Y7 appeal failed for 2012

[isky]

We have failed our appeal for sep 2012 ( we are on waiting list but random allocation takes place). Could we make a fresh application in Y7 or Y8 as clearly allocated school is not ideal school for our child with 50% GCSE passes.Poor standards which are confirmed in Ofsted.
Any suggestions would be helpful.
Isky

AFAIK you can appeal once per school year. So once in year 7 and once again in year 8. Poor standards don't win appeals though. Otherwise all 1200 kids (or whatever the roll is) would be able to win appeals!

50% pass isn't that bad though.... Why wouldn't your dc be one of the 50%?

What titchy said. To win an appeal you need to prove why your dc is a special case who needs the school you are appealing for more than all the thousands of other children in the borough who also have not got a place there. The fact that your dc is special to you and should have the best won't cut it with the panel: they have to consider every child as equally important. It would be difficult to come up with an argument that proves to an objective outsider why a risk of failing GCSEs would be worse for your dc than for any other child.

Sorry ,I haven't mentioned full details:

1. Allocated school is non catholic
2. Allocated school has minimum extra curricular activities

School we are looking for is catholic ,with variety of clubs /sports, maths specialism.Son is quite sport, SATs level 6 and needs challenge as he gets to bored.

I am sure not many parents would like to go through exausting appeal procedure again once child already in a school, I might be wrong.

OK but presumably those were the reasons you gave in your unsuccessful appeal - why would those same reasons suddenly work next year?

Your ds will probably be a delight to teach and his teachers will stretch and encourage him as a result, particularly if they are used to having to teach bored disinterested kids. Give the allocated school a chance! And get him into non-school sports.

Presumably your Catholocism won't be affected by going to a non-Catholic school?

Why did you not get in on appeal?

If you have appealed now for a school place starting in year 7 in september then you cannot appeal again until it is a year 8 place you want, unless there is a material change in circumstances.
As titchy has said, nothing that you have posted would appear to be strong reasons for admission at appeal.

Isky - are you on the waiting lists for catholic schools? I think I remember from previous threads your query was about banding - is that what you appealed on in the end? Is there no other RC schools that your ds could go to and if there is, could you not appeal for them (even if you don't get your first choice)? I may not be making sense - what I'm trying to ask one of the experts, is could you not appeal for another school which suits your ds better?

Yes Angel, we are on waiting lists in few schools but there is not much of movement and in Central London not big choice of schools either.

Catholic schools seems to have much better discipline in / out of schools rather than currently allocated school which has full time liaison police officer on site which is worrying.
I know there are many police officers allocated in many schools (at least in Central London) which is due to lack of discipline from home and school, schools with no facilities and extra curricular activities are hanging around streets fighting and disturbing others.

Isky,

You may not like your currently allocated school - though I hope for your child's sake that you are only ever positive about it in front of them - but you need to think of reasons why your child needs to go to a different school, not why you don't like the one they have been allocated.

"I would like a nice MC school for my son rather than the one that doesn't appear quite so nice from the outside [even though you know nothing whatever about what your child's experience might be as a pupil there]" is not going to win you an appeal - otherwsie every parent would win their appeal for the best (on paper and in local gossip) school in their area....

Your child is almost certainly going to the allocated school what can you as a parent do to mitigate any of the disadvantages of that school?

• Up the links with your catholic church (e.g. youth groups) if you are worried about the faith element.
• Get into out of school sports. Out-of-school sports provision is often excellent, and may well be better than anything delivered in school.
• Explore out of school Maths, or maths-linked activities....and work on upping his self-motivation rather than requiring it to come from "exciting teaching" all the time....
• Ensure that your discipline at home is good, and that you support any in-school discupline. If your child is a delightful, keen, well-behaved child who follows instructions and loves to learn at home, it is unlikely that he will change this behaviour at school if your parental influence over his life is strong.

Thank you to everyone for advice and support.

Isky

At level 6 he would definitely be one of the 50% & come uni applications it might actually help him that he didn't go to a "better" school.

What else should you say if you are appealing against oversubscription to catholic schools?
Evidence was provided for every point raised.
Was there point of attending the appeal as everything was ignored , including my sons SATs MATHS level 6 yet school is Maths Specialist. Letter from Teacher confirmed.

Following paragraphs in appeal decision:

Wanted a catholic education, although her husband was not catholic; very intelligent; liked maths and was doing well; good at sport; liked the discipline that the school offered and what was expected outside the school; mum was his lynchpin when it came to religion; school offered mass; easy journey - 2 buses and 30 min; independent and would be able to travel on its own. Low weighting.

The panel also considered your written statement , however as most of it was about his academic ability, the panel were unable to take this into account , as School is not Grammar School. You still have no relatives in the UK to help you bring up your son as catholic. The panel considered that there were many such parents and gave tis low weighting. The panel also considered the letter from current primary school , but did not feel that this gave any extenuating or strong social or medical reasons as to why a place should be offered. The panel considered all other evidence including your parish priest a GP letter regarding your marital problems between 2000-2002 , hence delayed baptism. The panel also took into account the easy journey , but gave this low weighting.

Panel have also mentioned that some kids to be rebanded and put on waiting list accordingly . Is that possible? Why do I need to know that ?

