school appeal

[dismum]

i am very disappointed that we didn't get the preferred school and have made an appeal. have any of you appealed before and how effective it is and when will you know what no. you are on the waiting list.

You can ask now where you are on the waiting list, although some LEAs won't (I think) hand out the information until after the date on which offers have to be accepted as, until then, there'll be some toing and froing.

Whether your appeal succeeds will depend (broadly speaking) on whether you can demonstrate that the admissions criteria weren't applied properly or there was some other error. Assuming this appeal is for a reception place, then the provisions relating to infant class size and prejudice will also apply. Look at the admissions code and admissions appeal code on the DCSF website.

We appealed for dd's secondary school. Apparently there were 35 families who appealed to get into the same school but I haven't heard whether anyone apart from us was successful. Basically, your chances of getting in will depend on your being able to persuade the appeals committee that your dc is a special case:

either because you can prove that they have applied their own admissions criteria wrongly so that your dc should have been admitted ahead of some other dc who was admitted

or because there are special social/medical/other reasons why your dc needs to get into that school more than all the other dcs who also have not been admitted

If you appeal they will either decide to admit your appeal or not, so it won't be about waiting lists. We didn't have to wait more than a couple of weeks after we had been heard by panel, can't remember how long it took to get to panel though.

We appealed on medical/social grounds: dd was wheelchair bound so needed wheelchair adapted school, but also had documented emotional problems so needed school where she would know someone, and (again documented) needed to be close to local GP surgery (otherwise, they'd have fobbed us off with some wheelchair adapted school at the other end of the LEA no doubt).

that was very helpful, the appeal is for a reception place - thank you BTB we are about 0.6 miles from the school and the one we got into now is 0.5 miles. is there a chance of moving to a better place on the waiting list if we moved still closer to the school now?

Thanks for a lot of detail, basically s has been a troubled child right from the beginning and can't cope very well with lot of changes and many of his nursery friends would go the same school and the school we got now is very very average.. i am worried that he will find it difficult to cope and the main reason we are living in this area and paying a high mortgage is for this school. i don't know if all this would be considered though.

Probably, yes. The waiting list will be arranged in the same priority order as the admissions criteria. In most schools, that's looked after children, social/medical need, siblings and then distance to school. So if you move closer and provide documentary evidence of your new address you'll almost certainly (unless distance isn't one of the criteria) move up the waiting list. But if you won an appeal you'd go straight in.

What's the basis of your appeal?

Thanks again ... to me this looks like more a distance related criteria but i am not too sure as theere are 90 seats which are filled now and 104 on waiting list of which 50 is distance based.. my basis for appeal is the one i gave on my previous post.

I don't think there is much basis for appeal if your grounds are that yr DS doesn't cope well with change - unless he's at the school already in FS2.

The thing about the other school is obv not a ground either.

If you move nearer I would imagine you will jump the queue - tho they can't (can they?) withdraw someone else's offer and give you their place if you do that.

Remember that people often go private/move/hold offers in other LAs so places do come up. Where would you be on a waiting list?

Just seen your latest post.

Look at the admissions appeal code, especially pages 29-30.

To be frank, I don't think saying that you don't want your child to go to an average school will carry much weight. Of course parents want the best for their children, but you need to couch your appeal in the terms of the admissions appeal code, and so disparaging the school you've been offered doesn't really move things forward.

Similarly, saying that you want your child to go to the same school as his friends probably won't clinch it, either. You may have more prospect of success if you can expand on your son's troubles - does he have recognised special needs, for example? Does he have social problems which mean that he couldn't realistically be expected to make new friends like the hundreds of other children starting school at the same time as him? Has your son been assessed by (eg) a psychologist who could confirm his need to go to that school rather than any other?

It still won't be easy to win the appeal because you are (unless the school is under-subscribed, which I guess it isn't as then you might have got a place) up against the class size limit of 30 and the very limited grounds for exceeding that. I don't want to sound discouraging but I'm trying to give you some sense of how appeals are decided. I'm an appeal panel member, by the way.

If the school takes 3 classes of 30 each then the problem is all 3 classes will be full if that makes sense. School not allowed to go over 30 for KS1/FS.

Our inf school takes 80 so often has 3 classes of 27/28; it thus has a bit more flexibility on extra children as the classes are not "full" even if the year is IYSWIM.

Sorry in my first post here I meant if yr DS was already in school in FS1 ie nursery, he might have better grounds.

Agree with T&E that you need some kind of medical prof's opinion wrt needing to be withall his nursery pals etc.

Is that likely at all? Is he under a paed or ed psych etc?

To answer Clary's question. They wouldn't withdraw another child's place to give one to you if you won the appeal. That's why infant class size appeals are so hard to win, because the class size of 30 is set in law and the circumstances in which it can be exceeded are so limited. If you move very close to the school, the best you could achieve would be to rise to 1st on the waiting list, in which case you may well get a place before September - especially as it's three form entry.

Yes that's what I thought T&E - even if they lived next door, now that places have been allocated, the best they can hope for is the next place that come sfree.

Tho yes, in such a big intake one will come free.

we did. infant class size appeal = utterly pointless. That about sums it uo im afraid.

(unless they have made a technical error that would have put your child in like measured your distance wrong in which case they will gib=ve you a place as soon as you point it out)

The first question is whether or not this is an infant class size appeal. That depends on the admission number and the number of classes in reception, Y1 and Y2. If the admission number gives classes of 30 in these years it will be an infant class size appeal. In that case your grounds for success are limited - in essence you have to show that the LA have made a mistake and that, but for that mistake, your son would have been admitted.

