted net capacity, which is normally anywhere in between the two other figures but makes sense when it comes to the number of classrooms. 150 as a net capacity gives a PAN of 21 as there are 7 year groups in the school, it is not the number of teaching groups.
As far as the appeal is concerned the LA has 40 school days to arrange the appeal, so depending when in July the appeal was submitted they will probably be well within the time period still. However they must inform you at least 10 school days before the appeal of the date of the appeal and they must provide information that the LA are using to present their case not to admit. You can also reasonably expect the LA to answer any questions that you have before the appeal.
The key information you need is the numbers in each year group and the arrangements of each of the classes. From your figures in the infant classes they have 22 + 25 +21 = 68 infants, which can only be satisfied to meet the infant class size regs by having 2 classes of 30 and then 8 of the year 2s in with year 3 pupils or as you seem to suggest one class per year group. It is questionable whether either layout of classes would come under the infant class size regs. The good thing is that as there are 25 in year 1 and only 22 in year 2 there is one ready made argument that says you are coping with 25, so you can cope with 23 in year 2. However the issue is much more likely to be around the size of the classes in the junior end of the school. If each year group had 21 in it that would be 3 classes of 28, which is not really excessive unless the classrooms are very small. The problem comes with increasing the cohorts, such as year 1 which is 25, as that just bumps up the numbers in the junior classes.
Get the information of the LA or the school, so that it is more obvious how strong the case not to admit is or is not.

I know they have gone over PAN in Year 2 and posdibly in junior classes but that is due to appeals been won. I have requested to see the school's net capacity assessment under the Freedom of Information Act as LA are not disclosing anything until the papers get sent out. Am hoping that I will get the information quicker this way! They did have a higher PAN set last year (22 instead of 21) but not sure why this was the case.

Thank you for your reply admissions. We have an appeal hearing set for the second week in October. When I have tried to ask the admission officer dealing with the appeal for information relating to how many in each year group, class sizes etc, I have been told that information will be sent to me by the appeal person 7-10 days before the hearing. When I rang the appeal people, they said that the LA did not have to provide me with that information until it was sent out. I have therefore requested the information under the FOI act in an attempt to gain this information sooner

A question for Admission if you see this! If I contact that LA again and ask them for the numbers and arrangement in each class and year group, would this be a reasonable request they should answer? As I have said in previous post, they have refused to tell me this as they are still preparing the appeal!

Good luck with your appeal. I found the LA quite unhelpful in our appeal too. I made sure I put everything in writing through email and they tended to be more forth coming. It's such a stressful time you can do without them being annoying on top of it all!! Is there any chance you can ask the school for the information? I asked the school for some of the information as I thought it might be quicker (it was)!

I replied on your original thread which is in the Education section.

Just to answer your question to Admission, yes that would be a reasonable request. Having said that, I would expect to see that information in the case to refuse admission which you will receive a few days before the hearing.

I accept that the LA has to check with the school, exactly what the current numbers are, but they are not being very helpful if they are only going to give you the information when all their case has been agreed.
My temptation would be to ensure that you keep copies of the correspondence with the LA and see how long before the case you get the information. If it is say 5 days before hand I think that you probably have no real case to say you have been disadvantaged. However if it is only a couple of days then I would ask the clerk before the appeal starts to submit extra information indicating that you believe you have been disadvantaged by this short time period - it is not reasonable. To be honest if as a panel member I only got the papers 2 days before hand I would be questioning what has been going on.
As far as the PAN is concerned moving from 22 to 21 seems somewhat pathetic but then there could well be some hidden logic in what they have done. Maybe it would be interesting to ask the question why was it reduced, has the net capacity figure changed? An another alternative is, are you in Wales because they tend to change PANs on a nearly annual basis?

Hello Admission. Thank you for your reply. No i am not in Wales! I thought it strange that the school had increased its PAN slightly and then reduced it again. I will definitely be asking why this was so. Another possible argument that I am thinking of using is to challenge why my daughters in year admission cannot be considered under the agrement for children living in the priority admission area now that we are living in the priority area. In the school's admission criteria is states that:
The Local Authority may offer places above the published admission number in the following exceptional circumstances:

1. for infant classes at the class size limit, if outside the normal admission round, the next nearest school with a space is not within a reasonable distance of the home address.

The next nearest school that is being offered to us is 2.3 miles walking distance from our home address. However there is no path along the busy main road so we believe it would be more than this.

Does anybody think this might be an argument to pursue??

I'm afraid that is unlikely to be regarded as an unreasonable distance. You may think it is too far but most appeal panels would accept up to an hour each way as reasonable travelling time.

This admission criteria is one of the exceptions that can be used for exceeding the infant class size limit. Most LAs use it sparingly because they realise that once they start a precedent for admission it will lead to an avalanche of such appeals. As such I agree with PRH that most panels would not see 2.3 miles as unreasonable distance, though as a village school you never know what might happen.
However I do know of one LA who have catchments and frequently take a view that they will admit over PAN if somebody moves into the catchment zone and admission will not contravene the infant class size regs.

You have nothing to lose by asking the LA presenting officer at the appeal why your application has not been considered under this agreement, to ask at what distance and conditions it would be invoked and see what response you get.

