Moving house and one child not been given spot in local school

[Fiddletiddle]

Hey all,

We are moving house tomorrow and my son (age 7) has been given a spot in Year 2 in the local school (probably 100/200 yards away from new house) but my daughter has been declined a spot in Year 1 at the same school. The only alternative is another school for my daughter but its around a 25min walk and my wife doesn't drive.

I have appealed the rejection and had an appeal hearing through today with a letter from the school countering my appeal which has deflated me somewhat (it's like a 5 page essay as to why my daughter shouldn't be given a spot).

My main reasons for the appeal were the fact her brother has accepted a spot, the alternative is 25mins away so one kid would always be late, the school being about 100 yards away, and the fact my daughter relies quite a lot on my son (he's a lot more confident than her).

Also recently been told during parents evening that my daughter is really far behind and likely to fail her end of year 1 assessments, and I feel like her potentially now having no school is going to be so detrimental for her entire education.

I guess my question is, does anyone have any advice or guidance on how to strengthen my appeal as I'm feeling quite hopeless at the moment! Any help would be tremendously appreciated.

Thanks!

But yes once your DS starts she should be top of the list as all other siblings her year will already be there

Have you asked the council if the school further away has space for your son? 25 minute walk is fine as a school run.

I won 2 appeals on the basis that the detramental impact on my childrens wellbeing and our family as a whole was greater than the detramental impact an extra child would have on the class

Those grounds are explicitly excluded from infant Class Size Appeals.

If there is a vacancies it must be given to the person at the top of the waiting list, or if none then the next applicant. If there is no vacancy the appplication must be declined. It's as simple and impersonal as that.

The only grounds for winning an ICS appeal are that
a) a mistake has been made that deprived your DC of a place that they would have been offered if the mistake had not been made. Vanishingly unlikely for an in-year appeal, unless you have good grounds to think there was a place and it was offered to an applicant who fitted the criteria less well than your DC
b) the decision is so perverse it cannot be allowed to stand - the threshold for this is very high eg child protection issues.

Transport issues don't come up in to it. Everyone is expected to use wrap-round care to make timings possible.

As described in my previous post to op .

"There are two types of appeal. If your child has been denied a place because of infant class size legislation (i.e. there are 30 pupils in either Reception, Year 1 or Year 2) you can appeal on the following grounds:

The admission criteria weren’t legal
The admission criteria were not correctly applied, and if they had been, your child would have been allocated a place
The decision not to admit your child is unreasonable
Otherwise, you will make a two-stage appeal, where:

The school has to prove that admitting your child would prejudice the education of the class as a whole, or would involve an inefficient use of educational resources, or,
You have to prove that the impact on your child of not being admitted would outweigh any prejudice to the school.
Also remember that because – unlike in junior and secondary classes – infant classes are limited to 30 children in all but exceptional circumstances, infant place appeals are the least likely to succeed. "

Also SEN and LAC applications will be met before alm other pupil critera. Best of luck op.

On the information to hand, this will be an Infant Class Size appeal. As there's nothing to suggest an error was made in refusing the place, the only way to succeed is to persuade the panel that the decision to refuse was so unreasonable (in the legal sense) that it shouldn't be allowed to stand.

The bar for winning such an appeal is very high. There are many ICS appeals on these lines but they rarely succeed; wanting siblings to be at the same school is understandable but rarely enough to win an appeal and needing additional support in school isn't relevant. Give it your best shot.

If they can't provide your child with a space in a school within 2 miles of home, she may be entitled to free school transport. (This is often a taxi - usually on a contract so it's the same driver each day.)

@lanthanum

If they can't provide your child with a space in a school within 2 miles of home, she may be entitled to free school transport. (This is often a taxi - usually on a contract so it's the same driver each day.)

If it’s a 25 minute walk away it’s almost certainly within 2 miles, so this wouldn’t be the case.

The school a 25 min walk away is in a different LA. Does the home LA have to find a school within their own LA or can they ‘outsource’ to a neighboring one? If the former, it’d be interesting for the OP to ask the LA which they live in where the nearest school in the LA with places is. That might be more than 2 miles away and so might mean she is eligible for transport (although transport could be a bus pass for the child rather than a taxi).

They can cross LA borders, yes. It would appear that the child has a school place within the required distance.

As a sibling, hopefully this should put each child high on the waiting list for the other school.

Once the eldest gets into Yr 3, any appeal would become a regular prejudice appeal too, which are slightly easier to win, although awkward logistics wouldn't be grounds.

Thanks @PatriciaHolm I had been wondering this as we live very close to a county boundary.