Pulling hair out with worry..... Catchments and Appeals?

[madmissy]

Hi there to whoever reads!

My daughter is now 4 and is in a great and very popular Schools Reception. However we are out of catchment and her being in Reception doesn't guarantee a place in September for Year 1.

I am so worried that my daughter will not get a place come September, she so settled there and really enjoys it. Dreading to perhaps have to appeal.

Last year they had 204 list as a preferance and they only have 90 places. They met all catchment criteria as this is very small but the distance criteria the school was not able to accommodate , therefore, the pupils living closest to the school were
allocated a place.

now we do not live far away 4 min drive max but so many must apply.

If DD is not offered a place I will appeal..... but what happens with these?

Has anyone any experience of a appeal and whats taken into account?

One worried and upset mummy here! (Bloomin hormones!)

[cory]

"You can only secure a place if you can prove that the school haven't applied the entrance criteria correctly."

Not entirely true. Appeals can also be successful if you are able to show that there is a special reason why an exception should be made in the case of your child.

Scenarios I know of have included:

wheelchair bound child and only School X has disabled access

severely traumatised or bereaved child and only School X offers specialist counselling

very emotionally fragile child who needs support of special friend (but you'd need to prove that the child was more emotionally fragile than the other children on the waiting list- so you're looking at a psychiatrist's report)

Look at it from the point of view of the school: if they only have 90 places and 240 applicants they are not going to be able to let all those extra 150 children in, because they simply don't have the space.

They may be able to make an exception for one child, but then they'd need to know that that child really did have extra needs, to let her or him in while not opening their doors to the rest.

We did get dd into secondary school on appeal. Her needs were pretty special- wheelchair and long record of emotional problems- but it took a whole file of evidence from paediatricians/psychiatrists/hospital/occupational therapists etc to prove that her case was different from that of the other 34 children who had also appealed.

[SoupDragon]

Special reasons are put on the application form though aren't they? I thought there was a "special/medical reason" part of the criteria (for our local schools anyway)

Our borough's criteria are:

1. Looked after children
   
2. Siblings
   
3. Medical
   
4. Distance

[cory]

Yes, but it is possible to be turned down at the application stage and still be accepted later, even though the LEA does not admit they'd made a mistake. Happened to us. Basically, the LEA did not accept the importance of our case, but the appeals panel did once we had provided more evidence and I had actually explained in front of the panel.

[madmissy]

yes same criteria here so hopefully the distance will swing it for us

[SE13Mummy]

Are you able to find out the home to school distances for last year? Our LA publishes a list of the home to school distance of the last child offered a place so that people can get a vague idea of whether or not they're in with a chance.

Unless a mistake has been made or there is a genuine medical/social/emotional need for a place at a particular school it is unlikely that an appeal for a place in Reception will be successful.

This time last year we applied for our DD to start Reception at a school that was 800m from our home, was the school where she was at nursery and where I am a teacher. We didn't get a place but had always known that none of our reasons were really enough. We didn't get a place at any of our other choices either and in spite of having put on the form that we needed a local school with breakfast club provision (due to both of us being teachers and not able to be in two places at once - school start times for teachers aren't flexible!) we were allocated a place at a school the opposite end of the borough!

We didn't appeal because we didn't have grounds to do so but we did reject the place we were offered and ask to be put on the waiting lists of various local schools. A place came up at one and we accepted. DD spent the first term of Reception there but we moved her back to 'my' school in January as she'd moved up the waiting list and a vacancy became available!