Secondary school rejection letter

[Foxranawaywithhisshoes]

We received a letter from our first choice school outlining why my son's application had been rejected. The letter stated that he did not attend a feeder school and that only children attending one of the feeder schools had been admitted - the furthest away child being 5 miles from the school.

My child does attend a feeder school (it is listed with its address and postcode in the Admissions Policy document attached to the rejection letter). We live 4.13 miles from the school. There is no indication in the Admissions Policy that there is any preference between feeder schools but ours appears at number 16 in a non-alphabetical list of 27 schools.

We would still very much like our son to attend this school; notwithstanding their administrative incompetence!

What should my next step be? Currently I have accepted an offer from our second choice school. I don't know if it makes any difference but the school is in a different LA to the one we live in.

Accepting the second preference school makes no difference.Just keep hold of it until a place at your first preference school becomes available.

A possible explanation for the letter is that the school have sent the wrong letter out to you. What did the formal letter from the LA admission team say. It should have said under what category you were considered and why you did not get the offer of a place. I am assuming that the distance figure of 4.13 miles has come from this source

Given the school has 27 feeder schools, my feeling is that this maybe a straight forward error in your application. If it is a mistake, it is going to get messy, because if you were missed off as being in a feeder school then the probability is that all applicants from your school were missed off and that will mean a significant review of all the applicants and places offered. It might mean that even if you are considered again you might not get a place because others will be involved.

The other possibility, ignoring the letter, is if you did not get a place because there were more applicants in the feeder schools than places. I would then check something out. Look at the 27 schools that are feeder schools and look at their PANs.If you make an assumption that all the schools are full,how many pupils would this come to for the year group. If say for instance the PAN of the secondary school is 250 but all the PANs of the feeder schools adds up to 500 then there will always be a situation where pupils will be rejected even though they are in feeder schools. Under those circumstances the admission criteria of the secondary school is flawed - there are just too many primary schools as feeder schools. In effect you are saying that pupils applying in one of the lower catgeories of admission have zero chance of success. What would happen at an appeal is an interesting legal problem as it would be difficult for the panel to say that the admission criteria are correct legally.

Thanks, Admission.
The school has now sent me an email stating that they have "requested that the LA offer a place at our school to your child".
I won't quite believe it until I have the offer in writing.
No-one in recent times has gone to this school from our primary school which may account for the mistake.

Well that sounds like a very good potential outcome and is obviously because they realise that a mistake has been made. School has to be applauded for sorting it out, many would make you go to appeal, even though they know they messed up, because they think it is better to let the appeal panel make the decision.

Good Luck!