Can they just refuse her??? Midterm place offered by LA but school is saying no room sorry!

[Takeitfrommumma]

So my 13 year old daughter has been having a terrible time in her current school. I won't go into it but the poor girl is traumatised!

I applied for a transfer to another nearby school, I got an email 2 weeks ago from the LA saying she had got a place and I accepted it! I've applied for a bus pass, which has been approved and brought her new uniform!

I called the school today as I've not heard anything from them and they told me that they have no room in her year and so she can't come there!

Can they just refuse to take her? My daughter is devastated and the admissions department isn't open now until Monday! Can anyone help? It seems incredibly unfair!

@Takeitfrommumma
Well done you.

It’s an interesting one in that the school argued it had reduced pan but the LA didn’t seem to know. What did the admission arrangements say on the web site or the council’s web site. I’d love to know. They had also got enough space for 180 prior to reducing pan so classroom space could not have been an issue.

Well done. I'm glad this is sorted.

Thankfully, most appeal panels understand issues like this and will get it right. Hopefully, the school will learn from this and not try the same trick on any other parents.

They have called me and set up a meeting for Tuesday next week. They said she can start on the Wednesday. Hurray!

Fantastic news, well down for persevering

Brill!

Brilliant news - very happy for you

Fantastic. Enjoy your weekend and a well deserved celebration.

That's good because she'll get three days to settle in.

That's fantastic. It'll be helpful to her to "dip her toe in" before half term I think. Good luck !

Glad it worked out.

Presumably when they needed to make cuts, with a year group barely over 150, they cut it to five classes instead of six. That makes sound financial sense, but only if they have cleared it with the LA so they don't end up with classes of 35 by the end of the year. It will be interesting to see what happens for year 10; it's possible that they would need to run six classes in the option blocks to accomodate pupils' choices, and maybe they'll be persuaded to go back up to six for core subjects too, so that there is room for new pupils.

This is absolutely appalling! So glad it has finally worked out but how can they have acted like this?
As always, so grateful to prh47bridge for their knowledge and timely, clear advice.