Do I stand a chance with my appeal ??

[wavebyebye]

I applied for a place for my dd to change primary schools, main reasons being friendship/low level bullying for 4 years and lack of support from the staff regarding this and also the fact my dd does not seem to be progressing and I know longer have a relationship with the school or any faith in them after my oldest dd was spectacularly let down by them with regards to her learning disability

So the school I have applied for has 13 children in her year group (5) and they numbers allow them to have 15! The classes are years 3/4 and 5/6...but they have refused her a place on the basis that come September they will have 35 in that class (when the 22 year 4 move up) and they don't want to have 36

I'm thinking of appealing on the basis that her year group has 2 free spaces currently along with all the other reasons

Do you think I stand a good chance at appeal or can anyone advise on what route to go down with regards to appeal ?

No idea - but generally speaking school do tend to turn down the first request - I feel it's a test to see if you're serious -

Yes appeal - but wait for further advice

Thank you it's actually my catchment school and it's a lovely place had they be full I would probably accept it more but seeing as the actually do have 2 spaces in year 5 I'm just not willing to let it go

Well put a strong case forward - I mean what would they do if another few families moved in?

By no means an expert but if their Pan for y5 is 15 then they should admit up to that, it shouldn't matter what other year groups are doing (my children are at a mixed year group school)
Plus they are already well over 30 so that argument really doesn't hold water..

You need to know the PAN for certain. The school my dc go to has a PAN of 13. Reception is by itself, and then 1&2, 3&4 and 5&6. Once they have got to 13 they will admit more in year groups up to class size of 30 depending on demand. This means some years may have only 13 and others 17. I think the PAN of 13 is mainly to give some flexibility for fluctuating demand in small village school.

Why are they over PAN in the current year 4? They are probably refusing on the grounds of 'future prejudice'. Is there only one teacher for the Y5/6 class?

It was the council who told me that they currently have 13 in the year and they are allowed 15 meaning 2 are free

The school have rejected on the fact that come September they will have 35 in the class as the 22 children who are currently in year 4 will be moving up along with the 13 year 5 pupils giving a total of 35

Yes one teacher (along with TA's etc) is in that class, it was actually the class teacher who advised me to go ahead with the application as she said she wouldn't have a problem with it.... but don't tell the head she said that.

I think the higher numbers from the lower classes comes from the fact that it used to be just a infants and this year is the first time they have had year 6, basically 3 years ago they changed to juniors and just kept the kids on

Under normal circumstances at reception year the fact that the year group is not up to PAN would mean that the pupil would be admitted. The same principle is applied to other year groups as they progress through the school normally.
However the issue here is one of how big a class is acceptable and that is why the school is saying no, despite not being up to PAN they are wanting to refuse entry. The issue is not with the year group which your child is in it is in the year group with 22 in it.
You do need to go to appeal because it is necessary for a panel to make the decision. The 22 in the year group below is completely because the school has been prepared to accept pupils over and above the PAN of 15. So the issue for the panel is how much have the school caused their own issue and how big a class is too big. I would say that it is 50/50 which way a panel will go on this because it is quote easy to argue for both admitting and not admitting.
The other thing that you need to find out is what numbers are there currently in the year 3/4 class now - you know that there are 22 in year 4 but if the year 3 cohort is any where near full they will have over 30 in the class, which can argue is already setting a precedent to allow admission.
You need to argue the school have caused the issue by allowing 22 in year 4 and that under normal situations the school would have to take your child. You then need to improve your chances by talking about the situation at the current school with bullying. Have you got any written evidence about you complaining about bullying? If so you should enter that as evidence of the fact that the current school are failing your child. Without any written evidence the case is severely weakened as panels will hear about bullied children all the time and will not give it much weight when it comes to making a decision. Anything in writing is worth much more than you just saying that your child has been bullied.

I spoke to the council again today as I wanted to clarify numbers in other year groups

They have confirmed that there are currently 13 in year five (there numbers are 15, so 2 spaces available

They have also confirmed that currently in year 3 their is 19 pupils and year 4 has 22 pupils

So she has refused my application on the basis that come September the class withheld have 35 (the 13 current year 5's& 22 current year 4's)

But the following September she will have a class of 41 so can't see how her argument carries any weight

So does the current Y3/4 class have 41 children in? Or is the school actually using some other groupings than the ones you suggest.

I would have to say that it would be very unusual for there to be 41 in a class, it would have to be an enormous room and any expectation of even outstanding teachers controlling a class of 41 must be remote.

However those figures are good news for you. What it shows is that in both year 3 and year 4, the school has gone over the PAN and it would be very usual if that was as a result of successful appeals. So for the school to argue we cannot take any more in year 5, having not even reached PAN, because of the school's behaviour over taking pupils above PAN in other year groups is to my mind a very weak argument, no matter the size of the class.

Well I'm presuming so, these were the figures given to me by the council today, I intend to do more digging and speak to the council again on Monday