sibling rule appeal

[aj9]

hi there, we applied for a place at our first choice primary school but didn't get in. we have instead been offered a place at an inferior primary school in our catchment area.
when we applied we were living in the cathchment area for our first choice primary school but moved in januray of this year.
my son is attending the nursery at the first choice school.
he also has a sister in year 2 at our first choice.
this means that we will have to take our 2 children to 2 different primary schools. how can we be expected to do that and make sure that we are punctual.
we are appealing and would appreciate any advice. thanks.

I have had similar issues.

At one point i had 5 children at 3 different school. All needing to be there at the same time.

Tbh we gave up fighting with the 2 older ones, they had 2 years of primary school left.

We now have 1 in an infant school, another in the junior school (diff site entirely)and the twins at another school altogether.

The school run is fraught but so is the inevitable paperwork.

Imagine 3 diff school plays, fetes, xmas performances, inset days, school trips, uniform.

Fight hard i say!

that sounds crazy.

my problem is made worse by the fact that i can't drive. so i have no idea how i will manage to walk from one school to the other and get there on time.
takes about 25 minutes, maybe more as i'll have to push my 5 month old in her pram as well. with the walk one of my kids will start the day very tired.
we are thinking that if appeal is unsuccessful then we won't send our son to the other school and just wait on the waiting list. we might move back into the catchment area if we have to.

Much depends on the school?s admissions criteria. Our LEA uses distance to school rather than catchment areas but something I have learnt from MN is that in LEAs which have catchment areas, out of catchment siblings often come a long way down the admissions priorities.

If there are 30 children in each class in KS1 at your preferred school, then any appeal will be heard under infant class size rules. This means that (as infant class sizes are limited to law to 30) to win the appeal you have to show that there has been some sort of grave error which has deprived your child of a place. Essentially, you have to show that the admissions procedures were not properly carried out.

Being in the nursery rarely gives a child any priority for admission to Reception and, as I said, out of catchment siblings are often a long way down the priority order for admissions. Has your letter from the LEA explained why your child did not get a place? Have they been squeezed out (say) by a large number of in-catchment siblings? Unless the LEA has overlooked some vital information, or blundered in some way, you are not likely to win an appeal. The panel may well agree that it is not ideal to have two children in two different schools but they may also take the view that you have to some degree created this situation by moving out of catchment. They may also take the view that you could manage the school run by sharing lifts with friends or using a childminder, for example.

Because it?s far from certain that you?ll win any appeal, you need to think hard about other options. Does the school you?ve been offered also have a place for your older child?

Should also have asked - do you know where your child is on the waiting list?

As Panelmember says, this is all about the school's admissions criteria. If your LA places siblings of out of catchment children below in catchment children an infant class size appeal is unlikely to succeed. However, if siblings are placed ahead of catchment children and they overlooked your DD and put your son in the wrong admission category an appeal should result in your son being admitted.

we haven't recieved the letter yet so are waiting to find out the reason.

how do u find out where our child is on the waiting list?

also how do we found out if siblings criteria is placed ahead of catchment criteria?

as for sharing lifts, we do not know anyone well enough to do that or from our area. as for childminders we can't afford that.

according to the ofsted report for the school we have been offered a place in it only rates as satisfactory. the school we want rates 1 across the board. there is no way i am taking my daughter out of the best primary school in town.

as for my son we are not going to send him to the offered school and will prefer to teach him from home. rather this than send him to an inferior school that no one we have spoken to has a good word for.

You may have fallen foul of a tightening up of a loophole , for which LA's have previously been criticised. That parents move or rent to have an address in catchment , get one chidl in then move further away assured that subsequent children will be admitted. Sorry if that isn't the case with you but it does seem that LA's are damned either way. The criteria are published in the appliciation pack or online by LA's - showing the admissions criteria for each school in priority order and often the number of admissions per category the previous year. Presumably you knew you took a risk moving away whilst applying ? Being offered an "inferior" school and logistics are not normally considered strong grounds for appeal. Your best bet is to ask LA about waiting lists. Have you visited the offered school yourselves ? Is the ofsted report recent ?

AJ,
I suspect that you might have fallen foul of the detail of admission criteria and the admission process. Did you tell the LA that you moved house in January? You need to check the detail but I wonder whether by telling the LA you might have been classed as a late applicant. As such you would be at the end of the queue after all those applied in the alloted time period.

If you go onto the LA website you will find, normally under admissions, the actual admission criteria and also the timetable for what does and does not count.

You need to get to the bottom of the situation before you can start to consider what your possibilities are. Personally I would accept the offered place to start with. If you don't then the probability is that you will end up with an even more difficult journey to another school you do not want.

The letter from the LA must confirm why you were not offered a place at your number one preference and having got that you can establish from the LA where you stand on the waiting lists.

i have been at my previous address for over 30 years and we only moved because we need more space for our 3 children.

stupidly we assumed that my son would get into the school because his sister was there. we thought that it was common sense for siblings to be at the same school. how wrong we were.

the application pack is that the one with the schools booklet and the appluication form?

if so then i think siblings place 3rd on that list.

does it make a difference that when we applied we were living at our old address? the application was made on time

The LA has a set admission criteria for community schools and it would be sensible for siblings to be 3rd on the list after looked after children and exceptional circumstances/ medical. But where is catchment area in the admission criteria?

You need to look in the schools booklets at two things. It will certainly say something soemwhere about people moving house and what the rules are about this. Secondly you need to establish if you told the LA in January that you had moved what the effect of this is.

Your original application is fine if it was on time and should have given you two priorities, a sibling and being in catchment. If your house move was after the closing date for applications in my LA it would not make a difference to your application but not all LAs work the same way.

