Primary school appeal - PLEASE HELP

[Clknight]

Hi guys

I'm looking for some help with my appeal letter. I've picked out some fantastic advice from previous threads but was hoping for some additional advice.

My daughter started in her current school aged 3 and 3 months, attended pre nursery and is now in nursery - shes been at this school for 15 months now and has formed lovely friendships with her peers and relationships with her teachers. We received her rejection letter, for reception class at this school, last week.

I've managed to put together an appeal letter but I really need some help with the more formal/figures section.

The personal reasons I have listed for wanting to attend the school are as follows:
*She had an extremely difficult time settling into to transition from pre nursery to nursery which made her anxious, upset and caused months of wetting accidents that she was embarrassed to tell her teachers about. This resulted in her becoming sore and irritated and having to go to the GP, who confirmed it was behavioural rather than a medical problem (medical report included)
*Her 4 cousins attend the school who see her regularly and help with her confidence around school
*regualr shared pick ups with my sister and brother whose children attend the school
*Our family have attended the school since 1986
I know the LA dont consider these personal reasons but they are close to me heart

I am dealing with an infant class size appeal but the LA have stated the class size regulations are 30, but they have accepted 35 of the 39 applications received.
*her class have already been functioning at 37
*other classes are undersubscribed, some as low as 26
*her class are planned to split (we were informed in parents evening last month)
*the school have split classes in the past

To support my appeal, what information do I need to gain from the LA or school secretary? And how do I use this information in my favour?
Class sizes/intake? square footage?

All advice will be much appreciated!
From one very stressed mum! x

I'm not an expert but curious: So the school has a PAN of 30 but has admitted 35. Surely the question must be, why 35? Why not 34 or 36 or ...?

1. If the reason was that by admitting 35 of the 39 applications, they were ensuring that all in-catchment children that already attend nursery get a place, then that would be arbitrary - and giving an advantage to nursery children over other catchment children. Maybe next year they will admit a number that ensures some different criteria of children get a place? Surely they can't change the admission number to reflect some arbitrary preference that isn't given in the oversubscription criteria? Why would they admit 35 (all in-catchment nursery children get a place) but not 37 (all nursery children get a place) or 39 (all applicants get a place)... who decides which criteria will be applied to determine how many extra children shall be admitted?

2. From previous threads on appeals I thought to have understood that even if there were free spaces in Y1 or Y2, that didn't mean that more than 30 could be admitted for YR, under ICS rules. Often parents ask if they can win an ICS appeal based on the fact that there will be mixed age classes, and some of the higher years are not full, so the classes will be under 30 children, or could be arranged that way.
   Usually the experts say no, the school still cannot admit over 30.
   As the school might run into difficulties in future years, when these 35 YR children are in Y1, they must still be able to admit 30 new YR children so might have 65 across the two years, so it would be impossible to fit them all into classes of 30. So by admitting over PAN now they are prejudicing future admissions... I thought that was not allowed?

• If that isn't true, and under ICS they can admit over 30 as long as the total of YR/Y1/Y2 is not higher than 90 so they can arrange the mixed-age classes into groups of maximum 30,

... and if it is true that the other years have 4 spaces each free ... then why would they admit 5 over pan, rather than 8 over pan, until they are 'full' at 30 per class?

It seems to me that if the school admits over PAN, then the reason for the newly set number should not be arbitrary. It shouldn't be derived from someone deciding "I think all THESE children should get a place, but not THOSE, there are 35 of THESE, so we will increase the admissions to 35, but not to 37, as then we would have THOSE children too."

OP clearly the school believes it can admit over PAN without breaching ICS regulations. Clearly it believes it can deal with (has space for) 35. So an appeal could IMO rightly ask the question, if the school can deal with 35, why not with 36? If 35 won't breach ICS, will 36 breach ICS?
It seems to me that the school would need to be able to argue that 35 does not breach ICS, but 36 does. If the school had a way to argue this, it would be an ICS appeal and hard to win. (But you could argue my point 2) above that they are prejudicing future admissions.)
If they don't argue that 35 doesn't breach ICS, but 36 does, the appeal would no longer be an ICS appeal. The school would then argue that it doesn't have space for 36, or it would be detrimental to the 35 it has already admitted, to have a 36th child. In turn you would have to argue that the detriment to your child of not being admitted, outweighs this detriment to the school/admitted children.