Any ideas where we went wrong or should have done some more.

isky

Isky - I just picked up on your comment about police officers in schools. Pretty much all schools in central London have this. At DD's school it seems to be more about protecting the pupils and forging good links between the police and the local community. There is not a great problem with anti social behaviour at the school - though 10 years ago there was. The school is Ofsted Outstanding and sought after.
I also had occasion to complain to DD's school about a suspected parent trolling and impersonating kids on Facebook - I was told to go to the police and that they would liaise would the school because they had the link already.

RE the appeal. I am a member of an appeals panel in London and frankly unless the admissions authority have messed up big time or there are strong extenuating circumstances that were not considered first time round, it is extremely difficult to win an appeal for London schools. You did your best, there is nothing else you could have done. I don't know which school you appealed for but normally with Catholic schools it comes down to how "catholic" you are according to their often narrow and rather subjective criteria or how close you live.

Isky,
as has been said before academic ability and what the school specialises in are not things that an admission appeal can take into consideration. You based much of your appeal on this area and it is therefore not a surprise as the letter from the clerk says that the panel did not find in your favour because they could not take this into consideration.
There have to be considerable extenuating circumstances to succeed at appeal, and from your posts I do not think you had a strong case. I don't think there was anything else you could have done to improve your chances of success.

Isky not sure of the full background but given that it is a RC school, I think I would have made more of my commitment to the RC faith. I may be wrong (tell me if I am) but you may not have got into the school because of the late baptism. There were obviously issues around as to why this was and what a lot of RC schools are stating now is that late baptism will be looked at as long as it was not parents choice but other extenuating circumstances. These include 'illness of child, sibling or parent; delay caused by the parish; domestic abuse' etc. The school would also need back up from the parish priest and/or doctor. I'm not sure what you could do now (admission/panel chair may be able to advise)

Isky I have replied to you on PM but for everybodies knowledge I have recently come across something called a Certificate of reception into the full communion of the catholic church. I am still trying to get my head around it properly (anybody with knowledge I would love to hear from you) but this is what is on the Diocese of Birmingham website

Has been validly baptised in a separated ecclesial community and subsequently received into full communion with the Catholic Church by the Rite of Reception of Baptised Christians into the Full Communion of the Catholic Church. Canonical proof of their baptism and reception into full communion with the Catholic Church can be given by recourse to the Register of Receptions, or in some cases, a sub-section of the Baptismal Registers of the Church in which the Rite of Reception took place (Cf. Rite of Christian Initiation, 399).

That to me says that there is a way of being considered baptised in a catholic church, for the purposes of school admissions, when you have not actually been baptised in a catholic church. More importantly it is actually stated in some catholic school admission criteria as being equivalent to having been baptised in a catholic church.

Dear Admission , please re- send reply as it didnt arrived.

Thanks,

Isky

Admission - there is only one Baptism. Someone may be baptised, as a child, or an adult into the Church of England, or other Christian denomination. Later they may convert to the Catholic faith, bur they will not have another baptism. They would (dependent on their age) take First Holy Communion and/or be Confirmed.

Magic, yes that is what I understand. From the discussions I have had recently if someone was for instance baptised as CoE and then subsequently the family became catholic that they could apply to the priest for this certificate which is then accepted as the equivalent of having a catholic baptism.
It is something new to me and I know of a good few previous appeals on which I have sat where a pupil has not been given a place in a catholic school because of the lack of a baptismal certificate from a catholic church, even though the school and church have accepted the family are of the catholic faith. If you like it is a "half way" certificate before they are accepted into the catholic church by communion.

As an athiest and an appeals panel member I have a couple of queries in respect of baptism. My understanding is that many RC schools insist on this taking place within 6 months or 12 months. Are schools meant to take into account cases where there has been a family breakdown, sickness of close relative etc and what weight do they give this? Is baptism an occasion where you organise the whole day a bit like a mini wedding and if you are unable to do that for whatever reason within the time scale your reasons could be accepted? Or is it so fundamental to the faith that you are expected to have it take place asap after birth even without the godparents (do you need them for a baptism?), or the social event. I know that some people have their sick babies baptised asap in hospital - this sounds like a really stupid question - but can they afterwards have another service at a church with godparents etc or is it a one off? Don't mean to offend anyone, I just don't know. I am shortly to hear some appeals for an RC school for the first time but none of the cases have baptism as an issue.

The Catholic church views baptism as fundamental and so it should be done as soon as possible. My brother was baptised in the early hours of the morning a few hours after birth in hospital as he was critically ill. He could not have another baptism so the family had a service of celebration at the church with the family and godparents.

It later gave my mother a real headache getting the baptism certificate as she had trouble finding out where relevant Register was held.

In life and death circulstances it is also possible for any catholic to baptise a child if there is no priest available. Have no idea how it is recorded and how one would get a certificate!

Thanks Imogenh. What an awful thing for your family to go through...
Re the appeals; I assume therefore that the reasons would have to be absolutely overwhelming for a child not to be baptised within the time limit, curious to know what they would accept though...

My dd was over a year old when baptised and she did get into the school of choice, although VA GBs are of course very subjective. I feel for Isky as the reasons were so out of her control. I looked at some cases on the OSA site and as you have said BF, I thought their justifications were sound. I accept that VA schools have to have some type of faith criteria but not sure what is the fairest.

Thanks Angel.