Appeal documents??

[Secretloverofsparklystuff]

So....the same as a lot of people today, my son didn't get into our preferred school. I have replied to the email to be reconsidered for the school we want and we will be appealing. But I'm wondering if any of you know what documents I will need to back up my appeal.
The situation we are in, is that we have a child in the school already, so I can't be in 2 places at the same time. My older child who already attends the school has additional needs, so we don't want to disrupt his education by moving him away from his support network. But our younger child has no additional needs that are apparent at the moment anyway, so would the documents relating to our older child's needs be any good to back us up in appealing for the younger child?
The only other solution is to pick which one goes in late everyday and is picked up early everyday, that won't harm their education right?

You need to start by checking a few things.

Did they put your DC2 into the correct admissions category, and does the distance they have for home-school seem right?

Does the school have an exceptional medical/social need category at all, and if so did you apply under this, on the grounds of DC1's additional needs? Was the application for consideration of exceptional need properly considered?

In case you do end up in separate schools, you need to think flexibly:
Can you use a breakfast club / after school club.
Can you use a childminder for pick up drop offs.
Can the child's other parent (you say 'our' and 'we') shift working times to do one of the drop offs.

What is the distance between the two schools?
What year is older child in?
Depending on the additional needs, is it really not viable to move older child? Is he not in the nearest catchment school? If not, what did you think would happen for your younger one?

As Medtrina says, firstly make sure that the details they have for you are correct, and your child was considered under the correct category - for example , does the criteria give priority to siblings, and were you considered under that category?

A key thing then you need to know is whether the appeal will be held under ICS, Infant Class Size, rules. Is the intake 30 (or a multiple of it) in reception? Then the appeal will be ICS, as there is a legal limit to 30 per class in reception, y1 and y2.

This makes it very hard to win an appeal. You can only win on one of 3 grounds -

• the admissions authority made a mistake which directly cost you a place (hence checking the distances/grounds as mentioned above)
• the admissions criteria are unlawful
• the decision not to admit was "unreasonable" - the criteria for which is a decision so perverse no sensible person would have made it. The bar for this is very high.

Your OP doesn't suggest you have any grounds that would win you an ICS appeal I'm afraid; parental transport issues are not considered grounds to appeal.

Thanks everyone, kinda knew that would be the case but was hoping someone might know some loop hole I could jump through lol
Schools are about a mile apart the preferred one being further, my older child went there originally as his older siblings did, since being there the additional needs have been diagnosed and support put in place with the help of this school. We're not in a position financially to use breakfast or out of school clubs as I am a stay at home mum, (I need to be on hand for our other son, who has aspergers and regularly need to go into his school to deal with issues etc) so only one income, hubby works in a uni so is tied to set working hours.
Fingers crossed someone will have been allocated a place they no longer want and we get in on them grounds