Have you been able to find anything out since school started up, do you know why they admitted 35? Do you know if 36 would cause classes do be larger than 30, whereas with 35 they aren't? You really need to find out if it is ICS or not.

Speak to the school.

This happened with DS1 with his first choice school. He got rejected because we lived out of catchment. They then decided to jiggle the numbers around and admitted all the children who appealed because they had less children going into nursery.

We actually declined our place for DS1 and chose the school closest to us. I didn't want DS having to chop and change classes and friendship groups as he went through school. I also didn't want to face the same rigmarol with DS2 and potentially end up with them at different schools.

The situation needs to be explained at appeal
I think that they were planning to maximise the number of pupils they could take by moving pupils into year 1 and 2 so they could have classes of 30. However they have failed to appreciate that if a yr 1 or year 2 pupil comes along then they have to admit to 30 which is the agreed PAN for that year group.
So I think that year1 had 25 and therefore they made a decision to admit 35 and now find themselves with an extra year1 who they have had to admit and therefore now broken the infant class size regs.
There is no doubt that admitting 35 they have created a problem potentially in the years to come if they get 30 in reception in 2020.
I think it was a reasonable argument by the school to say we will take as many pupils as is possible and there is nothing legal stopping them taking any number of pupils from 31 to 39. What the appeal panel will need to have explained is how they came to decide on 35 and why they could not take the other 4 applicants. They will also have to understand how the school will handle the infant class size issue they now have, with I suspect the school hoping that one pupil leaves the school in the interim

OP: "Can I ask why you feel it is so ridiculous to ask the LA to consider allowing one more pupil into the school?"

I’d first point out that nobody has used the word "ridiculous" except the OP. Nobody is trying to ridicule the situation, we’re all just trying to accept the reality for what it is and not build up false hope for what looks like the weakest of weak appeals.

On the face of it, what you’re asking is perfectly reasonable. Why can’t the LA find room for just one more child at a school the mum feels is right for them?

The fact is (and herein lies the problem) there are currently thousands and thousands of parents who all want LAs to find room for "just one more", and who think their feelings are just as valid, if not more so.

Let’s just suspend reality for a moment and says the LAs approve all such appeals. The outcome would be tens of thousands of very disgruntled parents complaining about class sizes, plus hundreds, possibly thousands of less popular schools staring down the barrel of closure for lack of pupils.

Which is why LAs work to measurable criteria, and offer everyone an opportunity to influence those criteria ahead of the decision making process, rather trying to use an arbitrary process based on the personal feelings of thousands of individuals. That doesn’t mean it’s always fair or right, but it probably produces a better degree of fairness overall than any alternative system.

As Admission says, on the numbers given the school is going to have to justify to the appeal panel why, when they decided to go beyond PAN, they took 35 pupils and not all 39. They appear to have failed to consider what happens if more pupils apply for Y1 and Y2 and, as a result, have put themselves in breach of infant class size regulations. Unless they come up with a good justification it may be that the case to refuse admission is very weak. In that situation the OP doesn't need a strong case to win her appeal.

There are no guarantees with appeals. It all depends on how the appeal panel views the case. But the fact that the school appears to be playing fast and loose with the regulations means that the OP definitely has a chance of success.

It isn’t the weakest of weak appeals though. With a PAN of 30 it should have been. But it became slightly stronger when they admitted 5 extra children without thinking about what might happen next.

If the way they mix classes means that it’s not an ICS then there’s slightly more room to manoeuvre. I’m not sure it’s guaranteed that 30/31 across reception/yr 1 will be the final decision.

When you say her class has been functioning at 37 and you were told things at parents evening, presumably you are talking about the nursery?

There seems to have been a lot of assumptions made, possibly fuelled by nursery staff, that this class were going to move on together into reception.
Having attended the nursery makes no difference, and for all anyone knows there could have been 20 children who were not attending the nursery who ranked higher for places in reception, so nobody should have assumed nursery children would get a place, unless they met higher ranking criteria than just catchment.