Late application - Appeal Oversubscribed Catholic Primary School

[afbelchior]

Hi everyone,
I am so lost! Her is my case.
I just moved with my family (husband and 2 sons) to Derby from Brazil. I received a job offer late in February to come to Derby in June. Early March I contacted Derby Council school admission as I wanted to apply for a school place for my boys but they advised me to apply just after June 15, as I wanted schools places for the next school year. So I did and didn’t get school places for my boys in any of our 3 choices due to oversubscription. Our 1st option is one Catholic School as we are all Catholics and my kids are Baptized. I decided to appeal and I am preparing my developing case document now.
I am not British and this is a completely new topic for me. I already read a lot about appeals and decided to go without a lawyer due to many factors and also to the short time I have to send the documents (Friday 31st July).
I have some doubts about how to build my case and hope that someone here could help me.

1. Did the admission team give the wrong advice regarding to wait until June to make my sons application for a school place? I guess the right question is, there is a difference on applying before the national day offer and after it? Would it have made a difference for the application outcome if I Have applied earlier as even if I am still overseas, they are obligated to receive the application?
2. The school argument is that the school lacks the resources and the space to accommodate additional children, although looking to the school ground plan given to me within the appeals documents there is a classroom that is not assigned to any year group. It seams to be an “empty” classroom. Can I use it to challenge the allegation regarding space?
3. My main reason to appeal is our faith. I think that to be received in a school that has our values and faith could help both my boys to feel less the big change that are taking place in their lives (changing countries, leaving family and friends, moving house, etc). I really think that being in a Catholic School could make them feel more like. I don`t know if you can understand me…. Should I develop this as my main argument and drop the others? Please, could you advise me? Thank you all in advance for adivces and opinions

Few questions...
What ages/year groups are the children?
What are the year group sizes (normally a multiple of 15/30)
When did you officially move to the UK

The National Offer Day only applys to new year groups (so Reception, Yr3 for a Junior School, Yr7, and some areas have middle schools). In other years, you can usually only apply for a school you need immediately, not for the future. June/July is also sometimes given for September entry.
Also they should be making you an offer of a school place somewhere, but not necessarily in a preferred school.

The biggest question is how old/what year group - if you are appealing for places in Reception, Year 1 or Year 2 you will be impacted by infant class size legislation, meaning that classes cannot go above 30.

Appeals for higher years have a little more flexibility, but still rely on building a good, solid case.

You should have been offered a place /places in a school even if it is not the school you want. The general advice is to accept this place / places because the Local authority will not offer you another one and at least your children will have a school place. If you are lucky the places offered wil be in the same school, if you are unlucky they won't.

Ask to be put on the waiting lists for your preferred schools, you never know, a place, or preferably places, could come up.

It is a standard response for a school to say they cannot accommodate extra children above their allocated numbers. The purpose of your appeal is to demonstrate that your children's need for a school place there is greater than the school's response that they cannot accommodate them. An extra room that doesn't seem to be a classroom won't work, the room will be used for something, group work, social skills, library, resource room. The school is not going to turn it into an extra classroom and pay for a teacher for one child.

By all means use continuity as an argument for your appeal, but I am not sure how effective it will be. Have you made contact with the local church and priest, introduced yourself to the church community? Are there other curriculum or social advantages to the school. For example do they run a maths club and your child is mathematically gifted, do they offer additional music classes or instrumental teaching that your child can continue with.

I imagine that the school's argument will be that they are no better or worse at settling new children into school than any other local school and that you can make local connections through the parish which will support your children's social and faith development.

Be warned that any appeal if your child is in Reception, Year 1or Year 2 will fail on the grounds that if the school is at its maximum capacity they will not admit an extra child . If you can prove your case for children in Years 3 to 6 then there is a chance that the panel could make the school give you a place and go over their number, but this is assuming they haven't already done so with previous appeals.

Also, remember you are appealing for the school you want. You are not' saying why your child should not/can not/will not attend other schools. So in your appeal don't ever say anything negative about other schools, even if you feel it, the panel will not appreciate it, and for all you know their child might go to the school you are being negative about.

Thank you all. My kids are 10yo and 6yo so, year 4 and 6 next school year.
That was another thing that I though was strange, in the letter from the admission authority they just refused places in the schools I applied for, they did not offered any other places in any other schools...

Sorry, my kids are 10yo and 8yo, so year 6 and 4 next school year

With my DD I originally got a letter saying no places available. We rang them, and they confirmed they were searching for a place for her. 2 weeks later I did get an offer of an alternative school (but then won the appeal for the school her sister had been allocated which was one of her preferred choices.) We were told it would be the closest school with a place within 5 miles. We were also offered free transport.

If you told Derby LA that you were looking for places to start in September then the advice to apply in June was sensible advice as schools will not hold places vacant for more than a few weeks.
If you have applied for places and been refused then the LA should, knowing you are new to the area, have offered you alternative school places, so that is something that you need to go back to the LA about but you do need to understand that the places offered made not be in one school but in different schools for each of your children and secondly that they may be a distance from your home.
In terms of the places required, you are lucky in the context of the fact that appeals for places in year 6 and 4 will not be infant class size appeals, which are incredibly hard to win. The appeal will be on the basis of the strength of your case for admission against the strength of the school's case not to admit.
In terms of what you have said, you definitely need to question why there is a spare classroom, what it is being used for and whether there is spare staff to teach there. Having said this, that on its own would not be enough to win your appeal. You need to be specific about the reasons for this school being the only one that is appropriate for your children. I fully understand your comments about your and your children's faith however whilst it is an important reason for applying for the school it will not, as far as the independent panel is concerned, hold much weight in your reasons for admission. The issue here is that the reasons for the school really need to be around their education not their faith. I accept that the school may have a very different view on this. What you need to find out is what the school do that will be an attraction for your children - so is the school musical and your children play an instrument or the school is very sporty.

1. National offer day isn't relevant for those year groups. It makes sense to apply for a space a few weeks before you need it as they won't keep the space that long. The school probably didn't have spaces in Feb anyway and if they unexpectedly did they couldn't hold them for six months, so would have had to offer them to someone else ready to start.

2. I don't think this holds much weight as your children would be in classes with 30 others and they couldn't shift the classes round even if there is an empty room. Possibly worth mentioning but probably not a big point.

3. Can you explore the practicalities of this further. Does the school's links with the church mean the children take part in certain activities that they are familiar with? That they couldn't do if not at that school?

Have you actually moved yet? If not, I wonder if that is why the LA haven’t given a place, only said that there aren’t places in the schools you would like.

I’m in Derby, given it’s not a big city is there any way you could get your kids to one of the other RC primaries if it has space? There’s also St Elizabeth’s in Belper. All feed into the same RC secondary.

Have you settled into a Catholic Church yet? It may be that the priest has links with one or more of the Primary Schools and might be able to give you some help and advice with who should talk to and what you should argue.