School appeal - urgent

[monyk12]

Dear parents,

This is a desperate post re schools and appeals; apologies if not allowed, I can delete if needed.

I have appealed for reception for my daughter and I am looking to find information, reasons, motivations on how to build a successful school appeal.
I am concerned that the offered schools is unsuitable for my daughter and the hearing is tomorrow.
Any information welcomed.
Many thanks in advance.

We only have one daughter, whilst other have 2> kids, therefore they have preference in getting a slot - so every kid should receive fair allocation regardless if they have siblings or not

Every single one of those families started at the school with an eldest child who had no sibling priority. Sibling priority is permitted in the Admissions Code. This line of argument will not ger you anywhere

Distance first - 0.4 miles from our house
Last year distance was 0.21 miles. So I don't think is improved this year

So you live nearly 2x the greatest distance offered in previous years (and have not established what this year's cut off is in your category - do keep looking for the letter that should tell you. You no longer mention that you think the distance is wrong - can you clarify?

Attendance to after school activities
For is relevant - we work FT with long hours including weekend, so this services in a schools is very important to us as a family

No matter how important to you, it is simply not relevant to an ICS appeal

Concerned about attendance if we cannot organise school drop offs and pick ups

There are exceptional circumstances (such as mobility issues: the person who is doing the school drop offs has restrictive mobility issue and we highly rely on the nanny to do the school drop offs and pick-ups; further more, nanny was present in our life since the day our daughter was born and we don't want to replace or get rid of her as she is amazing

Regret that wanting to keep the same nanny is not relevant to an ICS appeal. And indeed is likely to harm you case as theres no obvious reason why nanny cannot do a different school run

Safety reasons

Compared with the school she was oferred which has an above than national and borough average criminality rate, with hightly transited public roads increasing the risk of accidents and endagering personal safety, be believe that the location of the Academy schools has less criminality rate

Not relevant to an ICS appeal.

Also do you have any compelling strong reasons that you consider are good to use?

You need to establish if this appeal is under ICS rules.

And if it is (and nearly all Reception appeals are) then your best chance is to prove both that a mistake has been made and that the mistake cost your DC an offer that would have been theirs if there had been no mistake

I'm not sure on what grounds you've appealed.

Thinking it's not the best school for your child for whatever reason (perhaps unless some SEN) is not a reason for appeal.

You sound totally under prepared, just because you didn't get your choice of school is not reason enough to win an appeal and I can't understand how you are thinking of going to the meeting tomorrow without having a strong case of appeal already prepared.

The only grounds you have are distance and if the figures you have given here are correct, based on last years admission have no chance.

I think you’ve misunderstood the purpose of the appeal.

Because it’s an ‘infant class size’ appeal, you can only win if you can prove that the local authority have made a mistake in applying the admissions criteria, and it doesn’t sound like they have.

Usually, priority is given to: 1) looked after children 2) children with EHCPs 3) Siblings 4) distance, but the criteria for your school will have been clear when you applied.

Your childcare arrangements, work, nanny, OFSTED, etc aren’t relevant for this appeal. You need to either prove they’ve made a mistake (unlikely) or accept the school you’ve been offered.

I know that’s not what you want to hear. Sorry.

The school will have an admission policy with the criteria and the order of priority ie pupil premium children, siblings etc. Unless they have not followed this I don’t think you have a case in appeal.

I'm sorry op, I don't think you've understood how an appeal works.

The things you've listed are not things that would be considered in an appeal.

They won't consider anything to do with your working hours, hobbies, the nanny, crime rates.

Does your child have special needs or a disability? If they do not then it's not likely that your child's needs would be prioritised in this situation. None of the things you've mentioned are relevant to the admission criteria.

Simply put -

• If this is an ICS appeal (30 children per teacher in Yr,1,2) - then the only grounds that an appeal can be won on is if the admissions criteria are unlawful, were incorrectly applied and that cost you a place, or the decision not to admit was so unreasonable a normal person would not have made it - which is a very high bar to reach and the normal example used is a child/family who is in some sort of police protection.
• Your only relevant ground here is if your distance has actually been measured incorrectly and this error cost you a place. The LA will use a special software tool to calculate precise distance between a nodal point on your property to the relevant point in school. This will not be the same as any distance you can get from Google maps etc.

If the appeal is not ICS, you need to show the detriment to your child of not attending is greater than the detriment to the school of taking another pupil. Nothing you have said so far - getting to school, ofsted, area, after school clubs - are strong grounds to show this.

The school case, which you should have by now, will say whether the appeal would be ICS. Does it?

The whole point of the post is to get ideas on how to defend out case, so if you have any ideas, that would be more greatly appreciated. Thank you
The central issues are:

• You're currently not sure whether they have worked the distance our incorrectly
• You've not currently got any compelling reasons why your child requires this school

For context, assuming no EHCP in place, these are rough examples to illustrate.

A child with medical issues is unlikely to meet the exceptional and compelling threshold because most schools are expected to be able to manage a range of medical issues appropriately. A child with substantial or severe medical issues that requires their school to be close to a local hospital to minimise disruption for their long term treatment/needs to be close to their parents in the event of medical emergencies might, especially if the parents have supporting evidence from their child's consultants, occupational therapists, physio etc.

As others have said, kindly, OP, an appeal is to prove the LA have made a mistake.

E.g. rarely they miscalculate the distance from a pupil's home to the school gate. If you can prove a pupil further away than you (with no other reason for being higher up the list - eg medical, EHCP) has been admitted, you have a good case.

