Secondary school appeal help

[kep1979]

Hi,

I could just do with a bit of help. My son had his place at our first choice secondary school withdrawn as we had sold our house, the house we were buying fell through, so we had to move (out of area) in with the in-laws. We are in the process of buying a new house which is less than 700m away from the school, due to complete in June. We have not yet exchanged contracts.

The appeal is in two weeks, and it is unlikely we will have exchanged by then as we are in a chain. We have a letter from our solicitor to admissions stating that we are in the process of purchasing the house with the aimed for completion date.

Does anyone know how this kind of case could be handled? From what i am aware if we had exchanged things may be easier but i am hoping desperately praying that there will be some flexibility.

The school currently allocated is in the area not even that close to our current (albeit temporary) residence, and is a failing school. It is c15 miles away from our soon to be new house.

Also, where can i find admissions numbers for the last few years, i have the PAN, which hasn't changed for the last few years, but cannot find the actual admitted numbers.

Any help gratefully received, ds has no idea his place has been withdrawn - he attends the primary school practically next door to the school and all of his friends are going there. He is extremely sensitive and will be devastated, and therefore we decided to keep him on the dark until we knew something for certain, and he has enough on his plate with sats coming up.

Hi, I am sure one of MN's fabulous 'resident' admissions experts will be able to help you with info/advice really soon. In the meantime, try to get together all paperwork regarding your house sale/purchase including dates, and any email/phone logs you may have had with the admissions department, as this will all be useful at appeal. Have you asked for your DS to be placed on the school's waiting list? You can ask the school to supply you with admitted numbers. Good luck with it!

Is the main focus of your appeal that the offer was removed illegally then? The fact that you intend to move in the near future is irrelevant to your appeal, though once you've exchanged you'll be able to tell the LEA and that should move you up the waiting list.

If your appeal is focussed on the address what was the exact timescale of you moving out and then into your PIL? Which address did you use to apply from?

If the LEA acted correctly the you'll need to come up with a reason why this school is the best for your child. Being the only school with an orchestra and he's a grade 5 violinist, or he is partially deaf and the school has a specialist hearing unit would be examples of the sort of thing to use.

If they offered a place they cannot legally withdraw it just because you are moving. The Admissions Code (paragraph 2.12) is clear that the only reasons an offer can be withdrawn are:

• that it was made in error
• the parent has not responded within a reasonable time
• the application was fraudulent or deliberately misleading

If you moved before the offer was made that is a different situation. It is therefore important to understand the exact timeline in this case. When did you apply, when did you sell your house, when did you notify the LA of your change of address and did the LA actually offer you a place at your preferred school?

The house you are buying is not really relevant for the appeal unless the LA is saying you obtained a place fraudulently, in which case it is evidence that the LA has got this wrong.

If the LA has done nothing wrong you need, as titchy says, to explain why this is the right school for your son. What is it this school offers that is particularly appropriate for him?

Can we have more detail either on here or PM as to what has actually happened over the place offer being withdrawn. What is required is the date of the house move falling through, the date the place was withdrawn and exactly what was said by the admission authority, which house you put on the application form to start with and when was that application put into the admission authority. Would also need to know the school and LA, so that a sensible comment can be made on the whole process.
AS far as the appeal is concerned a week before the appeal you should receive a pack which will include the case by the admission authority to not admit.

The brief timeline is:

• applied in October with address we lived at (v close to school)
• sold house in November
• house we wanted to buy fell through later in November
• Christmas came and went
• Found another house at beginning of March
• allocation of school place
• admission withdrew place due to updated address (checked with school)
• Some delays on house purchase but plan to complete in June

We were under the (now obviously wrong) impression that we were not allowed to give a temporary address, so hadn't informed admissions of the move. We were also (again wrongly) under the impression that the address that mattered was the one at date of application. Admissions therefore withdrew place as fraudulent application.

Hindsight is great, and obviously if we had known we would end up in the mess there are a number of things we would have done differently, the main being not selling during this critical time. But we have made the mistakes, and as you can imagine this is a horrendously stressful time. To cap it all I miscarried on the day the place was withdrawn. So I'd really appreciate kind gentle advice.

