Appeals- round 3 with the LEA

[Momzilla82]

Hello,

Hoping for some more top quality advice please!

I have finally got a response from the lea.

"
I understand that there was an error made in the allocation of places for Xxx Primary School. This has been investigated and the appropriate actions have been taken. Anyone who was disadvantaged by that error has now had that rectified.

In your particular case you would not have been allocated a place if the allocation had been carried out correctly and so therefore you have not been disadvantaged in anyway.

We are currently preparing the statement for the appeals which will detail the error, our actions and the detailed information relating to your case. If you go to appeal that information will be sent to you as part of our statement."

Questions I am looking for advice on;
If they have offered places to people living further away from the school than us then surely we have a strong case at appeal?

If they have since offered places to those who should have been offered places if it had been done correctly, but haven't removed the offers from those who erroneously got places then what is our situation at appeal?

And also is it even legal to offer places to people who haven't appealed outside of usual admissions and arrangements and wouldn't have been aware of the mistake had we not pointed it out.

Yours in hope!

If they are rectifying an error, then although some LEAs ask it to go to appeal, it isn't actually necessary. So yes they can do this.

You pointed out the error, they investigated it. So far so good.

They then looked at what should have happened if there had been no error. Say 2 children who really lived too far away had been offered places. Those places cannot be removed, even though offered in error, unless the affected were notified in a timely fashion (precedent under old code, 3 days, not yet tested under new code, but widely expected to be the same). So those two stay in.

But the two children, the next ones on the ranked list, should have been offered places. I suspect that is what they mean by 'rectified' in that they have now been offered places (which may or may not mean the class is now over numbers, depending on whether any other places were declined).

This bit "In your particular case you would not have been allocated a place if the allocation had been carried out correctly and so therefore you have not been disadvantaged in anyway." means that your DC was not high enough on the list and would not have received an offer even if the offers had been made correctly all along.

You cannot expect to win an appeal based on offers made in error to other DC, regardless of how much further away they may live.

You could however ask for information that would make it clear whether the reallocations are error-free (as they weren't first time, then it's not unreasonable to not want to take that on trust).

I'd be interested to know how they are managing to accommodate the additional offers while complying with infant class sizes i.e. If the class now has 32, say, and those two places not the result if a own appeal, are they paying for an extra teacher? If they are, then why not fill the class?

Warning - I don't know much about appeals or the regs, so may be completely wrong to look at that angle.

Thanks for all these replies. I am really upset- but you are confirming what I suspected already. So frustrating. I am going to appeal to make sure they haven't made a further error, as we know a family 200m closer to the school than us who got a place originally. I just expected we would be close to being next (we live in an area with mostly mature housing).

One thing which it would be good to understand- do they keep admitting when they re-run up to the 60th child who Should have got in and the extra 3 are the excepted children let in, or do they just fill the classes with kids who were subject to the error once the people who have declined their spaces (I know of 3 people who have declined their place). Or some combination of the two?

And at this point shouldn't they be able to tell us where we are on the waiting list?

So they offered 60 places, found the error affecting 3 places. They should then admit the three children who should have got the offers as excepted pupils. That makes 63 in the year group.

Only if 4 offers are declined (ie reducing the number to 59 plus one vacancy) can they admit from the waiting list.

They will rerun the entire allocation and then look at the differences between that and the original list.

If only a handful of children are different, then they will offer places to those who got missed first time, whilst not withdrawing places from those who were offered in error. So the extra 2-3 who should never have had places in the first place will be the excepted ones. Everyone who should have had a offer in the beginning will get one now.

If loads are different, they may choose to add a bulge class to this school to accommodate them, but I would imagine you might know if that was the case.

It will get even more complicated if some people have already declined, then places offered from the waiting list but the order of the waiting list was also affected by the error; without knowing the error, that's hard to determine. If they merely measured the distance of 2 or 3 homes incorrectly, then that's pretty easy to sort, if everyone's distance was wrong then that is a much bigger issue.

Given the letter you have, I would assume the problem only affected a couple of people.

Unfortunately, your appeal will now be exceptionally hard to win as the class is already over PAN, but it's always worth a try.

So in submitting my appeal I can ask questions presumably about the sequence of events with regards to people who turned down places, and the re-run process. If they had allocated places to people on the waiting list before try's re- run then presumably they are already over 60 places. But there may actually be a mistake with the waiting list as well which they allocated from?

Is it usual to ask for further information about the re-run to check they haven't misadministered 1) the original allocation, , 2) the allocation of spaces coming free from the declined places and 3) the rerunning of the admissions to see who was not offered a place.

Out of interest, if the lea can offer more than the expected infant class size places, whether as an error in this case, or in deliberately over offering, without then having to stump up the money to keep the classes compliant with the ICS prejudice, why doesn't it happen more often? A back door way of boosting class numbers over the 30?

I know that a few years ago at our school, the lea offered 10 places over the 60 in the assumption that they would not be accepted (they were offered to people who had not listed the school as a preference). They then got egg on their face when the school ended up with 67 acceptances. They paid for an extra teacher for years R-2 and I believe that it is expected that numbers will have dropped slightly by the end of of year 2 so that the year group can go back into 2 classes of around 32 as is the norm in KS2.

Thanks tiggy. The sequence of events here is crucial but if we are say number 61-3 on the list we would have got a place from the waiting list had they not made the error (as in from the declined places). But presume they will always keep admissions under 60- so if the re-run happened before they allocated the waiting list places then presume they will keep class of 60. Seems unfair! It seems odd they will not tell us where we are on the waiting list even now.

The decision to appeal is a sound one because the timings of all this are crucial. Going to appeal is the only way that you can draw together all the various strands of this to confirm what went on.
If say following the 60 places being allocated, 3 were rejected then the LA should fill those places again from the waiting list. If they had no knowledge that there was a problem then that should have happened. As soon as it became obvious that there might be an issue then the LA should have suspended any further movement into the school until the issue had been resolved. So if, as is being assumed 2 pupils were disadvantaged, then it could be that the pupil count went to 62 or it could be that the three places were not filled and as such the count would only be 59 (57 + 2) and the LA would then have admitted one from the waiting list.
What you need from the LA is a blow by blow account of what happened when, so you can see the way The pupil numbers have moved. My guess would be that the LA seem to have done a reasonable job of handling the problem.
What I do think you need to establish also is that the LA are absolutely right on your distance measurement and that you have always been on the waiting list and where you have been on the waiting list as time has moved on. If at any time you were top of the waiting list then that is where you need to check that the LA did things completely correctly.