If you have a case of "it's not fair" because you happened to want the closest school, or it doesn't match your lifestyle/ aspirations or even siblings' medical needs, you won't win an appeal on that basis.

The onus is on you to prove a mistake has been made. Very few appeals are successful.

People aren't trying to be unkind, but you should probably brace yourself.

Echo others - you are getting good advice on this thread and it’s not possible to argue that sibling preference is unreasonable as schools are allowed to have this as a criterion.

Also, many of those siblings will live closer to the school than you, if the distance has been small for a few years, unless they moved after the eldest sibling got in

I think you've misunderstood what an appeal is here, OP. It isn't a plea because you don't like what you've been given, that's not how the system works. It's an opportunity to explain how the LEA made a mistake, and they haven't made a mistake here. It's best if you start to prepare yourself for the school you've been allocated, or consider any private options you have.

OP I know that you want people to tell you how to win an appeal but unless you can prove that the distance / admission criteria was not followed, you can not win.

An appeal is your opportunity to tell the panel how the admission criteria was not followed. it is not a meeting for you to say "we want this school cos it is in a nice area, has a good ofsted rating and is better for us for childcare"

None of those reasons are any more important for your child than they are for everyone else's children.

How can you say siblings shouldn't have priority when your try to claim logistics with drop of/pick up as reasons for appeal. Ridiculous entitlement.

To everyone, especially those who've shared their valuable knowledge, do remember that we were all new to this once and OP is on a steep learning curve.

Yes, we can all shout about how you should check the distance of the last admitted child before you apply for a school, but many, many people don't know this.

I also know every year our local school has 10 or so appeals and the vast majority of them have no case. OP isn't alone in misunderstanding the appeals process.

That said, OP, time to start making plans for the school you've been given and/or investigating other options. Unless the school is vast, it's vanishingly unlikely you're going to see movement of 23 children in the next couple of months.

With respect, you can get annoyed with posters saying you can't win and ask for advice on how to mount your appeal, but they go hand in hand. There is no advice anyone can give because your grounds for appeal aren't valid. You are out of the catchment area, end of.

The difficulty you'll have is that you have no winnable grounds at appeal. Not one. Compelling grounds would be so compelling that no reasonable authority would deny a place. An example might be that a family has been moved out of area for their safety and by sheer chance they've found out that a close relative of the person they are in hiding from has children at the offered school and it would endanger the whole family. Even then, they would only establish that they can't go to the offered school, rather than that they must go to their preferred school.

In my LA, the kind of appeal you are seeking has a success rate of 0.4%, that's 4 in a thousand, and those 4 are usually from genuine mistakes. Many appeal panellists refuse to sit on ICS appeals because they hear heartbreaking cases that still don't meet the threshold for overturning the LA decision.

I think you've completely misunderstood the appeals process.

You don't have any grounds for appeal.

I am one of the rare people that has won an appeal and spent stupid amounts of time looking into possible reasons for appeal before our appeal meeting. From @meditrina 's list earlier we won because:

a) the admissions criteria broke the Admissions Code (eg not giving priority to a group they must prioritise such as LAC, or prioritising a group they must not) and if they had compliant criteria your DC would have been offered a place.

There were too long to go in to reasons why the year we applied the LA had criteria that were later deemed to be unfair (they changed them back after first admissions round).

Lots of people in LA appealed under these grounds in the same year and even then we only won because it wasn't also an ICS appeal. Some people did win despite ICS but not all. Unfortunately for you, it is pretty much impossible that you will win this (assuming ICS).

So some advice for tomorrow. Try not to get emotional, stay calm and to the point, write down what you want to say if this will help you and read from that, don't get angry and honestly, don't go on about crime stats. The people who make the decision aren't council employees - treat them with respect. I hope you find peace with the school you have been offered after this is all over.

So sorry you are going through this....it is heartbreaking when you plan on a particular school and then it doesn't happen. Unfortunately, pps are correct .... it doesn't sound as though there are any reasons for appeal so people can't really help. Things like work, drop offs etc will have no bearing ..... think of the problem if they said yes and then the 22 children above yours on the waiting list also say it's because they work etc it's just unmanageable which is why there are such stringent guidelines to make it fair to everyone.

rarely they miscalculate the distance from a pupil's home to the school gate. If you can prove a pupil further away than you (with no other reason for being higher up the list - eg medical, EHCP) has been admitted, you have a good case

Not necessarily - you not only have to show that a mistake was made, but that the mistake deprived your DC of an offer they would have had if the mistake hadn't been made.

In this example, the family of the DC who was top of the waiting list would have a strong case, as wrongly admitting one other pupil would mean they didn't get the offer. But that won't apply to OP, who is 23rd on waiting list

OP: I know I've written a lot of things that you won't really have wanted to read, because they have not been encouraging of your chances (on the basis this is indeed an ICS appeal). I do think you need to be realistic.

But I hope the day goes well for you

But people are telling you that there is no case to build as you don’t meet the criteria

Your ‘appeal’ is based on personal preference and not because the selection process was incorrect

I’m amazed you are even being given the opportunity to appeal based on what you have said

I’m amazed you are even being given the opportunity to appeal based on what you have said
Then you don't understand the process either.

Unfortunately OP you are unlikely to win and I also agree the sibling link shouldn't exist if you move out the catchment. Have you looked at other schools which you might prefer that have spaces? What about the faith school system or private if you can afford it?

As others have said you need to stick to the facts about why you think they've made a mistake. Talking about crime rate will not help the appeal, also about the nanny is irrelevant.

You may need to accept the good school in the poor area or if you can afford it maybe private may suit your long working hours.

There aren't grounds for a successful appeal from what you've written here.