Infant class full - appeal

[Riemarkable]

Looking for help on infant class appeal.
bit of background. Older sibling (current year R) was in one local school but decided to move him as he wasn’t progressing in this particular school. When we looked around the proposed new school we spoke to the Head Teacher to discuss younger sibling, due to start year R this year as date for admissions had already closed and we had named the old school.
Head teacher was confident, because of Lowe birth rate, that you sibling would still get a place so we moved the older child.
younger sibling wasn’t allocated a place in this school and school is now full. Logistically I can’t be in two places at the same time as the two local schools start and finish at the same time.
I can’t remove older child as he has made amazing progress since moving him, has really settled. We have an appeal date in ten years time. Any suggestions?

You’ll not win an appeal based on this.

Get on the waiting list and start making some arrangements for drop offs.

We have an appeal date in ten years time. Any suggestions?

🤣🤣
Yeh, don't bother, they'll be at secondary school!
🤣🤣🤣

Sorry, but loving the typo.

Your only hope is via the waiting list. There is no reason to win an appeal in what you've written.

Just go on the waiting list, they move faster than you think.

I agree, you won't win an ICS appeal based on that.

I appealed for my child's reception place in 2020 and won - despite being advised on mumsnet to not bother, so it's always worth a try OP!

I believe you have to show that the detriment to your child not attending the school would be more significant than the impact on the other children being in a larger sized class (or something to that effect). I also argued that the decision the school had made was not a decision which would have been reasonably made by other local authorities.

If there's no space then there's no space, surely?
(In Scotland so maybe I'm over simplifying English system).

If you are on the waiting list with a sibling, what are the priority criteria? In most cases you would rocket to the top or nearly of the list, so your chances of a place are reasonable.

I believe you have to show that the detriment to your child not attending the school would be more significant than the impact on the other children being in a larger sized class (or something to that effect)

For Reception, that is for cases where adding an extra child to a year group would mean taking it over PAN, but no class size in Reception, or in year 1 or year 2 as that intake moves up through the school, would need to go over 30 as a result. e.g. a PAN of 25 would normally see all three years being taught as separate classes of 25.

However, e.g. a PAN of 45 would normally have Reception taught as 22 and 23, but then years 1 and 2 taught as a block of 90, 3x30, with either one or all of the classes being mixed yr1 and yr2. Therefore, an appeal for Reception would be heard under Infant Class Size legislation because although the immediate effect of one extra wouldn't be to take a class to over 30, there woukd be no way to keep classes in yrs 1 and 2 for that intake to 30 as the year group progressed.

Also, the bar for 'unreasonableness' is high and applies to the process (e.g. the application was ranked other than according to the published oversubscription criteria for a school / the LA ignored the rules for allocating places etc), not to the outcome - so the process being followed completely correctly but the result is that the parent has DC in different schools isn't legally unreasonable.

That being said, occasionally parents appealing against an Infant Class Size refusal do get lucky.

My experience is slightly different to this.

In my childs school reception is a PAN of 60 (2x30). This meant the class size ended up being larger than 30 (I wasn't the only successful appeal that year). The school brought in an extra teaching assistant (to support with the larger class size).

In this case the schools selection criteria had been applied correctly, I just argued it wasn't reasonable and the outcome of that poor decision would have a detrimental effect on my child. The local authority agreed with this.

Essentially the schools criteria favoured its feeder nursery in the selection criteria over catchment area.

Try and find out where you are on the waiting list, it is not first come first served, so check where you are in line with admissions policy, sibling may edge you above another but not above catchment. There will be movement at some point this year but will possibly have to start at allocated school

Appeals are decided by an independent appeal panel, not the LA.

As I said to you at the time of your appeal, you will occasionally get a sympathetic appeal panel that will step outside the rules for a deserving case, but that is unusual. In general, you can't win an appeal heard under infant class size rules in England unless you can show that a mistake has been made.

Not for Infant Class Size appeals

It was an infants class that I won the appeal for.

Appeal AND Contact the school directly, they have input into appeals. Worked for us.

For clarity, the school is specifically prohibited from supporting an appeal and the appeal panel is independent. The panel's only input from the school should be their written case plus what they say in the hearing. The school cannot give any other input or guidance to the panel.

I must also repeat that @Creamcake123 was lucky based on the information she has shared here, although it may, of course, be that there were factors involved that we don't know about. The rules for an infant class size case are that the panel can only admit if there was a mistake which cost the child a place or the decision to refuse admission was unreasonable. The bar for being unreasonable is very high - essentially, it has to be irrational.

Update ....... thankfully this appeal was successful.
We didn't even get to the part when we would need to present our argument forward as to why sibling needed to attend the same school.
Basically, through the panel's initial questioning it came to light that the school appeared not have to followed their own and also the LA's admission criteria, which we were completely unaware of. The Panel decided to uphold appeal and a place was granted.

So for anyone in a similar situation, I would say just go for it as you have nothing to loose and you never know what will come out during the panel's questioning.