As Admission says, you need to check whether moving out of catchment between the application deadline and the allocation date means you are treated as an out of catchment applicant. I've been assuming that it does, but you do need to check what your LEA says in its admission guidance about changes of address (and whether the admissions criteria distinguish between in and out of catchment for siblings). Likewise, you also need to check whether you have been treated as a late application and whether this is consistent with your LEA's published information.

Where LEAs have defined catchment areas, it is often with the aim of creating 'local schools for local children' and (as I mentioned earlier) out of catchment siblings often come a long way down the list of admission priorities. I take your point about it being common sense for siblings to be together, but (arguably) it is also common sense for children to go to school near where they live. The admissions criteria attempt to strike a balance. Many threads here show that people feel it is not fair that they cannot get a place in a popular local school because so many places (as they see it) go to siblings who live miles away.

If you take this to appeal, you need to present the best case you can for your son to be admitted to the school but if this is an infant class size appeal you are only likely to win if there has been a serious error or non-compliance with procedures which has deprived your son of a place. To be frank, arguing that only the best school in the district is good enough for your children will not help, as it does not address the main issue (ie whether procedures have been properly followed) and may just antagonise the panel.

how do we know if procedures have been followed correctly? also how do we find out if change of address has a bearing on admissions.

all the letter says is that you didn't get into your preferred school. and u have been offered a place in your catchment area school, also gives option of accepting offer or not.

because the schools are about 45 mins walking distance apart (i don't drive) then we are thinking to decline offer and see if we get a place via waiting list.

we may also move back into the catchment area. as it is we live in my mum's house and have been looking to move out. but i don't know whether this would make any difference. would mean we would be in cathchment area and have sibling at the school so we would fulfil criteria 1 and 4. this may move us up waiting list.

while he is waiting we could homeschool him, no ideal but given the situation (one of them being late all the time) i think it may be our only option.

You LEA should have all the information on their website. There should have been a big booklet about applying to school, and my LA has this online too.

As Mummytime says, the admissions booklet should give you all the information you need. If you haven't kept it, your LA should have it on their website. It will confirm the admission criteria for your preferred school and tell you how moving house affected your application. You can also ask the LA for the detailed reasons why you didn't get in to your preferred school.

I would strongly recommend that you accept the place that has been offered. Declining it will not help you with any appeal (it may actually damage your chances of success), nor will it help you on the waiting list. All it will mean is that you don't have a school for your son. The LA has offered you a place. They are under no obligation to find another one for you so it will be up to you to find a school or to home school him. There is no guarantee that a place will come up at any time, so you may find yourself home schooling him for much longer than you intended.

Moving back into catchment for your preferred school would move your child up the waiting list. Your position on the waiting list is determined by the admission criteria.

read thru everything. in the booklet it says that if u change address u should notify them asap otherwise they can't guarantee u getting into the catchment area school.

well we never informed the LA so how they managed to get our correct address i'll never know. by the way not telling address was just because we forgot, not because we were trying to con anyone.

appeal wise it doesn't look like we have a leg to stand on as classes are full.

i timed the walk this morning and it took me 50 mins from one school to the other. how on earth am i going to get my son to his school on time and pick up on time. joke!

how is my son going to feel about this. not happy at all.

we have decided to rent a room with a family in the area. partly because we are not getting on with in-laws and so we can be in catchment area again. hopefully this and sibling rule will move us up list and if we get lucky we get in.

Moving into the catchment area should move you up the waiting list but, again, you should check exactly what your LEA expects by way of evidence of your address. They will need to be satisfied that what you are providing is a permanent address. Renting a room from friends - how many of you are there? Is it really plausible that you could all squash into one bedroom? - may not be acceptable to the LEA unless you can show that you are on the electoral register there, pay bills there etc. LEAs are extremely wary of people using very short term lets and so on just to get an address inside a catchment area.

we are currently 7th on the waiting list. in tems of renting it would be 2 bedrooms which is what we have for my family now. it would be our permanent address until we could find our own house to rent. need to save for it thnough

recieved an email from the admissions service who advised us to fill in an appeal form. have done this so will c what happens

I was informed by a primary school teacher who had to go through appeal for as similar situation that the only way to win an appeal is not through educational reasons but through social reasons, i.e. that your child will is being picked on etc.

How true is this?

In our LEA secondary school children (who can obviously travel independently) are given priority over catchment area children.Yet primary school admissions place catchment area higher than siblings!
Can't understand the logic of that !

Treas,
The answer to your question is that you can win a case based on either educational or social reasons. It depends on the strength of your case. Having said that if you are simply appealing that the school you want is a better school than the school you have been allocated then you will never win a case based on that arguement. Panels are not allowed to take the school attainment into consideration.

we are not appealing on the basis of the quality of the school. the reason is that i can not drive and will physically not be able to take 2 children to two different lower schools and get them there on time, and pick them up on time.

also will argue that when we applied our address on application was old one as at time we were still living there.

only moved because we live with parents and have no where else to go.

spoke with headmaster today and he says as of next year having a sibling in the school already will get u in. he said they have been trying to get this change as it is unfair.

well we've moved back into the cathchment but i don't think it is going to make a difference. there are at least 2 families who live closer. not sure whether us meeting 2 of the criteria, being catchment area and sibling, will m ove us up waiting list.

got a feeling they only take into account cathchment criteria

The admission criteria determine the order in which children are admitted. They can't pick and choose which bit they apply to you. If you have a sibling and are in catchment, you go into whichever is the higher of those two categories (assuming they give priority to children with siblings).