School admissions policy changed to deprioritise siblings

[benjoshalex]

Hi
To cut a long story short we recently won a Primary School appeal and got our middle son admitting.The reason was that the admissions arrangements/criteria were so poorly written that we, the school (and academy) and the Council (who administered) all interpreted their treatment of siblings in a different way. Ultimately the appeal panel sided with us and admitted our son under an interpretation which would give siblings priority regardless of their distance from school (as it happens we’re only 2.8miles or so away, and we haven’t moved since first son admitted). An exacerbating factor is that the school behaved pretty poorly through the process in terms of dragging us through appeal even though all these issues were highlighted to them early on in the process.
The problem we’ve now got is the treatment of our third son in 2026 as the school will get an opportunity to rewrite the criteria by then. Our interpretation as agreed by panel and based on what the policy actually says effectively gives all siblings top priority. The school said that this was a mistake and what they intended was the alternating pattern of priority to local siblings (under 2 miles) then local other, then non-local siblings then non-local other. And the council did something completely bizarre, ignored the words completely, and only prioritised siblings up to 2 miles after which it is a free-for-all.
The problem is that the school will probably now want to deprioritise siblings to system they originally intended but didnt manage to write down! Fair enough if starting with a blank sheet (siblings vs. non siblings is always a tricky dilemma), but we would obviously now argue that it would be unfair to amend the arrangements to substantially change the treatment of siblings (from that which the panel confirm apply now) in a way which affects families like us who have already placed older children in the school based on that interpretation of a longstanding policy. We’ll also argue for alignment with what the Council do for the schools they run – they looked at sibling vs non sibling priority a while back and extended the definition of local from 2 to 3 miles due to number of sibling issues emerging.
A few questions please:

• Has anyone had a similar case of siblings being deprioritised once you already had the eldest in? Did you successfully argue any of the above and did it work?
• Has anyone ever seen (and can you point me to) any arrangements where there was a time limited transition in the arrangements to mitigate this. For example, siblings are given unlimited priority where the eldest was admitted to the school before year X?

Thanks in advance – really appreciated

Schools have to consult on changing their admissions policy so you and others in the community will have an opportunity to share your views. Also important to consider children living very near the school who don’t have older siblings attending who may be displaced by families living much further away who probably have access to nearer schools. Without priority linked to proximity / catchment, I think the schools which have most problems are those often high performing outstanding schools with a tiny non-sibling catchment, a clear property premium; parents get the eldest in, then sell a small property and move out for a bigger house, then get subsequent children in. Have you moved house since your first child gained a place?

So you won your appeal, now you're looking to challenge them again if they amend the policy because it would be 'unfair' to your family? You wouldn't stand a chance I'm afraid.

It's a school's prerogative to change their policy at any time they like, as long as the way they do it is above board. You won your appeal because the policy wasn't clear. If they make it clear, they'd be doing nothing wrong if your youngest child doesn't get in in the future. To be honest, your appeal is probably what has prompted them to amend the wording of their policy. I think you're realised this and are now panicking, right? You were thinking short term about child number 2 when you pushed for an appeal, without considering the impact on that in the future for child 3. They realised they risked people appealing every year under the current woolly policy, so think it's better to change it. Their prerogative.

That's the risk you take by applying to a school over 2 miles away. Even if one child gets in, there are no guarantees for future siblings if the policy doesn't prioritise them (even if a previous one did). It doesn't matter how long-standing the previous policy was, policies are always subject to change.

Yes this would be a pain for your family, but changes to admission policy will always be a pain to someone. What benefits some under certain policy changes, creates a headache for others. That's the nature of these things. You can never please everyone. On the flipside to your dilemma, someone else more local to the school than you could argue it's unfair to their family if their eldest child can't get into what might be their most local school because places are all taken up by families who live further away, under the current sibling rule.

Most school admission policies give priority to looked after children and children with an EHCP naming the school as the most appropriate for that child, then siblings in catchment, then other children in catchment, then siblings out of catchment, then other children out of catchment. It sounds like your school want to bring their policy in line with this, to make it fairer on local families rather than prioritising siblings regardless of how far away they live.

Basically, you were quite lucky your eldest got in to a school 2.8 miles away, you were very lucky the policy was so woolly that you won an appeal for your second but it sounds like your luck might be about to run out for your third. Sorry.

Schools absolutely should prioritise local children. Siblings within the immediate locality should rightly be given preference, but out of catchment is a major risk to apply, if you have more than one child, as children within the catchment area should come first. For the local families who have previously been missing out, this change sounds very positive.

As for this not being 'fair' on your family, welcome to life. It often seems unfair. However, the school are actually trying to do what is fair for the families in the community they serve. As an 'outsider', your family shouldn't be a priority above those families. if this policy change is passed, after following the correct procedure, there's bugger all you can do I'm afraid.

