gah - primary allocations LA fuckup

[zoemaguire]

We just got our primary allocation, for our second choice (our catchment school) meaning ds has been given a place at a different school to his sister, aaaaarg. Only the council information sheet states that places for our first choice went to criterion 4 (out of catchment with siblings) to 1.4 miles. We only live 0.6 miles away!!! So on the face of it there has been a fuckup somewhere and we should have been allocated a place for ds at our first choice, on the basis of sibling priority. I've re-read our application online and we definitely entered all the information correctly, including the sibling priority information.

What happens?! Do we have to go to appeal, and can the LA say 'yeah sorry we got it wrong but too bad because there is no space?' (Would be infant class size appeal as pan is 90). Or do we ring up the la tomorrow and they say 'oh yes sorry quite right, have a place after all!'

I am having palpitations at the idea of two kids at different schools, the logistics don't bear thinking about. How can the la possibly have got it wrong?!

Ok, keep calm.i have no idea how this works but appeal and you should be their priority. In an entry system of 90 kids I can imagine some will not take their place, whether they end up going to private, or appealing themselves. Good luck.

Yes, on the face of it, this sounds like an error.

Contact the LEA, point out the apparent error and query which you missed out when people in the same (I assume) admissions category but living further away got places. Ask whether (if there has indeed been an error) they will rectify it now by giving you the place.

In theory, if the LEA has made an error that has deprived your child if a place, they should give you that place without making you go to appeal. Many LEAs, though, insist on taking it before an appeal panel, largely because they can say that it was the panel's decision, not theirs, that the school should admit additional pupils.

Sorry to hear that, how stressful! I am no expert but def sounds like a screw up to me.

sorry hear this does sound like error.

ring the soon as you can.

I hhave just been offered school dd2 over mile half from dd2s current school so know how you feel.

Thanks panel chair. Assuming they have indeed made a straightforward mistake and do make us go to appeal, is there any way an appeal panel would find in their favour, or do we have a legal right to the place?

And thanks to all the other replies too of course :) Just counting down to 9am phone call, though can't imagine we will get through for a good while! Barely slept last night:(

If there has been an error which has deprived your child of the place they should have had, if the admission arrangements had been correctly applied, then the appeal ought (frankly) to be a formality. Of course, you need to present evidence to demonstrate that there had been an error. The facts you mention about the distance ate hitch the last place was awarded do seem to do that, but you need to be absolutely clear that the child living 1.4 (I think you said) miles away was in the same admissions category as you and wasn't (say) a looked-after child who was in priority category 1.

Please excuse all typos.

Sorry to see you are dealing with this, we are dealing with similar for a high school place for DD, she was assessed in the wrong, online & incomplete form that wouldn't work with our MAC computer, meaning they ignored the correct paper forms & therefore I too well know how stressful it all is, though in our case its not sibling priority, but should be catchment & medical grounds for needing our closest school.

As Chair has said, in our case we have found that the complaints process IS the appeal, no other option, though we have tried & the SA did initially own up to the error, but then denied it. It may be different in your area, but even if not, you do have good grounds for appeal.

One thing I would advise, which worked for our friend who had pretty much exactly the same thing happen as we did, but is in a slightly different ward area to us & therefore has a different MP - is to contact your MP - hers was brilliant, very proactive & sorted it all out for her so she avoided going to appeal - our MP was completely useless & we are still having to go to appeal - but you might have much better luck

Hope it works out for you

Thanks, that's great to know. We have several good friends in the same category as us living further out (so we know their circumstances for definite), so if they got a place we'll know it was an error. Can't believe the lea would put us through the stress of an appeal, but good to know it should be a formality if it got to that. Of course it may be the distance admitted that they made an error on in the guidance sheet, but knowing the places situation in general terms that would seem surprising.

Mp is good idea rockin, ours is quite on the ball usually. Let's see what they say on the phone! Will update.

Yes, good point, Tiggytape.

I'm assuming this is a one-off mistake rather than a systemic failure which has (for argument's sake) led to dozens of wrong measurements.

Someone I know checked the numbers with the la in advance (as they were on the border of last year's siblings admissions area) and got told that the estimate was 56 kids in catchment. We are about as close as it is possible to be out of catchment. But if the system is computerised I don't understand how an error could happen at all. Worried they will claim it is our fault somehow, even though I have the printout of our application with all the sibling details on it.

Mistakes ought to be impossible with a computerised system but they can creep in. I chaired one appeal, for example, where the family lived somewhere that had only recently been converted into a residential property. It wasn't on the system map and didn't have a datum point at all and somehow (I don't remember the details now) the system had produced a measurement that was wildly inaccurate.

This is why it is worth double-checking everything.

Good luck with your phone call!

We have a good friend who is in charge of IT for the LA - I spoke to him about our situation & the fact that our MAC was a problem for the online application form & that I now know we are one of many going back years

turns out he "clears out" & resets the system for the SA for the new intake to fill in online, adding new browsers etc et - he was very un complimentary about our SA department, in that then he hands it over months in advance & they are meant to run system checks & flag up any problems so that his department can fix it before going live.

They don't bother running the full system checks & what little they do, is so last minute that us means chaos for his department trying to sort it out - here, it goes live knowing they have problems - I was also quite shocked at how few staff his department has, for the whole of our LA & linked bodies.

So in practice, if that's anything to go by, I can see how easy it is for errors to happen

Yes, that's why I suggested double-checking that the child who lives so much further away was in the same category and not (say) a looked-after child, who would automatically be in a higher priority.

We've just heard that our friends living further out got a place (and definitely in the same category as us), so it is definitely an error. Just got off phone to lea, Bloke first tried to palm us off saying 'appeal if you are not happy'. We quoted the government leaflet saying if there was an obvious error they needed to deal with it sooner, he said they'd check and get back to us, but it might take 10 days!!

I need to calm down I know, but am really struggling right now. Ds is quite vulnerable (ex extreme prem summer born baby who will struggle in reception anyway) so this application was a big stress point even before all this!

Yep, point taken re looked after kids. But Friends dd is definitely not looked after child or in other vulnerable category. I first saw her a few days after she left hospital:) They live four streets further away from school than us.