School appeal coming up advice pls

[madmum22]

I have a school appeal coming up very soon.
From what I understand the first part is a grouped appeal and then parents can present there own case. My question is even so the year group for admission is full the school for years 4 5 and 6 are not full so do I bring this up at the grouped appeal or wait and bring it up when my appeal is being held in private? If it has to be said in the grouped appeal why can't I bring it up in private on my appeal. Can I not mention it t ll during the group appeal and keep it for the private part. Thanks

From my (very limited) experience of appeal hearings, the first part of the hearing (the group bit) is to establish if the school has follwed the admission code & whether there would be prejudice to the school in admitting more pupils (and whether this is "ordinary prejudice" or "infant class size prejudice") - so your point about whether the school is full in years 4-6 may be relevant here.

Assuming that the school make a case for "prejudice" (if not all appellants will be admitted) then they move to the second (private) part of the hearing.

The second part is to establish what prejudice your DC will suffer if they don't go to that school - so it is not relevant to that part to question if the school is really "full".

The appeal is all about the panel weighing up the "prejudice" on each side & making their decision based on that.

I hope that helps?

The fact that years 4, 5 and 6 are not full is really part of part 1. The admission authority has to argue the case that to admit more pupils to the reception age group would not be possible without prejudice to the pupils in the year group.

Actually the fact that there are spaces in years 4,5 and 6 is not really very relevant. Firstly because any school has to admit upto the admission number those spaces in years 4,5 and 6 have to be available. Secondly the appeal is about reception year and the fact that they have filled to capacity for that year. The only relevance to the appeal is that the school has not reached its maximum number of pupils but this will carry little weight at an appeal.

In part 2 you need to be stressing the reasons why you want your child to go to this school rather than any other school.The fact that there are places in years 4,5 and 6 is of no help to your case.

Admission is right in that it is unlikely to be relevant. However, you will definitely not be allowed to bring it up in part 2. Every year some parents try to give themselves an advantage in a grouped appeal by holding something back in part 1 only to find that they are not allowed to bring it up in part 2. Part 1 is about establishing whether or not there will be prejucide to the school from admitting extra children. Any evidence relevant to that question must be brought in part 1.

If this is an infant class size appeal the fact that there may be spaces in years 4, 5 and 6 is completely irrelevant. If it is not infant class size prejudice it is a little more relevant.

Just to correct Admission, paragraph 1.24 of the Admissions Code makes it clear that the school does not have to admit up to the admission number in years 4, 5 and 6. The expectation is that they normally would do so but it is permissible for the school to refuse if circumstances have changed, e.g. through the admission of a child on appeal. I found this paragraph very useful after the person who wrote it explained its implications to me.

Thank you all for replys.

So if the school has had some building work done in last year making more space and PAN has not changed for a few years this would need to be brought up in part one. And part 2 is just about my child and her needs is that correct? Not a infant class school appeal. Thanks

To elaborate on my comment last night, paragraph 1.24 is rarely relevant at appeals. It is based on the primary legislation which says, in essence, that schools must admit up to the admission number in the normal year of entry but doesn't say anything about other years. I don't think that is relevant in this case as the panel would still have to consider the possibility that reception will be full in every year whilst your child goes through the school, potentially leaving it over capacity at some point.

As this is not an infant class size appeal you have a much better chance of success. And you ar right that the points you raise need to come up in part 1 whilst part 2 is just about your child.

I believe in only asking questions to which I know the answer in an appeal. I would therefore ask the LA to confirm the capacity of the school and when it was set. The capacity should be 7 times the PAN. However, it isn't always. If the capacity is more than 7 times the PAN it may help you.

If the school has had extra space added and the capacity and PAN haven't changed that is certainly something worth bringing up in part 1, particularly if the extra space is teaching space, i.e. classrooms.

The admission authority will argue that the admission number has been set and places offered upto this point. At primary school level where we are usually talking about a year group to a class room or mixed year groups to one classroom you would have to be talking about a substantial increase in teaching space before an arguement that the PAN is not appropriate can be sustained.

Ask specifically about the PAN and when it was set and all the building work carried out since then. A good tip is to look on the school website - sometimes things are said on there about increased facilities which can be helpful at appeal, though this is usually more relevant at secondary level.

If something came out in part 2 that had a material effect on the decisions made after part 1, then the panel would have to take that into consideration. I have known this happen once where a parent deliberately withheld something until part 2 believing that it would only be used for their child. This is not the case and in fact we had to adjourn the hearing to allow all appealants the opportunity to consider and challenge the new information supplied by this parent.

We appealed under very similar circumstances.There were places higher up in the school and that the PAN was way higher than the MAL suggested.
I got the numbers for every year group and argued that they could group teh classes differently and have a mixed Y4/5/6 class , a mixed Y3/2 class and a mixed y1/R which would keep all the infants in a class of

Glad to hear that Admission's appeal panels will allow parents to bring up things in part 2 that should have been brought up in part 1. Some panels won't do this. If parents don't bring up everything they should do in part 1 they lose the chance completely.

I have to say that howmuchdidyousay was lucky to win an appeal on this basis. The school determines the arrangement of classes, not the appeal panel, so panels generally won't consider arguments that solve infant class size problems by changing the class arrangement, especially if it involves mixing infants with juniors.

I can confirm that an appeal panel is absolutely not allowed to redesign the school's classroom management for them. What the school has agreed is what the panel has to work with, unless they are doing something wrong, like ignoring the Infant Class Size Regs.

It is also as PRH says upto the discretion of the panel Chair as to what can and can't be admissable in part 2, that should have been indicated in part 1. I take the view that I will allow the parent to say anything they want to, for as long as they want to (within reason) but it has to have relevance to the case.

My experience is that panel chairs (including me) are fairly relaxed about what is raised in part 1 and part 2 - some things don't fit very neatly into one or the other and natural justice dictates that you don't want either side to leave the appeal thinking that they haven't mentioned some crucial piece of information. But it's also true that parents can't 'hide' information in part 2 thinking it won't be shared or passed on.

I should point out that I had the support of the school in my appeal.They wrote a letter detailing how the classes could be rejigged to admit the 2 children appealing without class size prejudice.It was the LEA not the school who were against the children being admitted.It is a small school with fluctuating intakes and they have to take advantage of larger intakes to make up for the lean years.

That explains how you won but I shouldn't think the LA were too pleased with the school