Would this be an infant class size appeal?

[Bramshott]

If a small primary school has a mixed Yr R / Yr 1 class, and has 12 children in Yr 1, has admitted 15 for Yr R, and a parent is appealing (i.e. for a 16th place), would this be an infant class size appeal? Obviously if the school has to admit a 16th Yr R child, this will have knock-on problems with class sizes for the following year, and higher up the school.

If the admission number is 15 this will be an infant class size appeal. The LA will argue that they have to admit up to 15 in Y1 if more children apply and that they have to admit up to 15 in YR next year, either of which would take the class over the limit. This would therefore be a future infant class size prejudice case, which is heard under the same rules as other infant class size cases.

Have a word with the head teacher. The school aren't allowed to directly support your appeal. However, they might be quite glad of an extra pupil, in which case they may indicate to the panel that re-organising to cater for your child without causing class size prejudice wouldn't be too difficult.

Thanks PRH - in fact I am sort of on "the other side" as my DD's are already at the school. Just wondering if the school could be forced to take an extra child / children as there is space in the class as a whole. But it seems unlikely - thanks for making the whole process clearer!

Bramshott,
PRH is correct that it would be an infant class size case on the basis of future prejudice assuming that the admission number is 15 and not 12.

If however the PAN was 12 it would not be an infant class size case until the two classes got to 31, that is an extra 3 pupils could be admitted across the two year groups. The down side is that it would have some fairly severe knock on effects later on in the junior classes and unbalance the school classes.