Appealling primary school admission

[Qihto]

Hi,

My son has been on the waiting list for a reception place for our preferred school since being rejected through the standard admissions process due to oversubscription. His stepsister (who lives with us and her mum) has transferred to the same school and will be starting year one at the same time. I made reference to this in his application however the school were not able to consider her as a linked sibling at the time of application as she had not yet completed the transfer from her old school. Once the transfer completed they added the sibling link and he jumped to the front of the waiting list.

I received an email offering him a place at the preferred school this morning which I immediately accepted. They have now sent a further email retracting the offer due to a clerical error as the space was meant to be offered to a child with an EHCP. My understanding is that there was no necessity to revoke the offer as legislation would have allowed the child with the EHCP to have attended even though the 30 child limit would have been exceeded.

Having the two children in separate schools is going to cause us significant logistical issues so I'm considering appealing this latest setback, any thoughts/advice?

Thanks

The offer was an error. Any error also has to deny you a place you would have been offered had the error not happened.

It is not unusual for parents to have children in different schools sorry

The offer should have been made to the child with the EHCP. Future children with an EHCP can be classed as 'excepted' but not one who should have taken up one of the PAN. The school have done the right thing and withdrawn the offer made to you by mistake within an acceptable time frame.

The School Admissions Code does not say your children must be accommodated at the same school.

If the appeal was an Infant Class Size appeal, your circumstances are not taken into account. The only thing that matters is that the process was administered appropriately.

The timing here seems odd, but given it's the first week back maybe not.

A child with an EHCP should have been admitted as soon as the EHCP was completed, regardless of class size; they shouldn't be on a waiting list at all. They count as an excepted child, and so take the class over PAN. However, the class still has to fall back to one under PAN for the next normal admission, so 2 children have to leave for there to be a vacancy.

I can only assume that this was school admissions first working day back, and they had a child leave and the paper work to process the child with the EHCP both land yesterday/today. The child with the EHCP has to be dealt with first, and given a place, which takes the class over PAN, and then the child leaving takes it back down to PAN.

Given the mistake was rectified very quickly, there is no problem with the place being removed due to an error.