Advice re potential primary school appeal

[Pl242]

Hi. Hoping some of the knowledgeable people on these threads might be able to help.

We didn’t get our first choice primary school. This wasn’t a massive surprise but have just found out waiting list info and how offers were made which has raised some question marks on the process for me.

Background is as follows. We would have been close enough to get a place in 2018 but not 2019. But at the school tours we were told that 2019 had been a bumper year for siblings and they were expecting a third of those sibling numbers for 2020 applications. Whilst obviously no guarantees this gave us some hope that we might get in on distance.

However come offer day the last place offered distance was half of that in 2019 and we have now found out that there were almost 4x the amount of siblings than the number the head mentioned at the tour! (DH and I went to tours separately and I’ve checked with other friends and we all recollect the sibling number mentioned so sure we are not all misremembering).

We are way down the waiting list so no chance really that we will get a place that way. So I wonder if an appeal is worth it to explore the sibling numbers vs what parents were told at tours? Any thoughts?

Many thanks.

Governors from the school won't be involved in any appeals. The panel is independent.

Governors from the school won't be involved in any appeals. The panel is independent

Different in a faith school as governors are the admissions authority. They argue the case for the school although in reality this is usually delegated to the headteacher.

At least you have a clear answer now. The head teacher's information probably was a bit misleading and he shouldn't have sounded certain about numbers as he wouldn't have been in full possession of the facts. However, it didn't affect your place did it? If you had had the correct information and still applied, you still wouldn't have got the place. If you had decided not to apply because you thought you had little chance, then you still wouldn't have got a place there.
I am assuming that you got a place at one of your preferences, since you only say that you didn't get offered first preference? If that's the case, surely if you had been aware of the high sibling numbers then the only difference it could have made is that your current second preference would have become first, and so on? Hence the only way that the potentially misleading information could have actually affected your child's outcome would be if you didn't get a place at any of your preferences and had been allocated a school which you didn't apply for at all. In that case you could, I suppose, argue that had you realised that you stood no chance of a place at this school you wouldn't have applied and could have named another school at the bottom of your list. But even that would be hard to prove I would think.
If you were allocated an acceptable school it is probably best to just forget the whole thing. Hopefully the head won't be so confident in predicting numbers in future though!

No even in faith schools they are not involved.

They may run their own admissions policies but appeals are run independently. You are excluded from hearing an appeal for a school you sit as a governor.

They usually pay into the LA provision.

cabbageking - the point Puds is making is that Governors, in schools where the school is their own admissions authority, can be involved in appeals on the schools side. In such schools, there is often a Governor in charge of admissions who may make the case at appeal for the school. Often it is the Head, or they buy into the LA provision for that too as well as suppling the panel, but they can supply their own representative to make their case.

Governors cannot, indeed, hear appeals as part of the decision panel for schools they are a governor of (or local schools in best practise) but they can make the case for a school in the circumstances above.

Thank you PatriciaHolm - exactly right!

Hello. Can anyone offer any advice about an appeal based on the ‘perverse’ factor?

Yes, if you want to talk perverse factor I can do that. PM me if you want.

Yes, happy to help too.