Advise on school place please!? Westminster/kensington and chelsea

[mamawldn]

My son has just been refused all 3 places I put down on his primary school applications.

I am non religious and chose to put down all 3 closest non religious schools on the application, obviously all 3 great schools aside from that fact aswell.

Now he has been refused all 3 and has been offered a place at a close Catholic school and I wondered if 1) I have grounds to appeal his place at the closest school I applied for on the grounds of me wanting to send him to a non denominational school and 2) if anyone has any experience with St Mary of the Angels school in W2?

Thanks any advice welcome 💕

Others will come along with better advice but I don’t think that would be grounds for an appeal. Check the admissions criteria of the school you want, and whether there are 30 places in the reception class. If so, it will be an infant class size appeal. Plenty of advice on here about ICS appeals. Make sure you are also on the waiting list.

Firstly, you would need to determine whether the appeal would be ICS - Infant Class Size; this will be the case if the school has classes of 30 in any of reception/Y1/Yr2. An ICS appeal is extremely difficult to win (it relies on their being an error that cost you a place, or the decision not to admit being unreasonable - a very high bar in this sense)

Even in a non-ICS appeal, your wanting a non-dominational school would have very little weight as an argument I'm afraid (it's an argument as to why you don't want this school, not why you need a specific other one). You would need to show that the detriment to the school of taking another child is lower than the detriment to your child of not attending that school.

Make sure you are on the waiting lists for all other schools you would accept.

Whilst the school does seem to be a strongly Catholic one, the fact you have been allocated it suggests it is undersubscribed and thus it's likely there will be other non-Catholics there.

Is the number of pupils admitted 30 or a multiple of 30?

If so, Infant Class Size rules apply (occasionally also for other numbers, if they have mixed year classes in years R -2)

You can win ICS appeals on 3 grounds only

a) there was something wrong with the admissions criteria (eg giving priority to a group they must not) and your DC would have been offered a place if the criteria were compliant. This is exceptionally rare
b) the admissions authority made a mistake in handling your application (eg overlooking sibling, or measuring distance wrongly) and your DC would have been offered a place if the mistake had not happened. Also rare, but does happen sometimes
C) the decision is so perverse it cannot be allowed to stand - threshold very high - child protection reasons, or placing a DC who uses a wheelchair in a school that is not adequately accessible

Are any of those likely to apply to you?

No-one is guaranteed a school that matches their faith (and do remember that even non-denominational schools have to have a daily act of worship, some can have a greater religious 'feel' than a faith school). It is not grounds for appeal, just as it wouldn't be for a religious family who had applied for the six nearest faith schools, not qualified for them and been placed in a community school.

You’ve had excellent advice already.

Pressure of numbers in London boroughs means that (to the best of my knowledge) all primary schools admit in multiples of 30 and all appeals for places in YR are held under Infant Class Size rules. If that is the case here too, then nothing you’ve mentioned suggests that there’s been an error or that the decision is so unreasonable that an appeal panel would have the power to overturn it.

Thanks everyone I guess I'll just have to hope I'm high enough up on the waiting list!

I went to a Roman Catholic school

I'm not religious

Wasn't an issue!

Can I ask everyone what it might mean if a schools last offstead report was in 2017? Is this for any perticular reason do you think? Thank you ☺️

@mamawldn

Can I ask everyone what it might mean if a schools last offstead report was in 2017? Is this for any perticular reason do you think? Thank you ☺️

It doesn't mean anything - schools are usually OFSTED inspected on a 5 year cycle, but Outstanding schools can go longer; they were exempt but were supposed to be going back into the 5 year cycle, but of course the pandemic has meant few inspections have happened for a year so everything will be a bit behind. There are also interim inspections, usually to follow up on issues mentioned in a full report.

It doesn't mean anything, schools are not ofsted checked every year unless put in special measures

Okay thanks for your help everyone - anyone with experience with that perticular school please do share your thoughts on it would be so helpful 💞

If you want views on a particular school, it’s better to start a thread with its name in the title.

I don't know that school in particular but we live in Westminster and our two DS go to school in K&C. The only thing I'll say is that a lot of parents apply for schools as back up but children end up going to local private schools so there's a fair bit of movement on waiting lists. Good luck!