As a PP said, you need to make your representations at consultation stage. But in itself the policy that the school wants sounds reasonably “standard” so I suspect it will go through.

Can you move closer?

Also, you say the school behaved poorly by dragging you through appeal, but that's the process! They couldn't just say ok we'll give your kid a place after all, now you've pointed out what's wrong with our current policy! They probably knew you'd win the appeal, and were preparing accordingly behind the scenes to be allocated your child, but it wasn't up to them to simply do it, they had to wait for the decision of the appeal. Now they're responding, by wanting to change the policy, to ensure they're not in this position again.

If you think they've behaved poorly though, why do you so desperately wish your children to remain there? Maybe it's time to start looking for something more local which all 3 can easily get into? I'm guessing you don't want to, as you perceive this school to be 'better' than others around, which is why you applied in the first place right? You can't have it all ways I'm afraid.

The school may not change their policy, the quantity of primary aged children is falling so schools are in competition for funding/ children.

I would wait until the school actually begins the process of changing its admissions criteria before getting upset about this. If that actually happens, it would seem sensible to mobilise other parents in a similar position to respond to the consultation.

If the school is oversubscribed then your children getting spaces at the school will come directly at the expense of other children who won't get a place. The children who are currently missing out probably live closer to the school than your children and happen to be the eldest/only child through no fault of their own. I don't think it would take a huge leap of empathy from you to understand why the school wants to change this.

In response to your specific question, my local school deprioritised siblings after consultation without any transition arrangements so it can be done!

They did this in our Borough between dd1 starting at an undersubscribed school in 2015 & dd2 starting in 2019.
500m priority area for 1 form entry & 750 for 2 form entry. We are around 1 mile away.
There was a time stipulation built in that meant if you had a child already in the school when rules changed - from memory local siblings, non local siblings pre 2017, priority area, non priority area.
The reasoning is sound to stop people moving in and out of priority areas and displacing people who live on doorstep.

ConfusedKoala's is the sensible way to do it - otherwise those with children already at the school either need to disrupt the existing children at the school, or try and do two simultaneous school runs (fine at secondary, not at primary in my opinion)

A good school should want to facilitate their families and children getting an education - a holistic approach, realising that the children are part of a family, and not isolated units.

Our school recently did a consultation just about moving the opening time by up to 10 minutes (they settled on 5) because they know that it will greatly affect the parents who drop off their kids on the way to work (5 minutes at the start of rushhour can be 20 by the time you actually get to work)

A school locally had a massive row about expansion (tons of local opposition, long legal proceedings, did expand eventually but promised to keep the school ‘for local children’) and ended up with the sort of set up you’re describing.

Criteria 3 of this admissions policy shows a carve out for siblings who entered the school before the admissions criteria changed, its combined with quite a complex admissions priority area which aimed to deal with a black hole for some parents locally. www.merton.gov.uk/education-and-learning/schools/admissions/primary/primary-school-admissions-criteria/wimbledon-chase-priority-area#

They will do a formal consultation if they plan to change it. If they don’t consult - the tribunal’s interpretation should be applied from now on. If they do consult, you can input then.

I think the family whose firstborn is starting school in the same yeargroup as your 3rd child, and who lives 1.5 miles from the school, has a better claim to a place than the dozens of younger-child siblings of families living over 2 miles away.

You've got plenty of warning that this is on the cards. You can either move to within the 2 mile radius, or make plans to deal with the pain of having kids in different schools, or get your youngest child into the best school they actually qualify for and then apply for in-year places for the older children there.

As pp said, it was probably a mistake to go through with this appeal for child #2 of 3, as obviously unless child #3 is in an age cohort that has significantly fewer children, it's obvious that the same issues will arise and that therefore the school will clarify the wording in plenty of time.

You need them to add a clause like this which will prioritise a family if they applied from the same or nearer address for an older sibling but will not prioritise them if the family have moved further from the address. This will probably only apply to a few families, possibly only your family so it is not going to open the floodgates to everyone living next to the school to get the oldest child in and then moving away and still getting subsequent children into the school which is presumably what they are trying to discourage.

They will have had to go to appeal though because they cannot admit over the PAN for an infant class size other than through appeal. It will not be personal to your family and they may well welcome some input into crafting a more watertight criteria because it will mean they are less susceptible to appeals in the future.

You weren't 'dragged' through the appeals process, this is the process.

Yes the school can change the criteria, few have siblings regardless of distance as a top factor. To do this there would be a consultation period in which you and other parents who would be affected could partake in, but ultimately it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to change the stipulations given that this policy is not standard.

You need to click on the image for the full text, it has cropped out the key phrase at the beginning.

