Lost Primary Reception Appeal

[SKM777]

We lost our appeal for my daughter (reception) to be at the same school as my son (yr 1).

In Sept my children will be in two different schools one which local to us and the other is 4 miles away from us.

We moved into the catchment area after the schools in take and the local school had no places for my son even though he went there for nursery, resulting him to go to a school 4 miles away from us and sitting on a waiting list. We should have moved into our new house in January but due to solicitors problems ended up moving in July, missing out on any offers in between, admission where aware of us moving but where unable to offer us anything until we had moved into the house and then we had to have a welfare visit.

Currently I am driving my son to a school 4 miles away and then dropping of my daughter at our local school for 9.00 am - she is always late. When I am struggling I rely on my friends who have children of their own, we have no family to help us.

We wanted our children to be in the same school 4 miles away as my son is in yr 1 and settled we had the opportunity to move him (18 months later) to the local school, but due to his behavioural issues and health issues (stress and hair loss) we chose to leave him there and move our daughter over to the school he is currently at.

But because we swapped my daughters choice of school over on 10 Feb even though offers were made on 25 Feb it was classed as a late application (no one informed us about a cabinet member) resulting my daughter to sit on a waiting list at no.3. Even though she has a sibling at the school she is priority no. 3, children in the catchment area or moving into the catchment area have priority, which means she can move up down and stand no chance of getting into the school.

Logistically it is impossible to be at two places at once. One school starts at 8.55 - 3.15 pm and the other school starts at 9.00 -3.20 pm up to year 2 and then year 3+ both schools start at 8.55 ? 3.30 pm. It takes me approx 20 mins to get my son to school and 25 mins back due to traffic to get my daughter into school ? she is always late. I am putting my life at risk and my children?s life at risk getting them from one school to another on time.

We can't afford childcare costs as my husband has had to have a major pay cut to save jobs, he?s having a third operation on his foot in the summer and will be off work for 3-4 months as he was last year. My health is in a bad way at the moment due to all the driving around, stress and depression. We will be financially broke come September due to the extra expenses. I am currently seeking work but due to my daughter only being in nursery half days it is impossible to find anything and even if I do find work everything I earn will go on childcare costs!

We had a supporting letter from our doctor, MP and my husbands company. When we presented our case I was nervous and didn?t manage to get all our main points across and ended up crying and getting all frustrated when the panel asked me questions and when admission presented their case to the panel. It was a daunting experience and I now wished I got a representative/solicitor etc. involved. I have spoken/heard of parents who have won their appeals due to logistic reasons and late applications. We can?t appeal again but can get in touch with ombudsman/solicitor (very expensive).

I am beside myself at the moment thinking away around the whole situation and even thought about getting a solicitor involved and borrowing money from the bank! I can understand what you are going through!

Hi I have tried to CAT mail you but it came back with:-

Sorry, Panelmember has chosen not to receive "Contact another Mumsnetter" email from mumsnet. We can't pass a message on for you.

If you wish, post a message on talk requesting that Panelmember revise this on the email options page. Or ask them to send a C-A-M message to you.

Try to CAM message me!

I am going to contact ACE and I want to write to LGO, just need some advice how to go about it and what to say, I don't want to say the wrong this and risk our chances.

LEA say in their documents - if changes are made to an application after 1 February they are only considered if there is a genuine reason until after the allocation of places -whats a classsed as a genuine reason? and why weren't we considered under that criteria instead of going to an appeal?

Aha! I thought that one had to subscribe to send CATs. It sounds as if one has to subscribe to send and receive them.

This is from the school admissions code 2010 -

1.39 Once the closing date for applications has passed, local authorities should not allow preferences to be changed without a genuine reason for doing so, for example, if the family has recently moved address. Local authorities must make this clear in the information they provide for parents.

Did the application form or the starting school booklet make it clear that preferences could not be changed once submitted? Only the LEA can tell you why they did not consider your change of mind about moving your son to the local school to be a "genuine reason" for changing your preferences.

Really, at this stage, I think any advice you get from ACE (or a solicitor specialising in education law) will be more useful to you than anything I say here because you can talk to them about the detail of your situation whereas here we have to keep it general.

You could ask ACE whether, in their view, the LEA was unreasonable in not accepting that your reasons for changing your preferences were genuine. You could also talk to ACE about what happened at the appeal and ask their opinion on whether there was any defect in the appeal which means its decision should be overturned. The fact that you are unhappy with the decision is not a defect. Rather, you would need to highlight any procedural error or unfairness. If, for argument's sake, you were too distressed to state your case properly, that might be relevant. On the other hand, if you told the panel chair that you had said all you wanted to, that would weigh in favour of the original decision.

Depending on ACE's advice, you then need to compose your letter to the LGO.

But you need to keep in mind that your chances of overturning the decision of the appeal are very small. You need to think what you will do if the appeal decision stands (which it probably will) and if your daughter does not quickly get a place via the waiting list. I can understand why your children are upset at not going to the same school, and why you want to keep your son in a school where he's settled, but (forgive me for saying this) I think you need to think very hard about whether it would be better overall for your son to move to the local school to be with his sister. And I'm sorry to hear about your financial problems, but isn't that actually another good reason for putting both children into the local school and saving all the commuting time and costs?

