Been refused school place (reason included) do I have a hope at appeal?

[usernjdhkvdgkb]

Trying to change dd primary school to put local catchment school

Many reasons mostly ongoing friendship issues/mild bullying since year 2, concerned about her lack of progress and a breakdown of relationship between myself and head after he awfully let down my other dd in regards to her SENDS

The school I'm apply for currently have 2 spaces in the year I'm applying for year 5 but have refused place on grounds that come September when the current year 4 move up they will have a class of 35

Yet the following September when the next group move up they will have a class of 41 so this really doesn't make sense.

I'm really struggling to word my appeal and wondered if anyone can give any advice on what rout me to go down or even if I have a chance at appeal or if I'm wasting my time

It does happen but it doesn't happen very often.

I don't know the PAN of your local primary which could be relevant. If a primary has a PAN of, say, 90 an appeal panel, faced with a mistake affecting 7 applicants, could well decide that the school can cope with 7 more. However, it is far less likely when PAN is only 30 or 15. With a small PAN, if a significant number of applicants have been affected by a mistake the appeal panel has to decide how many the school can handle and then compare cases to decide which children to admit.

If an appeal panel in an ICS case admitted 5 or 6 additional pupils to a school with a PAN of 15 I would have serious questions about their training (assuming PAN has been set properly and is not artificially low). The only situation in which I could imagine a properly trained appeal panel doing this would be if the school was blatantly ignoring the Admissions Code and the panel wanted to send a message that this behaviour would not be tolerated.