URGENT APPEAL HELP! Tomorrow!

[MJIM]

Hi
I have a school appeal tomorrow. I have spent weeks preparing our case. I’m so nervous now.
I am just re-reading through all the documents and I have a question if anyone can help with regards to the schools case for not admitting any more pupils. Most of it is standard health and safety stuff re class room sizes and reaching PAN etc but they have also said a few others reasons....are these valid? Or should I challenge them? To be honest I don’t feel like we have anything to argue with stage 1. I’m hoping our case in the stage 2 is strong enough to win.
These are the things the school have said.
-there are children with medical needs which must be monitored and medication issues if needed
-there are pupils who require daily physio by a SEN TA
-1/4 of pupils second language is English
-x amount of kids with autism
-x amount of loss with SEMH

Thanks in advance.

They are explaining why they think the balance of detriment will be to the school if your child is admitted. The special needs show that lessons are not straight forward and may require differentiation with the teacher having to stretch themselves across the children. Also the classroom may have extra support who need space. SEMH children may require a settled routine and support so adding another child may disrupt them and add to anxiety.
EAL children do not receive extra funding but may require extra support. The school are providing a picture of a year group that require support. This is to prove their case and is to be expected.

The school may argue that children with medical needs require more space for equipment or access. Those children may also require additional space or support to administer medication or for physio etc. Children with Autism may have additional support or react negatively to change.

Ok thanks for explaining, makes sense.

The bottom line is that the school have to prove that it would be prejudicial to admit further pupils at Part 1. They have to do that over and above having reached the PAN for the school, which is why they throw in all the other information they have. It is absolutely typical of most appeal cases, so do not be worried that it represents anything else but what is expected.
If you want to ask questions about the statements made, you might ask how many pupils with medical issues are there in the year group that your appeal is for and then follow it up with and which year group is the pupil who requires daily physio in? If you are lucky both answers will be not in the year group the appeal is for, at which point you can ask them what the relevance is of both statements if they have no direct bearing on the year group the appeal is for.
I suspect that the appeal panel will still feel that the school have made their case at Part1 but if you have knocked a few more bricks down out of the school's case then you reduce the level of prejudice needed for the appeal panel to believe you have a stronger part 2 than the school have.

Thanks that’s a great question to ask. They have given me SEN figures for the year group my child is going Into but I believe the rest is the whole school so I will ask those questions.
Wish me luck today. I feel physically sick even though I have prepared as well as I can. Luckily husband is cool as a cucumber so hope he can stay focused and calm for the 2 of us.

How did it go today?

It was really nerve wracking. The first stage was adjourned for a long time so all of the appeals were running late so the chair asked us to summarise in our stage 2. I don’t feel like I said as much as I could/should so I am driving myself mad stressing I didn’t say enough! I did have everything in my statement and supporting documents that I wanted considered so I really hope they read it all and base it on that? I didn’t say anything wrong in person I just feel I could have said more but only what was in my statement anyway I suppose. I just feel guilty like I could have messed this all up after weeks of preparation. Wish me luck find out next week sometime

Can I add something from a teacher's point of view.
Having bigger numbers in class increases the stress on staff. It means that each individual child gets less 1:1 time with staff. Guided teaching groups are bigger. Resources are more sparse. Practicalities like changing reading books regularly, speaking to parents before and after school, getting changed for PE become much more difficult.
Whilst I understand totally a parent's desire to get their child into a particular school, having them in a bigger class is not a great idea.

Good luck for your results.

Bezm I understand your point however the appeals process is there to balance the needs of an individual child verses the needs of a class.
They will only allocate a child a place in an already large class if they feel that the childs needs would suffer by being placed somewhere else.
Appeals based solely on parents desire would only be successful if the class was already a small class and the panel deemed there to be space.

I am a bit surprised at the level of detail that seems to be given out about SEN pupils in a year group/class. Once you are down to just 30 kids it starts to become possible to guess/identify which children have the SEN listed and that is that child’s personal information so shouldn’t be shared.