Mid Year Transfer - Appeal advice?

[lucylockett27]

I want to move my dd's to another school. There are in year 2 and 3 respectively. Both are making good academic progress at their current school. However, I have lost confidence in the school due to its failure to deal with my dd being 'excluded' socially. 'Excluded' is summary of a long saga that has gone on since reception so wont go into the specific details

However, none of the local school have places fin both year groups, its either no place or a place in either yr 2 or 3.

I am considering accepting a place for dd2 at a school with a year 2 place and going to appeal to try to get dd1 into the same school. dd1 is happy at her old school but is very shy and relies heavily on her much more outgoing and confident sibling. So separating them would be emotionally difficult for dd1

The school I am considering accepting the year 2 place says they are oversubscribed in year 3, but they are moving to a new building in September and increasing their intake size for future years. This has made me think I might have a chance. Any advice or even just general thoughts would be appreciated.

[lucylockett27]

bump

[admission]

In many respects you are doing this the right way round. There is no doubt that going to appeal for an infant child is much less likely to be successful than a junior child because of the infant class size regs.
However the appeal panel will be hearing two different view points at the appeal. From the school's perspective, you knew when accepting the year 2 place that there was no place in year 3, so you are trying to force the issue to some extent by blackmailing the panel into allowing the appeal to keep the two siblings in the same school.
The counter argument that I would use is that you accepted the year 2 place knowing there was no year 3 place and accepting that you would go on the waiting list for the school and hope that a place became available with time. However you now understand that the PAN is being increased and therefore believe that there is more reason to appeal for a year 3 place as they can now obviously take more pupils in each year group. That is actually not technically correct because the PAN is set for each individual year group, so it will be the reception year that the PAN is being increased. In 4 years that year group will have moved up to year 3, so eventually all years will be at the higher PAN. However many appeal panels assuming this increased PAN is coming into operation will take a reasonably positive attitude to increasing the numbers in other year groups, knowing that eventually the will get to the higher PAN.
I would go to appeal but accept there is still a fair chance that you will not get the year 3 place, so you need plan B.

[lucylockett27]

Thanks you for your reply, really useful information