Panelmember - thank you very very much for you advice, I will contat the ACE asap and then go forward with what they have to say. I had a email from the our MP who is willing to write a letter to the xx Council, not sure if that will help, but I suppose its something. I will forward all my documents and my case to whoever I need to. Thank you once again, I shall keep in touch. By the way are there any solicitors in edcuation law signed up with Mumsnet?

I am a bit confused. If your son went there for nursery why didn't you apply for a reception place for him before the admissions deadline? If he went to the nursery was your old house not local to the school as well? Or did he not start nursery there until after Christmas?

Why does your DD not already got to your DS's school or does it not have a nursery and why didn't you apply for her to go there in the first place? If your son was having behavioural issues in Feb then presumably he was also having them before the admissions deadline in December?

If you only moved house to be near the local school is moving near your son's school an option or HE?

The solicitors specialising in education that I've heard most about are Match. I have to stress, though, that I've never used them and have only heard about them through reputation. When I mentioned them on another thread, someone mentioned that they had used them - you could search for that thread.

Thanks I will look them up.

I would think very carefully before you waste any money on solicitors.
Firstly you are high up on the waiting list having got a sibling at the school already and it sounds like it is a big school,60 entry,I would have thought you would have had a very good chance of getting a place before september.
Secondly I don't think you have a leg to stand on.The LEA have given you your first priority school.
Thirdly you child will be fine at the local school.Many many others will not have a sibling there already.I am struggling to see why your DC is so dependent on his sibling that being at a separte nursery caused clinical stress and depression.And even more strange that KNOWING this you put them down for separate schools.

I would concur with howmuchdidyousay. Given that you made the decision to change your preferences in February I don't believe that any solicitor is going to alter the basic problem. By altering your preference you became a late applicant, unless the LA accepted your reasons for doing so.

By all means speak to ACE but I think talking to a solicitor will simply be a costly mistake.

Yes, let me be clear that - although I think that if you are going to consult a solicitor you should go to one of the firms specialising in education law - I think that what you probably will be paying for is an initial consultation which will (unless I'm much mistaken) tell you that you have not been the victim of maladministration, have very little chance of overturning the appeal decision and would do better to sit it out on the waiting list or move your son to your daughter's school.

Launching protracted legal proceedings is likely to be costly and ultimately get you nowhere - as, I think, any reputable legal adviser would tell you.

THANK YOU for all your advise it has all been taken in, I think its prob best that I sit and hope and pray something good happens from all this big mess. I hope this doesn't happen to anyone else. xx

similar to your position and understand the frustrations when others seem to get what they want no problem. My alternative would be to move my 2 kids to the nearest school which has places for both avail, but as that school has a dodgy reputation I'm currently happy to ferry them about to the 2 'good' schools they are now at. My reception child is number 3 on the waiting list at his brothers school but has been (was actually bumped up a place from 2 to 3) in that position since last June so not much movement there. I was really angry and frustrated at first but have partly created this problem due to arriving back in the UK in the middle of term and because I'm a bit fussy as to what school etc, I've learned to live with it a bit more.

Hi Panelmember I have spoken to ACE who have now past on our case to LGO - just waiting to hear from them takes 3-4 weeks. Any advice?

The first thing you should hear is confirmation of who will be dealing with your case along with a reference number. They will probably phone you for a chat if they haven't done so already. I would submit a detailed case in writing along with any relevant documentary evidence if you haven't already done so. Apart from that it is just a case of waiting, I'm afraid. They will contact the LA for their comments including the clerk's notes from the appeal. Once they've got all the evidence they will make a decision. There are in essence 3 possible outcomes:

• They reject your complaint
• They recommend a new appeal
• They recommend that your child should be admitted

If they recommend a new appeal it will be with a different panel. You will be allowed to change your case for the appeal as much as you like.

Fingers crossed that they agree the LA has got this wrong and they recommend admitting your daughter.

Thank you prh47bridge. Shall let you know how we get on.

prh47bridge, panelmember - thank you for all your advice, we got a call from addmission last week my daughter finally got an offer to attend the same school as her brother for reception - thank god! You can imagine we are jumping for joy! A lot of worries of our minds! Just a quick question do we carry on the the case lodged with LGO? When we spoke to ACE their was a number of issues they had flared up with our case! Advice please.

That's excellent news.

As your child has been admitted there isn't really anything more the LGO can do for you. On the other hand, I don't know if the LGO will feel that the case raises wider issues which the LA need to address to prevent future problems. I'd contact the person dealing with your case and see what they say.

Being of a suspicous nature it does make me chuckle at the number of times that a school place suddenly becomes available when the appealant has complained to the LGO and LGO seem to be taking an interest in the case !

Funny you say that, when I went to tell my sons school that my daughter had been offered a place, they told me that a list of only 59 children had been sent to them earlier on in the week, the school followed it up to find that admission had made a mistake!! I spoke to LGO about it and they said they would defo be following up the case and then all of a sudden we had a call later on in the week offering my daughter a place!