Appeal - infant class size

[Blythwind]

Our daughter did not get our first choice school, which is an academy that our eldest already attends.

The reason is we are out of catchment and the academy prioritise catchment over siblings.

We lived in the catchment when our eldest started and our daughter was a newborn, but moved in his first year at school.

The 30 places Are full with in catchment children.

We are two down on the wait list. But it looks as though she can be bumped down the wait list by anybody inside the catchment.

so, is it even worth appealing??

We dont meet any twin, EHCP, military child etc criteria for an exception place.

Thanks in advance for any advice

Appealing on what ground?
You need a valid reason to appeal, it doesn't look like you have one unfortunately.

I'd say you're vanishingly unlikely to be successful.
On what basis would you be appealing?
Id say your best bet is to accept the place you were offered and go on the waiting list.

My friend had this and ended up moving the older dc to the new primary dc2 got into for year 2 because she needed them to be in the same school. Once you’re out of catchment it’s hard till argue.

Extremely unlikely you'd win but I guess you can try. Surely you knew this was a possibility when you moved out of catchment...?

Not an expert but follow a lot of these threads.
No point appealing. The criteria are like that to stop a family getting 1 child in then moving 5 miles and sending 4 siblings.
Maybe a wait list place comes up, or maybe you appeal in y3, or you move elder to younger ones school.

Nah, you've got nothing.

Stay on the waiting list, but otherwise you don’t have grounds for appeal.

This is clearly an infant class size case. You can only win if you can show that the admission arrangements did not comply with the law, which is unlikely, or that there was a mistake in administering admissions that means your daughter should have been given a place. The admission criteria you describe are lawful and nothing you have said indicates that a mistake has been made, so any appeal would be a long shot. You may get lucky - there have been cases where the parents weren't aware that there was a mistake but evidence of one emerged during the hearing. But unless something like that happened, you would lose.

Thanks all - its as I thought!

Sorry, you don't have grounds to appeal. The admissions criteria is set as it is to ensure local children have as much chance as possible of gaining a place at their most local school. If you move out of catchment, you run the risk of not gaining a place at the same school as their older siblings, if the school are oversubscribed. This was always a risk.

You can only appeal if you can prove that the admissions criteria hasn't been adhered to properly, but that really doesn't sound like the case here.

Two separate school drop offs isn't practical, but unfortunately that's not admission's problem. It's their job to follow the admission criteria, which it sounds like they have. Your best solution is to look into getting them both in to a more local school to your new house, rather than wasting time on an appeal which you won't win. You may have a chance of gaining a place from the waiting list, if two drop out, but you are right that any new child moving into catchment would bump your child further down the list.

Update - we submitted an appeal. We've got nothing to lose....

We've submitted on the basis of changed admission criteria when the (brand new) school moved from temporary buildings into the newly built building.

I'm sorry @Blythwind but I still don't think you have a chance. So they changed admission criteria and it has affected your second child going to the same school as your first one. That's irrelevant. The admission criteria was going to change (as many things do,) and at some point, and people were going to be affected. That's life.

I can see why they have done it. Many people got sick of not being able to get their child into their local school - which was a good one, because there were no places, because some families had moved in a year ago or so (often into private let,) purely to get their DC into that school. Then when the kids were in, they moved away a few miles to somewhere they preferred living.

Why can you not get your older child into the school that is in the catchment area? Why the desperation for them to both be in the school that is not in the catchment area? (I'm guessing you're going to say the school your older child is at is a much better school, but if that is the answer, then why move out of the are, when you knew your second child would not get into the school the older one is at? You MUST have known this...)

In my village, people have to have lived here for a minimum of 5 years before the children can go to the village school. Otherwise it's the primary school in the Market Town 4 miles away. We have no shops or public transport or facilities here anyway (as we're out in the sticks,) so everyone has a car, so no-one can make the excuse that they can't get their children to the other school.

If anyone did live here for 5 years and got their children into the village school, and then they left, the child would be allowed to remain, but any (probably younger) siblings of that child would be refused as they're no longer in the catchment area/don't live in the village. It's an excellent school, and many people want their children to go to it, so they make it very hard/sometimes impossible for people (who have just moved into the village,) to get their children in. Understandably...

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I agree with prh47bridge.

Although you don’t (as some others have suggested) need ‘grounds of appeal’ - your ‘grounds’ are whatever arguments or evidence you care to submit - I can’t see anything here which is likely to persuade the panel that there’s been any sort of error in refusing you a place.

You are very unlikely to succeed if your main argument is that your child would have been admitted if the oversubscription criteria had not been changed, or had been changed in a different way. Give it your best shot, but consider back-up plans for September, whether that’s managing having your children in two schools, moving the older child to the younger sibling’s school or whatever.

Where there are changes to the admissions policy, there add rules around when changes are published. I’d check these were adhered to.

Agree. For whichever year of entry the change applied to, the relevant policy must have been determined by the end of February in the academic year before the year in which applications had to be made for normal admission round entry - so if the change only applies from September 2026, the policy should have been on the school's website in March 2025 (and in the LA's 'Starting Reception 2026' info in advance of applications opening for 2026 entry).

A change (in this case ?? from 'siblings' having priority to a differentiation between IC and OOC siblings?) must also have been consulted on fir 6 weeks between 1st October and 31st January in the year of determination (so for a six week period sometime between 1st October 2024 and 31st January 2025 for 2026 entry); if this isn't still up on the school's website, ask them or the LA to confirm that it took place, and when. I can't imagine that the independent appeal panel won't ask the school about consultations as part of confirming that its policy is lawful, though.

We got our third choice and are heartbroken! Son already attends preschool at the one in catchment, and we’ve lived in the village 10 years (my partner’s been here his whole life!)

The stats published on our LA website says that for the school we did get, last person offered was 1900m away but were 2200 away?? Surely this is an error, either on their published info or our admission? If it’s the latter, is it grounds for appeal? It wouldn’t necessarily help us get into the one we want but, what if it could?

At a loss of what to do, I’m really struggling with this and have cried every day since. It just doesn’t seem a fair system, I get there has to be something but still!

Any advice would be much appreciated xoxo

You would be better off starting your own thread to get more relevant replies.

LAs measure to a defined point (the gates or the entrance etc) at the school which may be further away than your closest point

Thanks will start another threat - I’ve measured to the school boundary and there’s a website which you put your postcode in and tells you how far the school is (it’s a council website) which also confirms our distance

Surely depends on how many other kids were closer/ higher priority...?