Appeal for preferred secondary school and ds is first on waiting list....

[jus3351]

I'm looking to hear from anyone who's had any previous experience in school appeals and wondered if anyone knows when the first allocation from school waiting lists begin. We didn't get our preferred choice of school and have been allocated a school we hadn't even looked at as it has just come out of special measures. We are Catholic and our preferred choice was a heavily over subscribed Catholic school, they have confirmed we are 1st on waiting list and missed the home to school distance cut-off point by 1.85 metres this year. If it was based on the previous 5 years, we would have got a place. Also my son is colour blind and wishes to cycle to school, although he has a lot of trouble distinguishing the traffic signal colours and our preferred choice had a journey that would have avoided all traffic signals enabling him to cycle safely to school. He has a colour vision report which is up to date and from a doctor stating his red/green colour deficiency. He has a letter from his headteacher supporting the fact that he shows particular ability in maths as this is also a maths specialist school. The school we have been allocated is a specialist art school and because of ds's colour deficiency is his least favourite subject.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated as cannot sleep and feel so sick each day, appeal should be early May so still lots of waiting.

It certainly wouldn't do any harm to find out what advice they sought when considering your son's case. If they didn't seek advice or the experts consulted were inappropriate you can use that in your case. However, what you really need (if you haven't already got it) is an opinion from an expert saying that your son needs to go to your preferred school because of his colour blindness. Without that you may struggle to convince the panel.

To me, the weakness in the colour blindness argument is that it is not about your son's ability to access the school or the education, just that he happens to have a preferred way of travelling. The panel has to weigh your ds' actual needs, not his preferences.

Otherwise they would have to give places to other children based on whether they prefer to walk to school/ go on the bus rather than the tube etc etc. For the travel argument to hold you should really demonstrate why your son is incapable of travelling in any other way; presumably there will be other children who have to travel to this school by car or bus. (We did actually manage to do this by demonstrating that prolonged bus journeys exacerbated dd's joint condition, but I doubt that would work for colour blindness).

Thanks for your comments Cory, we'll give it a shot though as we feel it's unfair that everywhere you look now cycling to school for children is being heavily promoted, well it certainly is where we are in London. It would be a shame that his primary school and the council have encouraged him to cycle to school and to take part in the Bikeability courses, the last course was to prepare them for cycling to secondary school but our son wouldn't be able to do this to allocated school and was one of the reasons we didn't choose it.

Have a date for one of the appeals which is 2 May so we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best!

have appeal date for one of the schools and its 2 of may, now feeling extremely nervous! originally my husband was going to present to the panel as i have a fear that i'll break down and cry, also we'll have our 2 year old with us. should i wait outside the room with her or is it better i take her in so we're both present in the room? any advice will be appreciated.

OMG dont take your younger child with you beg for some childcare from a friend or relative. It is a very stressful experience, think intimidating job interview with a toddler on your lap! Would not recommend at all

Do you have any friends with young kids? From toddlers or parents of your older children with little ones? Or do you know a CM, you could ask for one off? Or a nursery you are considering that might be able to do an extra day? Or even an agency? It will be too stressful to have your little one there.

Thanks all for the advice, I have people who are able to look after her so will organise that.

SchoolsNightmare - Yes, DS is still first on the waiting list and I now have written confirmation from allocated school that they cannot offer the FSMQ Maths exam which one of the preferred schools can offer in yr10 and yr11. This school also offer the Junior Sports Leadership Award from age of 14, allocated school have also confirmed they cannot offer this. I'm hoping this will strengthen our case but don't hold out much hope to be honest, although these two particular exams would be very relevant to our son.

In the meantime, we went to visit a local school which has just come out of special measures and they are currently under subscribed, I don't think their GCSE results have ever gone above 31%, however am willing to look beyond that. It is converting into a Harris Academy in Sept, there is a new Head and Executive Head and in 2 years they are expecting to become an outstanding school. Progress for students is rapidly improving.The most recent Ofsted from last month looks very encouraging although the school is currently 'satisfactory'. The building looks very run down and DS said it looked like a 'crap hole' when he saw it. Had to explain it's not about having a shiny brand spanking new building it's the quality of the teaching which matters most.

Husband says to try and forget about it all until the day of the hearing as he said I remind him of a dog chasing it's tail going over and over the same things, oh dear! Hard to forget about it as still have lots of additional supporting evidence to get organised and sent off.

I wish you the very best of luck in your appeals and hope you get something you and DS will be very happy with. You really do deserve it. I saw that you had letter of no offer so it must be an agonising time for you all and I can't imagine how stressful it must be trying to juggle family life and preparing SIX appeals!! I have to say I'm humbled that you've taken the time out to give me advice. Your advice is greatly appreciated, thank you so much!

Schoolsnightmare -

I know, whenever anyone asks how it's going, I'm so absorbed in it all I start going into great detail with any new developments, although everyone has been really helpful and supportive, DH is getting quite fed up with it all. He's a lot more relaxed about it but I think that's purely down to the fact that it's me who is the one preparing it all which is tricky to juggle whilst taking care of a toddler and two other children. I really will be relieved when it's all over and I can get back to normality again!!

The entry requirements for FSMQ Maths is GCSE A*-C which makes DS a very likely candidate. He is currently working at level 5 without any effort at all and with a lot of effort and hard work he could achieve a very good GCSE grade which would secure him a place on this course.