If it is not an infant class size appeal you have a much better chance. In that case your goal is to show why your son's education will be prejudiced if he goes to the allocated school rather than your preferred school. You MUST NOT base that on the quality of education provided. Any mention of league tables, "average" schools or similar is likely to turn the panel against you. Concentrate on needs your son has which can only be met by your preferred school. You can use the effect on your son's social development but that might be a difficult argument to make given how close the allocated school is. You certainly shouldn't rely on that argument.

Regarding waiting lists, they are ordered using the same criteria as were used to determine which children were admitted. The LA is required to assess the order of children on the waiting list at the time a place comes up. Even if you are first on the waiting list now, you could find you move down the list if someone moves into the area and is in a higher category or lives closer to the school. Assuming distance from the school is used as a tie-breaker (not all LAs use this so you should check), moving closer to your preferred school would move you up the waiting list for that school.

By the way, I won my infant class size appeal although it involved going to the Local Government Ombudsman twice. The reason I won was that the LA were claiming infant class size in a situation where it did not apply. I think the LA still believe they were right, even though subsequent events have proved them wrong!

Good point from prh47bridge. In our LEA, all schools have an admission number of 30 (or multiples of 30) and so all appeals for reception are infant class size appeals. But other LEAs may be different and so you need to check your ground very carefully.

thanks trowel and error, very informative and i think what you say seems to make a lot of sense. I don't think my appeal has a strong ground though except that he really struggles making new friends etc but doesn't have a special need as such. I will have to appeal and look at the waiting list no's to move this forward

all, yes it will be a infant class appeal and the school has 90 in total and the catchment area is 809.5 mts i.e. 0.5 miles and we are exactly at 0.6.

Dismum,
I presume when you say catchment area you actually mean the furthest distance that a place has been offered (0.5 miles). If you are 0.6 Miles away and that seems a reasonable distance to you, then I am afraid that your chances of winning at an infant class size appeal are very slim. You simply do not appear to have a case that the appeal panel could offer a place under.
By all means go to the appeal hearing, because you never know what might happen, but be realistic about your chances of success.

Remember, anything you say about his individual difficulties/needs has to be substantiated by experts who have seen him, like a consultant paed or educational psychologists etc. We did cite dd's emotional difficulties as one reason why she needed to go to the secondary we wanted but a) that was secondary so class size does not appeal b) we supported it by evidence that she had been receiving counselling for these particular difficulties over a period of time and the counsellor wrote in her support

does anybody have any experience at appealing against a Catholic primary school?

my daughter has selective mutism and has been under doctors' care - we have their reports and written recommendations which clearly say that in order to help her start talking we should avoid leaving her in unfamiliar environment intentionally.

we live in catchment area

she has been attending Catholic nursery next door to the primary school - all her friends from the nursery will start that school in September.

her sibling, our older daughter goes to that school

the admission criteria we don't comply with - we are not Catholics, we are Eastern Orthodox (which in our view, and our priest supports us, very close to Catholics... but obviously not for LEA)

do you think we have any chances of winning?

Mrs OG,
What you need to do is to find out from the local diocese exactly what they as the responsible body accept as catholic. I know in some diocese, some Eastern Orthodox churchs are accepted as being catholic in nature. If this is the case you may well have been placed in the wrong admission criteria category. Do not accept the word of the school or the LA, ask the diocese and get it in writing! I know of a number of cases where this has happened. In those circumstances and having a sibling in school, you should have been offered a place.

If the above is not the case then you have also mentioned two other possible areas for checking out, siblings and medical. You need to check where places have been offered to in terms of criteria order. Is there a sibling priority or a medical priority above the criteria to which they have allocated palces? If so then you may have the opportunity to appeal on this as well.

Any medical letter needs to say that the doctor has examined your daughter and diagnosed ..... If it says "Mrs X has told me that her daughter.... " then this will not be accepted by the panel as appropriate medical evidence, as it is not a diagnosis only your belief.

admission,

thanks a lot!

yes, I remember Eastern Orthodox church being mentioned as acceptable in the school application form which I filled out 3 years ago when my older daughter just started that school (! damn, should've saved a copy of the form and the notes - if they've changed it since, we're in trouble...)

and yes, we have a letter from a consultant paediatrician with a summary saying "I think this child has selective mutism..." and then giving his recommendations. we've been working hard towards helping our girl to overcome her anxiety. her being placed in a totally new environment (a new school with no friends) may cancel out everything we've achieved so far.
but! because of long waiting lists at hospital we only managed to see the consultant last November (hence the letter is dated November), whereas we submitted application for a school place with LA back in October. so now we're worried that the panel might say that the evidence happened later and therefore cannot be considered.

Mrs OG,
The panel may in exceptional circumstances consider evidence submitted by the parents to show what their circumstances were at the time the decision was made in order to support their claim. So if you were making a case for admission under a medical condition, then I would have expected the admission authority (which in this case is the school) to have asked for this proof. Given that your daughter was in the next door catholic nursery, there seems to me little reason why this should not have been taken into consideration. The actual decisions on the pupils who were offered places would I suspect be after November.

This could actually be a rare case where a panel could find that the admission authority acted unreasonably. If you asked for consideration under the medical criteria and told them what the situation was and given that they knew your daughter was in the nursery, they really ought to have asked for appropriate medical evidence, but clearly did not.

However an appeal panel may see this differently from me, but you have to appeal to find out!

I would still want to also pursue the eastern orthodox angle as well because this would be a safer bet than relying on a panel accepting the late medical evidence angle.

It looks like we indeed are Catholics according to their own admission criteria which clearly says that "Catholic child" is "...those who are members of churches that are in Full Communion with RC Church..." - and this seems to be the case. We'll investigate this further, of course.

admission, thanks again for your valuable advice!