Advice on appealing primary school admission refusal at a faith school

[Ysccc]

Hi all

Looking for some advice concerning primary admissions.for our DC given disappointing rejection from both first and second choices.

Looking for advice on how to approach an appeal for our primary choice. I've read on the forum this will likely be based on admissions criteria for the school and any mistakes in distance calculations.

We found this rejection from the local Catholic quite surprising. Although not being Catholic ourselves . Our neighbours either side attend the school one of which is non-christian albeit the children are older are in attendance. However we do know 1 child in our nursery who is non Christian religion living significantly further by straight line distance having being accepted for a place.

I am trying to figure out on what grounds we have to appeal given this is a faith denominated school and we would sit bottom rung but where we know 1 family distanced further by the same criteria being added (I do not believe we can however raise this in our appeal).

Is anyone able to advise of similar experiences in appeals for faith schools where you may not be of faith? Any information we can use to hand to make our case in the appeal or that we should be asking the LA for

Admission will have been based on the admissions criteria and as a non Catholic you will have been in a lower category. The child who has got in may be in a different admissions category for a reason you’re not aware of such as SEN or special circumstances. Or it could be that they are baptised Catholic, but not practising. Anyway, you can’t use this as grounds for an appeal, as you mentioned. You could find out which category you were placed in, and where you are on the waiting list. There is often some movement.

For a Catholic school, your child would almost certainly be lower priority than all those who qualify to for priority as Catholics. The criteria for qualifying as Catholic vary. Some require the child to be baptised Catholic within a short time after birth, others merely require the parents to attend church reasonably regularly. For some Catholic schools, your child would also be behind adherents of other faiths. And there can be other reasons children are in a higher category than your child - children who are formerly looked after or who have a sibling at the school, for example. All of these would be admitted ahead of your child even if they live further from the school.

For an appeal, the question is whether your child was placed in the correct admissions category and, if so, was the home to school distance measured correctly. If both of these are correct, you are unlikely to win an appeal. You can still try and you may strike it lucky, but you need to be realistic about your chances.

As other replies have mentioned, the other children must have qualified in a higher category than your child, for reasons you do not know about (and have no right to know about). All you can do in enquire where you are on the waiting list, and see where you go from there. If they're high on the list, there's every chance a place could still come up between now and September. You only have grounds to appeal if you have genuine evidence thay the admissions criteria has been applied incorrectly (very rare). You can't assume religious beliefs of other families, as you don't necessarily need to be practising to qualify higher. Sometimes being baptised pushes children into the practising category, even if they are not regular church goers.

Don't waste time on an appeal unless you have evidence to suggest you should win. How do you feel about the school you have been allocated? It was on your list, is it not possible your child could be perfectly happy there? I understand it must be disappointing not to get your top choices, but every school has their individual merits. Sometimes you need to reframe the disappointment and look at the positives of the school you have been allocated instead.

As other replies have mentioned, the other children must have qualified in a higher category than your child, for reasons you do not know about (and have no right to know about).

The OP says that neighbours' similarly non-RC DC already attend the school. So another possibility is that in their year(s), there were fewer applicants in higher categories (rather than that they themselves were ranked within a higher criterion).

You need to find the distance of the furthest child admitted under your criteria. This should be publicly available. If it's further than you, you can prove that a mistake has been made.

Quite possibly, for the neighbours mentioned. I was responding to this comment about another child in this cohort though:-

However we do know 1 child in our nursery who is non Christian religion living significantly further by straight line distance having being accepted for a place.

My local Catholic secondary will allocate to practicing Muslim and Jewish students if spaces after Catholic admissions.

However we do know 1 child in our nursery who is non Christian religion living significantly further by straight line distance having being accepted for a place.

At my village catholic school a practising muslim (or any other religion) with evidence of this would trump a non-religious child living closer (unless they are a sibling but non-catholic siblings rank lower than first born practising catholics).

I think you actually need to carefully review the admission criteria because it could be a number of reasons why this child has a place despite living further away.

Your letter should set out why a place was refused and the category in which your child was placed in. In previous years they may have had fewer faith applicants and siblings which allowed non faith applicants a place from further out than this year. Or there may have been housing built closer to the school since they applied which i creased applications. For priority consideration at faith schools you often need to supply evidence of baptism, regular attendance at services and/or living within certain parishes. Check the Admissions criteria to check you were considered correctly.

Bear in mind you can only win an Infant Class Size appeal if an error was made in processing the application, such as being placed in the wrong category or incorrect distance used and that error meant you missed out on a place.