Appeal on Monday for son with no school place at all for 6 months. Help pls!

[badgermama]

Hello lovely folk, all help appreciated. We moved at the end of March this year to an area where all the primary schools are full. The council have been no help and offered no school place so I have had my 5 year old year R son at home for 6 months trying to educate him whilst taking care of his two year old sister. During this time we have gone from no 2 on the waiting list for our catchment school to number 9. The Head told me it would probably be Juniors before he gets a place.

We have an appeal on Monday and any hints would be appreciated. We spoke to the admissions dept at the council today who gave us lots of information I am sure is wrong eg we think he may fit under fair access protocol as he has been unplaced and the council said FAP doesn't apply to secondary. They also said that he had not been out of school for 6 months as it counts per year so he has only been unplaced for one day (?!).

They also said that the council are setting up a room in a school four miles away till Xmas where all the year R and 1 children who are unplaced in the area can go, with no plans for after Xmas. I can't drive due to a visual problem and would struggle to get him there and feel reluctant to put a nervous 5 year old in a taxi. My son is also very able and was taught on his own for much of the time at his last school as his literacy especially was so far in advance of the other 90 children in the year so the thought of him being in a class with possibly mostly younger children concerns me. He used to come home weeping with boredom from the last school and I can't help feeling that stimulation might not be great in this interim holding classroom. The council official also told me they did not have him on their list as unplaced for some reason so had not got him on the list for this temporary classroom set up, I have no idea why they would not class him as unplaced as we have all the documentation in place to show we applied and are unplaced and an appeal date.

I am sorry to ramble. It had been an exhausting year and I really want to do right by my son and feel pretty hopeless about the appeal at the moment.

thank you to anyone who has stuck with this!

I hope you get some good news today. Don't be afraid to ring & chase for a decision, the delay you've already had is shocking. Fingers crossed for you!

Good luck for today.

Thank you folks. No news yet. They did say the end of the week but I have read on here that other people were phoned earlier in other areas.

Suppose I am not surprised that the communication is slow...

I rang the LA yesterday who said they didn't know as the panel wrote to the LA, school and us simultaneously.

What time does your postie usually turn up?

We have lost. I just can't believe it.

The letter says things like the home ed stuff is unfortunate and just a miscommunication

They are insisting he can't be Excepted as Exception is just at the councils discretion and they think he isn't

They say that the fact that the LA has not helped us and made no offers of school places is perfectly legal as the school is full and even though they had another teacher this can't be an ongoing situation.

It feels like a total stitch up. What chance do we have. We went in there with things in writing from the council showing they hasn't made us any offers at all and that they were getting things wrong with things like FAP.

Meanwhile my son needs an education and friends to play with.

I am on my knees with this. He needs to go to bloody school nada the council just aren't interested. I feel so angry.

Do we have to got to a LGO or can we take this to court?

Oh OP, I can't believe it! What do thrtyesay your options are now, both in terms of appeal and also DSs education.
Get back in touch with your MP.

The MP made it very clear he thought the council do their job properly and wasn't interested.

They say we can go to LGO but they are a stitch up too.

They said we can apply for a place at the bulge class if we want but it is 6 miles on transport, would take me well over an hour an a half each way with buses that don't line up for school start and end times with and loads of walking and my two year old stuck in her push chair for 6 hours a day. It's a complete impossibility for me. Not least that we would be sending him to a failing school, to a side room that isn't even a class room. The children would be unplaced ones but also those permanently excluded by year R that no other school would take. It has only been discussed for a few weeks with no definite future plans. I don't believe any good parent would send their child there.

That is literally the only place near us that has anything resembling a place for him to go.

We literally have things in writing about the council telling us incorrect things about guidelines and FAP.

If you have things in writing how on earth can they say that the LA haven't mismanaged his application?

What on earth would a LA have invested in fighting us about a boy getting an education? I seriously give up.

If you were able to go back to work, would you be able to afford fees?

My Ds was bullied so badly I took him out of his primary school. I had to find a childminder for my baby, and go back to work, but it was worth it in the end.

I am so sorry you are going through this.

Oh badger, I have no expertise to offer but have read this with horror. I hope someone with knowledge turns up with suggestions.

Is moving again an option at all?

Not really. It just cost us 20k to move 6 months ago. We have gone to our limits to move to a place without failing schools and quadrupled their dad's commute to work.

Take this to the LGO.

Whether the HE thing is miscommunication or not is irrelevant in my view. It still means the admission arrangements have not been administered correctly. And saying that whether or not a child is excepted is at the LA's discretion is completely wrong. It is a question of fact.

The LGO is not a stitch up. They regularly find in favour of parents. I would be very surprised if the LGO didn't intervene.

P.S. I would be happy to help you with your submission to the LGO if you choose to go down that route.

PRH thank you. Knowing that you have read our case in detail and the mails etc from council and their case means you know our situation.

I am starting to feel like I am missing something here. It seems blatantly unreasonable and unlawful and I cannot believe that they have acknowledged that and still said we lose.

PRH can I mail you photos of the letter pls.

You have done so much for us already.

I meant to say you have done so much it seems unfair to ask.

PRH thank you so much. You are an amazing person. You have never met my son and you clearly care so much. I once read a quote that said the measure of a person is what care they take of other people's children. You have been wonderful, thank you.

It seems from their letter that they used current year 1 staffing to determine breach of class size limit, when our appeal was about our application in March when they had an extra teacher. Surely this is wrong too.

That is aside from the fact that as excepted, being new to the area with no proper school place formally offered by the council at all since March, he would cause no need for extra staff anyway.

Oh no! I can't believe it. Checked in expecting good news :(

PRH can I mail you photos of the letter pls.

You certainly can. If you hadn't I would have asked for that!

This is just terrible! I am incensed on your behalf - it's shambolic.

Just spoken to LGO. They tell us their role is to investigate the process and if they think something has been done wrong they tell the LA to do another appeal. Am I cynical to think the LA would then just agree with what they found before, they aren't going to say they got it wrong...?

The LGO won't 'rehear' the appeal as such. They will look to see if the appeal has been correctly administered, and if they find it hasn't they will state what needs to be corrected and order a fresh appeal.

What you say about their decision on excepted pupils sounds just plain wrong, an the outcome of an appeal that has been conducted wrongly cannot be relied on.

If the LGO tell the LA to run a fresh appeal there will be another hearing in front of a different appeal panel. The clerk will know what went wrong in the original appeal and should ensure it doesn't happen again. If a second appeal is also flawed the LGO will happily step in again.

Whilst the LGO don't rehear the appeal as such it is not unknown for them to recommend that a child is admitted without a further appeal. If, for example, they believe there is only one possible outcome from a correctly conducted appeal, they would normally recommend immediate admission.

Given that your child has been out of school for 6 months due to the LA's failings I would certainly recommend asking the LGO to admit without a further hearing.

Thank you for these.

We are going to put our argument together this weekend for the LGO. I will mail it all to you PRH, thank you.

I just have permanent nausea at the moment. I feel like I have done something wrong and I am letting my son down. The last time he was in a group of children at a party a few weeks ago he was anxious. I am so worried that by the time we get all this sorted he will be too frightened to go to school. Before we moved he even stood on stage in a school assembly in front of loads of parents and kids and recited a difficult poem from memory. I just can't find enough local out of school kids at the moment to keep up his confidence, let alone that I obviously can't replicate a school experience for him to keep up his confidence about returning to the class room. I am ranting, I am sorry I just despair.

Whose betting the council will now pursue us for not formally deregistering him and fine us for truancy....