The Junior Sports Leadership Award (can take in year 9) would be relevant to DS because he represents his school for football, athletics, netball and cricket, He is a key team member and he has gone on to represent our Borough in tournaments held at Crystal Palace Stadium. I have head teacher's comments from last years progress report confirming all of this together with a comment on how well he did in their sponsored run and that when he finished he went on to help the younger children in the run and I could mention that this shows early signs of leadership skills. I also have all his certificates and letters from school to confirm he has been selected to represent the school in various tournaments for all the above sports. The preferred school also then offer the Sports Leader Award (can take in year 10) and this is only available at allocated school in the sixth form.

DH keeps telling me not to include too much as he thinks the panel will get fed up with a huge amount of paperwork to get through. I'm trying to keep it to a minimum but it does mount up as anything relevant must be included.

If appeals fail it will be a toss up between a school with 1600 students, GCSE league table results of 42%, weaknesses in teaching, particularly in Literacy where Ofsted reported the teachers expectations of students are not high which causes problems for pupils not able to fulfil potential. Poor discipline, however sure DS would be happy here as he'd know quite a lot of other students and it's very local.

Other school, he wouldn't know anyone here at all and it's out of borough so not as close as allocated school, however it's rapidly improving and the quality of teaching is far superior so think this would be better. Just don't like the thought of him starting secondary school not knowing a soul.....

Will keep you updated.

It sounds like you are very well prepared and at least you know that you have covered everything and done your absolute best which is important. It's better to submit everything than have any regrets later.

We too are concentrating quite a lot on the journey to school, as well as faith, although DS wants to cycle and we understand the panel may not even consider this because it is a preference rather than a need. There are mitigating circumstances as to why he would be unable to cycle to allocated school which I've posted before - his colour blindness. We have an up-to-date report from City University London - DS had all the tests available and was seen by the top Professor there. Part of the report clearly states that 'often he is unable to discriminate red-green colour differences that would be well within the colour discrimination range for a typical colour-normal observer'. It then shows all the errors he made throughout the tests. We also took photos of a set of traffic signals he would travel through to allocated school and the 'Colour Blind Awareness Organisation' had these simulated for us, the difficulties he would have are obvious, hopefully that will clearly demonstrate to the panel how ds sees the colours of the traffic signals which will help them to understand the difficulties and risks to his safety. Our argument is also that although he could catch the bus, it wouldn't be fair for him to be denied the right to cycle to school which would be the case for allocated school as route is too dangerous. We've also taken photos of route to allocated school and photos of the routes to preferred schools which clearly show how much safer the latter routes are.

Do you know how many other parents at your DS's school are appealing? There are just a few appealing from ours, however they've all got one of their preferred choices. We are the only family out of 60 who were allocated a school we hadn't chosen. It may or may not help, who knows? I guess it just all depends on who is on the panel that day and how strongly they feel about our reasons.

It's weird to think that in a couple of weeks time I'll have a decision. Still have no date for appeal for our preferred Catholic School.

I'll post an update on the 2 May to let you know how appeal went....yikes!!

Had one school appeal yesterday and although i had prepared a very effective response to the school's statement on their reasons not to admit our ds, the panel didn't really refer to it much at all.

They were far more interested in ds's colour blindness and the difficulties he would face on his journey to allocated school in comparison to the safe route to allocated school.

The Clerk at hearing went on to point out to us that the colour blindness is a sensory impairment and therefore a disability!

Under the 'Disability Discrimination Act' I think our other preferred school made a mistake by not giving our ds's application any priority and by not giving him a place have put him at a disadvantage. I wonder if this is the case, would I still need to continue with appeal for this school which may be some time in June?

Haven't slept a wink - again! Now waiting for helpline for disability discrimination to open so I can get advice from them. Only 3 or 4 hours to wait LOL!!!!

I am afraid to say that the Clerk and panel are legally wrong. Under the Equality Act, which now encompasses the Disability Discrimination Act there are many guides to examples of what is and is not considered to be a disability.
What it says under colour blindness is
simple inability to distinguish between red and green, which is not accompanied by any other effect such as blurring of vision is not considered to be a disability.
So if they apply the guidance correctly they should not accept it as a disability, though the panel can always decide what weight to give to any part of the case and maybe they will feel that your son's condition is a disability.

Admission: Well it certainly is a minefield as the Equality Human Rights Commission also advised me that it can be defined as a disability if there is a proof an impairment exists, it needs to be long-lasting or progressive and that it needs to have substantial adverse effects on day to day activities, the list to define these activities would be exhaustive, however, they said cycling to school each day can certainly be defined as a normal day to day activity for ds.

The Clerk shouldn't be giving incorrect legal advice to a panel, nor should they be advising us it's a disability if it isn't. The panel went on to ask me if I knew what the reasonable adjustment duty was which I had never heard of.

I don't know if they were referring this to allocated school, the admission/appeals process or preferred school??

Anyway, the decision letter was posted Thurs so maybe I'll get it tomorrow and will soon see!

TThe guidance to which Admission refers can be found here. It says that the inability to distinguish any colours at all would be regarded as having a substantial effect but, as per the extract quoted by Admission, red/green colour blindness would not.

Dear Admissions and prh47bridge - thanks to you both for the quick and accurate responses, you're both right it isn't legally classed as a disability.