It is important to remember in replies that OP's oldest child was living in the same address when she originally applied so at that time the family were either near enough and the school has become more popular or newer houses built squeezing OP' family out, or her oldest might have an EHCP naming that school, or similar legitimate reason for being placed there. Reasons which still mean that this school is the most appropriate for her oldest and which will mean that just sending younger children to a different school will mean that the school run is disproportionately going to affect the older child too.

This is not a case of the OP having lived next to the school for admission for the oldest and then moving away which does frustrate many people and which schools do try to limit.

Really appreciate this. Was exactly the type of help I needed, thanks. Do you mind me asking which school so I can google their policy and see the wording?

Sadly, now that the panel has determined their arrangements were unlawful as a result of our appeal they will have to change them, there is no choice. The issue is that they will have to use emergency provisions to change the 2025 procedures (much later than you'd normally be allowed) which means that they don't have to consult, but I guess you could object afterwards.

You can ask them to insert one of these clauses but you have no right to insist that they do.
They can change it to any policy wording that they like as long as it is not patently unreasonable which this would not be as many schools do have exactly the policy that you don't want.
Generally in life a duty to consult on something is a toothless thing as the authority can ignore consultation responses pretty easily.

A key fact I forgot to mention was that this is a very rural location. I appreciate 2 miles might sound a long way at a high competition London school, but most of our schools will be 2miles away from us, and they're all small 1 form entry (or in many cases 2-3 year groups together to make up 30).

In terms of the appeal, the policy was so poorly written that different people read it in different ways and it was ambiguous. From our perspective, we researched it and only decided to put our first in based on our reading of the policy that siblings thereafter would get in. But then we were surprised when the school read the policy a different way. The panel actually said it was unlawful as a result and needs a complete rewrite, but ultimately agreed the way we read it was right. So it wasn't so much "luck" but rather a complete failure of process in terms of a poor policy wording. So in reality, the current policy gives unlimited priority to siblings which is unusual, and they will want to restrict that in some way moving forward (which isn't unreasonable in itself).

We appreciate what others say about siblings being at the expense of first borns - as I said in my first post, a known dilemma. Prioritising siblings in some way is standard practice.

The debate here is really only two things:

• If they want to change approach, to reduce sibling priority, anyone's experience of "transitionary" arrangements to avoid problems for those who already put the older ones in knowing that their younger would get in.
• How big do you draw the sibling priority "catchment area". As others have said it is reasonable to stop people winning a place then moving. Equally, our first got in "naturally" based on simple distance at over 2 miles given rural location and we're still in the same house. The council set their rural catchment at 3 miles for this reason.

Really appreciate those who've offered some constructive help on these two questions - makes a massive difference seeing the wording of other policies to help us argue.

I wish more schools used the priority system your school intended to use. In our village primary, my son wouldn't have got a place this year despite us living 0.4 miles away. He would have been displaced by two sibling priority children, one 3 miles away and another 13! Our only other options are 2+ miles away.

I would proactively email the school with a suggestion rather than wait for them to produce emergency criteria which might also not be well thought through. It is likely that it will be a diminishing number of children who will benefit from such a clause over the years. Around here most people seem to have two children (or increasingly one child) with a two year age gap - i.e. the difference between your middle and youngest child. You know that your middle child will be one of the furthest away so the chances are that in 2026 it will only benefit a few families so is not going to disadvantage the people living nearby too much. I would try to work with the school on a policy. I would try to be open and supportive with them at this stage rather than adversarial because you want to win them over.

If you think that your area is at risk of turning into a black hole for applications then maybe petition the local council to explore expanding one of the schools to account for that. They might however expand a different school, not your current school.

So sorry, that's awful. We got dc1 into our nearest but not catchment school when it was undersubscribed 15 years ago. As it became more popular we were very grateful for the sibling priority as by the time dc3 started there the school was oversubscribed. We are 1.1 miles away from the school my dc attend and 1.2 miles away from the village catchment school.

Yes I would suggest you write to the chair of governors with a suggestion as soon as possible before they set in stone their own plans.

You can only make a suggestion but they may not have considered the possibility of making transition arrangements so a polite suggestion that they do so can't hurt.

I would make it a conciliatory tone though as I don't think you have any legal recourse if they don't do as you want so persuasion is going to be the only avenue open. You don't want them to conclude that it's in their best interests to change it not in your favour so they don't have to put up with you for longer.....

It seems only fair that the policy should have a sibling catchment of 3 miles like the council has set given the rural location? Additionally, and I think this may have been posted earlier, many schools have policies of a certain distance for siblings but also allow siblings outside of this if the family has not moved. This avoids having complicated transition arrangements (which could go on for years), particularly if the original policy was not that clear.