Helping a friend with in-year primary admission appeal

[victoriansqualor]

My friend's DD moved house over a year ago. She has been on the waiting list for the local primary school all this time.

To get to her current school her mother has to take two buses across town - this was not ideal, but possible until this year, when her DS was admitted to the local primary school. It is now not possible for my friend to get her children to the two different schools on time. Understandably she didn't want to apply for the school across town for her DS rather than the local school - not just for practicality reasons but also the school across town has a terrible OFSTED report and is currently considered 'Inadequate' in 4/4 areas. The local primary is rated Good in all areas.

She has appealed and been granted the appeal meeting for Monday. She's panicking and I've offered to go along with her and do some research into how to make the appeal successful.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Oh, DD starts year 5 this term so is not bound by the 30 children per class rule as 5-7yr olds.

Thanks!

She needs to show why this is the right school for her daughter. She is very unlikely to win her appeal based on transport difficulties and the Ofsted rating of the current school. She needs to identify things this school offers that are missing from the current school and that are relevant to her daughter. For example, if her daughter is interested in music and the appeal school offers more extra-curricular musical activities than the current school that is worth raising. She also needs to find out TODAY how many they have in Y5 (that should be in the appeal paperwork) and whether they have been over this number in recent years. If it is a VA school or academy she should ask the school, if not she should ask the LA. If the school has had more pupils in Y5 before that suggests it can cope with more again.

Most schools have a sibling policy and so she will move up the waiting list once her ds joins reception.

The school currently has 30 pupils in year 5. (I called today and asked). I'm waiting for her to return from work to find out what the Local Authority's Statement of Case says. DD is interested in sports and the local school offers much more in extra-curriculur activities so we will include that, thank-you.

drwitch the school have told her she is the only person on the waiting list but she needs to wait until the class number is under 30 before she will be allocated a place.

Also, my friend is dyslexic and is concerned DD might be too, she has mentioned this to the SENCO at the current school and nothing has been done so should we mention the SN provision even though DD has not been assessed?

You need to find out if they have had 31 in Y5 in the recent past. If they have that is something she needs to mention in the hearing.

There is nothing wrong with mentioning the SN provision and her concerns about her daughter but the panel may not give it a great deal of weight in the absence of a diagnosis. If she can show that the current school hasn't acted on her concerns that could help. Does she, for example, have any emails she sent to the school about her concerns and the school's failure to do anything?

Sadly not. How do I find out if the school have ever had 31 children in the class?

(Thanks for the help btw people!)

Ask them. They (or the LA if it is a community school) have to answer any question your friend asks to help her prepare for her appeal.

They've never had more than 30 per class. I'm afraid to say I don't think we have a hope in hell but we'll do what we can.

We were successful! We didn't need to go into any reasons why we needed the school because she was the only year 5 appeal and tbqh the LEA rep was useless. He had numbers that didn't add up (claimed there were 297 pupils but then said 300), had it down as a reception appeal, gave no information regarding why the school couldn't cope with an extra pupil and then went into detail about the fact that the school has good finances, recently had extra classes added, gets a lot of sponsored funding, has a Head Teacher that doesn't teach plus extra staff for PPA/Music/Sports coaching etc. Before we were even asked to present out case I questioned his numbers a few times and the appeal panel asked for an adjournment for five minutes - we were then told by the clerk we didn't need to go back in as we had been successful!

Based on what you've said I'm not surprised you won. If the LA don't present a case as to why the school will be prejudiced by the addition of another pupil the appeal must succeed. Indeed, going on about good finances, additional classes, etc. sounds like an open invitation to the panel to admit your friend's daughter.

This emphasises that an appeal is, in essence, a one way bet. If you lose you are no worse off and, however hopeless your case, there is always a chance of winning.

Well done.

That sounds a bit like a situation where the presenting officer knew that they had no chance of making a sensible case to refuse admission, even though they had admitted up to the PAN. There were enough clues given to the panel for them to make the obvious decision.
The question is whether this was a presenting officer who was useless or a presenting officer who was very clear what the outcome would be and made it easy for the panel