another appeal ... please advise.

[Tigsley2]

Its long .. please try and read it :)

I moved to a new area last year. DD has been on the waiting list for a year.. and has moved from 2 to 1 back to 2. I applied for a place for DD at the local junior school - A (0.3 miles away) during the current round of admissions.

At the same time I applied for DS to get into the local primary school - X.

DS got in .. DD did not.

I was told that as the two children were being 'enrolled' at the same time DD could not count as a sibling to DS. DD was indeed judged under criteria 5.. local but not attending school X.

However, the schools Criteria 3 - states -

Pupils who will have a sibling at school x at the time of admission.

It also told you to read note 3.. which stated pupils attending the nursery at school x would be counted as siblings.

The nursery attendees - are not given priority - for entry to school x.. so effectively are in the same position as my son was - going through the admissions process.

So - do I have a right to appeal - DD 'fitted criteria 3'.. but was not 'judged under it .. I had identified that due to our location - DS was very likely to get a place at school X (for the last 5 years he would have.. )

or does the criteria not mean what it says.. (that's what the school told me..)

I'm going to appeal - but was not quite sure how to phrase it..

thanks if you got this far x

Do they do a junior admissions round? Unless there's a separate infant and junior school then the admissions only happen at YR.

Yes there is an infant school admission .. and a separate junior school.
But they are sister schools.. so if you got to the infants - X you rank higher than if you didn't.

The junior school has different admissions .. although similar..

1 - Looked after
2 - Medical
3- Siblings - pupils who have siblings at school X at the time of admission
4 - Church (18 places) -sub categories -A- attends x B - doesn't attend x
5 -Open (72 places ) sub cats - A - attends x, B - doesn't attend x

Please note it says at the time of admission - other parts talk about at the time of application .. so I know admission means Sept 2015.

No advice but how daft. Good luck.

I realise I say DS has got into a primary - he has not he has got into the 'sister infants' school

DD is stilli n school where we used to live.. 3.5 miles away! but I was angling to get her into the very local (4 minute walk) junior.

OK well it is possible then that they have overlooked your DS as a sibling in which case you have a chance.
Call the LA admissions on Monday and ask why your DD didn't get a place. If they haven't put her in the right group they may well give her a place without an appeal as long as your application had the correct info.

I rang admissions they told me to appeal as the school had done the admission process...

Now this is similar to our situation a few years ago. The admission policy in our area also stated 'at the time of admission'. During our appeal hearing the LA representative tried to argue that the sibling needed to be there at the time of application but the panel said that if that's what they meant then the policy should say that and not 'admission'. The fact that it said at the time of admission mean that is what they intended it to mean (the rep had also agreed that admission meant when they started nut when they were given a place ie April).
That's not to say another panel wouldn't look at it differently but that was our experience.

You have a good case for appeal on the grounds that they have not applied the admission criteria correctly. If they wanted to give priority only to children with a sibling already at the school at the time of application they should have said so. Given the wording of the admission criteria they should have given your child a place. There are no guarantees but I think you have a good chance of winning your appeal.

No advice but interested (and wishing the OP best of luck!) as it's not impossible we'll be in a similar position...

So as I understand it, there were simultaneous applications for a YR (infants) and a Y3 (junior) place, criteria for both placing siblings before distance?

Ph47bridge - How would the allocating authority take into account siblings if neither is actually on the roll at the time of application, or is there just a box to tick to say that they will be on the roll in Sept 2015? Just wondering how you evidence it, though I'd also interpret the wording to mean Sept 2015, not April 2015 - but how does Tigsley argue the case in appeal, given they'd almost certainly say that they didn't know that the younger DC would definitely have a place?

Say somebody moves into the area (which it sounds as though the OP has done?) there seems to be no mechanism for allowing the older sibling entry to the junior school, if the infant school for that DC's year was full. So you could (sounds like OP did???) potentially move in, be allocated a school several miles away, have a younger DC allocated a place at the nearest catchment school but the older one not be considered a priority despite the normal round of admissions at Y3, and having been on the waiting list and the school effectively taking more new children over the first on the waiting list?

If this isn't unreasonable, it seems at the very least without reason.

We moved into the area... ds got in on distance..

dd is still in school where we used to live...in a different la.

I think the school has prioritised the pupils at the infants ...and not applied the sibling criteria as 'they wouldnt know ds would get a place'

there was no box for our situation.... there was another box for additional circumstances... the la told us to write in there...we did ...but the box said sibling information in the box would be ignored!

Is there still a class size limit? Can't she be treated as an in year move?

blackbirdonthewire - The LA must apply the admission criteria as written. Problems with administration should have been thought of when they set the criteria. They cannot do something different just because it is easier. The only evidence the OP needs is that her son has a place and her daughter is in the wrong category.

I am assuming that the OP'S daughter would have got a place if she had been in the correct category by the way. If being in the wrong category made no difference an appeal will not succeed.

How do schools work it if there are two admission runs at the same time, for different years? Obviously a Yr 3 child whose sibling is waiting for a Yr R place won't be in the sibling-at-time-of-admission category if the Yr 3 run is done first (and vice versa), or are they somehow done simultaneously, with every time a child gets in to either Yr 3 or Yr R, all the other applications are then re-evaluated and changed if necessary to put potential siblings in a higher category (but then surely bumping others back down that wouldn't have got in front of them, causing more knock-on effects of others potentially switching cateories, etc.). I can imagine that it could theoretically end up in some never-ending loop! (In practice, I realise that the situation of applying for Yr R and Yr 3 for siblings, neither of whom is in the school already, and being near the final cut-off for places, and in competition with other sibling pairs that it also applies to, etc. is extremely rare - but I'm still curious as to how such a policy could actually ever be applied! Is there a rule that the older year is always done first, for example, and then applications checked to see if sibling preference then applies before the younger year admission run is done?).

(I also realise that that is not quite the case in the OP's situation, since she is claiming that the older one should have sibling preference because the younger one is in nursery, which the admission criteria include - although again I guess if nursery admission doesn't guarantee a Yr R place, it still doesn't mean that there will necessarily a sibling at the time of admission, so some of the conundrum must still exist).

runaway - that's why most admission authorities I've come across say for siblings to count they must be there "at the time of application AND at the point of admission" - otherwise it is just too hard as you rightly point out!

As PRH said they didn't say that in this case, so they have to apply the criteria as written, however hard that is for them.

(I would expect they will now change the criteria from 2017 onwards - already too late to change for 2016)

Hi,

My son doesn't attend the nursery - but the admission policy for the juniors said if he did he would count as a sibling -but the infants school says - if he attends nursery it does not guarantee a place..

I'm not sure if it is relevant to my case. but it feels wrong to me - that if he had used it he would have got her into juniors even if he then didn't get a reception place..

If she had been considered under the right criteria she would have got a place.

yes, I can definitely see why most of them avoid it! It's an interesting theoretical puzzle though, to work out what conditions might lead to an endless iterative loop... (even if the actual prospect of that is vanishingly rare).

Thank you for your comments, I've used some of your wording in my appeal .. I will come back and update once I hear how it goes:)

well today I got offered a place - as one 'came up on the waiting list' .

So no appeal for me :)

I'm wondering if the admissions policy will change..