Thank you PRH and admission again for your invaluable thoughts. Much appreciated!

I have actually tried to pin down the admissions department to try and ask why my daughters in-year application would not be considered under this priority agreement. I'm more than aware that they will try to refuse her under this criteria but was having real difficulty in the department even acknowledging this criteria! Interestingly after requesting their Fair Access Protocol through FOI, I found out the following information: Outside of the normal admission round, a school/Academy will admit a child when requested to do so by the Local Authority, irrespective of the circumstances at the school and in the year group, where the distance/journey to the next nearest school with space is (where one or more of the following apply):
• An unreasonable distance, generally to be defined as more than twice the distance to the local school/Academy – and where the distance to the alternative school is more than 3 miles in walking distance
• Of a distance which requires specific individual contract transport to be provided, which is the case of a primary aged child takes longer than 30 minutes

Our local school is full and the second nearest school is also full. They school we are being offered has very low numbers and is a faith school. My daughter is not of that faith although I have no problems sending her to a faith school. The school is 2.3 miles drive in the car but we think it would be over 3 miles walking distance as no pavement for a lot of that distance.

I know our appeal wouldn't win on the above criteria but thought it would be interesting to raise in accordance with the criteria set out!

Any further thoughts on the above would be greatly received.

I forgot to mention that I am aware that the Fair Access Protocol for my LA is on the whole for vulnerable children who are hard to place. My daughter does not fit this category as we have simply moved house. So I am not sure whether I have a leg to stand on by raising this?!

The Fair access protocol would apply to people moving into the district if there genuinely was no other available school within reasonable distance. However you have been offered a school, about 2 to 3 miles away depending on how you measure it and that would always be considered reasonable by a panel. The LA have therefore met their legal obligations.
The danger in questioning the detail of how things operate on the admissions process is that it becomes the only thing in your appeal and you do need to guard against this becoming too important in your case. You need to be looking for the reasons for the nearest school, available clubs, forming local friendship groups and the lack of ability to go to after school clubs in the offered school due to the time and distance needed to be travelled etc

Yes thank you admission for keeping me grounded. We do have a lot of information that we will be raising in terms of why the local school is important to my daughters emotional and social well being. I am just very fearful that we will lose our appeal because the LA will say there is simply no space for her at the school.

The LA will always say there is no space. If there was space they would have to admit your child. The job of the appeal panel is to decide how much difficulty the school would have if they admit your daughter and whether or not your daughter's need to attend this school outweighs that. They will not refuse to admit simply because the LA says there is no space.

I just wanted some further advice regarding my above post. I have already recieved some great advice which I am very thankful for.

As I have mentioned in my post, the LA have not been very helpful with regards to providing answers to my questions as I was told that the LA was preparing its case. Following advice on here I have emailed the LA and asked them to provide information in relation to 3 questions.

My appeal is in 12 days time (10 working days). If the Local Authority do not feel in a position to answer my questions due to this information being sent out to me via appeal paperwork, if I haven't received any paperwork by next Monday, is this unreasonable? Please forgive me if somebody has already answered this question .

Hi Kally. I have just found this interesting link. www.schoolappeals.org.uk/further-info/admissionappealsguide.php
I will have to go through an appeal as well. As far as I have understood an appellant must receive a package with all information why the school does not have a space for you 10 days before the hearing.
Also there is communication failure before hearing www.lgo.org.uk/GetAsset.aspx?id=fAAxADQAOAAzAHwAfABUAHIAdQBlAHwAfAAwAHwA0. If the above link does not work try to google "School admissions - Local Government Ombudsman".

an appellant must receive a package with all information why the school does not have a space for you 10 days before the hearing

That is not correct. The old Appeals Code set deadlines. The new one simply says you have to receive the information a reasonable time before the hearing. It does not define what that actually means.

The LGO won't get involved in a case like this before the hearing. If you lose the appeal you can then refer the matter to the LGO on the basis that the paperwork was late and this hampered you in the preparation of your case.

If the LA hasn't sent anything by next Monday I think it is then late enough for you to tell the appeal panel that the LA's failure to provide information has hampered you.

Hi prh47bridge. I have found this info below. Do you have a link to the new code? Many thanks!

Production of evidence from the admission
authority prior to the hearing

2.20 The admission authority must supply the
clerk to the appeal panel with the documents
listed below at least 10 school days before
the hearing (unless this is not practicable
because the appellants have waived their
right to a period of 10 school days notice of
their appeal as in paragraph 2.10):
a) a written statement summarising how
places at the school were allocated
(without disclosing personal details
of applicants which would enable
identifi cation of individuals) and how the
admission arrangements for the school
apply to the appellants’ application,
accompanied by any relevant background
information and documents on which
they placed substantial reliance (such
as the appellants’ application form or
references from religious ministers).
Where distance criteria have been used
to allocate places, admission authorities
should demonstrate how this was applied
to the appellants’ application compared to
those off ered a place;
School Admissions Appeals Code 15

Continued here www.education.gov.uk/consultations/downloadableDocs/3885_SchoolAdmissions_app_code_aw5.pdf

Currently reading schools appeals code 2012
media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/s/school%20admission%20appeals%20code%201%20february%202012.pdf