Help with appeal (in year application)

[oznog]

Hello- I'd love some help and advice on my reception place appeal. We are moving to a new area and have not been able to gain a place at any of the 3 local primary schools. (school one: full no places to offer. school 2:full infant class size limit, school 3: unwilling to admit out of year group). Anyhow we are questioning how the school can be full. it has a PAN of 45 for reception and employs 2 teachers and 2 TA's for the classes. Year 1 and Year 2 are both 2 form entry with 60 pupils. When I looked around the school I was told there are places in year 1 currently and it could be an option to try and transfer my child there next year (as a year one student). I am still awaiting council info on net capacity and number on roll currently. But I am struggling with how they can currently have a 45 intake (assuming this is a class of 23 and 22) and not be able to take one more. I would also like any general advice on preparing my appeal statement.
Basically the reasons for wanting this school are

• its walkable (anything the council allocates will be over 2 miles away)
• we are new to the area (so have missed out on normal admissions round) but importantly need a local community school to get involved with our new area/make friends/meet people at the school gate etc

-follow the ethos of the school and think it is the best fit to what our child is currently experiencing

• we very much want our children to go to a non faith based school (potentially the one allocated over 2 miles away would be non faith but the other 2 in walking distance (and our catchment is faith)
• can any points/leverage be made for the fact that the school is our 2nd nearest school but we are not in the catchment for it?! this has alot to play as children without siblings already in school and not in catchment are further down oversubsctiption criteria-- basically i'm asking can a case be made that we are closer than some children admitted/higher on waiting list but penalized due to being in a different catchement (to a faith school we do not want)

No, because if they are on the school roll as being in two classes (as most free flow setups are) then they will only free flow through the day. They will still have times when they are taught as a class.

An appeal panel can't tell a school to organise itself differently. They can't say 'you have a bigger room that the year 3s are using but they don't need as much space, so you could move your year 3s to the year R classroom and then take little Johnny into year R in the bigger classroom. ' They have to accept the school's autonomy in organising itself.

The recommended space is <a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www3.imperial.ac.uk/pls/portallive/docs/1/46973696.PDF&ved=0CCQQFjADahUKEwjjs7j6-LLIAhUEEywKHbDcBy0&usg=AFQjCNFU6fw12AZm27ofd6gwqLcGST9NLQ&sig2=goQaO-9mzLhRrHA2WGjqqQ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">2.3m2 per child aged 3-7 for full day care settings, but I don't know that this carries to school. That would equate to 52.9m2 for 23 children, which puts one class you listed as quite small and the other only scraping to size.

If they have 22 in the smaller classroom and 23 in the bigger classroom, I'd expect them to say that the smaller classroom is already 8m^2 smaller than they need and the bigger classroom is only just big enough for the 23 children it holds. That, along with the evidence of using a cloakroom (however spacious with lovely views) as an SEN support area, would make it quite hard to justify giving another child a place, IMO.

Sorry. I know it's not what you want to hear, but the school sounds very full to me.

I'm not sure they are being considered as two separate classes. In the information table I have been sent for class organisation. YR is referenced to 2 classrooms and 45 pupils in contrast to two(separate) entries for year 1 and 2 for year 2 and each classroom/number of pupils if that makes sense?

Ok I think I know what argument I will make in terms of physical class space. Can you provide any insight into the actual prejudice for the school to admit one more child. They seem to be highlighting difficulties with a very large additional number of pupils last year and high pupils with additional needs.

The school is pointing to issues with large class sizes last year when they had 50- 5 extra and many special needs YR 1 this year shows 14 SEN and 2 statement/EHCP- (presumably those are the same that were in YR R last year). Obviously this big increase caused financial dificulties. (hiring another teacher for R

Since then they have changed which rooms are allocated to YrR and also rejected the idea *that they had last year) to combine nursery and R pupils with one teacher. so some of the financial hardship of last year was due to them hoping to combine classes which is not applicable this year- I guess i am asking how if the prejudice they are illustrating is an extreme situation from last year- will the panel base the decision of prejudice on that example or will they ask the school what the prejudice will be for admission of one additional pupil?

That will be for the panel to weigh up. "Can you provide any insight into the actual prejudice for the school to admit one more child."

One more set of books to annotate
One more assessment to do
One more child at the sand table/paint tray, etc, etc.

It's not down to them to prove the prejudice -they're already nominally full. It's down to you to prove that you need that place more compellingly than they need to stick to PAN.

In practice, the stronger the argument of the LA/HT, the more work you'll have to do to convince the panel that your case is worthy of forcing the school to take your child.

Sometimes you'd get to panel and the school would say 'oh we've got loads of space, really' and the LA rep just sinks their head in their hands and the panel finds it very easy to find in favour of the appellant. Other times, the HT explains in great detail just how difficult taking another child would be. In those cases, it's much harder for the panel to find in favour of the appellant. So it very much depends on the circumstances and the arguments in the day.

ok now for two other somewhat different questions.
What are the implications for the authorities case coming to me less than 7 working days before the hearing (set for the 15th) documents only recieved today (the 8th) mailed on the 7th.

Also what are the implications for the authority setting out in its case that the school has a indicated admissions number of 45 and a net capacity of 135- when the attached net capacity assesment states 157 and 52.

The Appeals Code says you should receive the papers a reasonable time before the date of the hearing. If you think you won't have enough time to prepare your case ask for the appeal to be deferred to a later date.

It is a bit of a tangled web is this one. To answer your questions, the relevance of the papers arriving less than 7 days before the hearing is nil. You have had plenty of time to study the papers and in reality if an appellant came to appeal and said they had not had the papers, the usual process would be to offer an adjournment to another day or have 30 to 45 minutes to read the papers and then carry on. So it will not make a difference
The net capacity is a more interesting question but I would like to see the actual wording of what they say before i comment further. If you want to, please pm me and I will give you an email address so that you could send a copy of the paper to me. The case seems very complicated for what is a smallish school.