So as far as I can see the LA hasn't illegally withdrawn the place, for as far as they see he wouldn't have got a place at allocation due to being (albeit temporarily) living out of area.

Our case is really that his education and mental/emotional wellbeing will be prejudiced by not being allocated a place. The evidence of the pending house move is meant to illustrate that it will be his local school. His current primary school is on the same road as the school, all of his friends are going, and to not go would damage his social development and education. He is very bright, and the school is academic - would sending in a report from school be helpful?

Also logistically the school is within walking distace, and a school 15 miles away would not be appropriate. I know this hinges on the evidence of the pending house move been taken into consideration.

The most heartbreaking thing for me is that he still thinks he is going, and is under so much stress at the moment with the temporary move, and his impending sats, and worrying about going to secondary school. I do really worry about how he would cope.

As I hope you can see all I want is the right outcome from my son, I am so worried about this.

The prohibition on using temporary addresses is to prevent the scenario whereby parents own a house, leave it (but don't sell it) to rent a property near a desirable school which they then use as their application address, then move back to the family home once they've got the school place. In your case, I don't see what address you could have used other than the temporary address - the old family home had been sold and you weren't close enough to having a confirmed address near the school to use that. I'm sure it was never your intention, but I can understand why the fraud alarm rang in the admissions team and they withdrew the place.

I think there are two things you can do: expedite the house purchase so that you have an address near the school, as that should move you up the waiting list (and make sure you're on it); construct your appeal around how the school will be the best one to meet your child's needs, be they curriculum, extra-curricular, pastoral etc. Don't, though, base it around how bright he is - that in itself is irrelevant to an appeal, but if that translates into particular needs (he is a chess prodigy and the appeal school is the only one with a chess club, say) do mention those.

Sorry, just looked again at your timeline. Generally you are right that it's the address on the application deadline that matters. I'm unclear whether you told the LEA about the temporary address or they learnt about it via their own checks. What exactly does the LEA's admissions booklet day about how they treat changes of address and key dates in the process?

It's not unusual for people to move between applying for a place and allocation day or even starting school in September. I haven't before heard of LEAs withdrawing places where the move has taken place in good faith, but, equally, saying that one is about to move close to a school is not enough as so much hinges on the distance from home to school and so there has to be a confirmed address.

Our LEA - Surrey - require that the child be living at the address on the application on the last day that changes of address can be submitted (Dec 12). So in your case that would not have been true unfortunately. However, other LEAs may differ, so I would definitely check.

In terms of appeal, you need to focus on what this school can offer that no other can and why it is specifically that your child needs this school. Are they the only local school offering specific GSCEs in subject he excels in, for example?

Our LA stipulates that a family must be in the address they are applying with by Feb 15th for that address to be considered - however this information isn't published anywhere for parents (!) - so it really is worth checking with your own LA as they all seem to have their own rules.

If you choose to appeal, just be honest and as prepared as possible. The appeal panel are there to help, not hinder families, and will treat each case on its own merits, but they will need all the information you can supply to help them make a balanced decision. This is where you can really make a difference, by doing your research, getting the facts together in a logical and chronological, unemotional manner and presenting them.

I recommend looking at a book called 'How to Win Your School appeal' by Ben Rooney as it gives really clear guidelines as to how you can set out your appeal documents - go through it with a highlighter and make notes. I found it really useful, and irrespective of whether our appeal is successful, I feel satisfied that we've done all we can.

Just a small point, but an important one. The panel aren't there to help parents, either. They are there to weigh up the case for admitting the pupil against the case against it. They should not be trying to trip up the parents, but they need to test their arguments, just and they need to test the school's and LEA's arguments, in order to reach a decision which strikes a fair and reasonable balance between the interests of that child and the interests of the children already at the school.

Your LA's rules around change of address may be important here. Which LA are we talking about? Feel free to PM me if you don't want to post that information publicly.

Absolutely panelchair I didn't mean to imply I think the panel are there to help parents per se - more so that they're not there to 'catch out' parents or hinder their chances of a successful appeal, should the evidence lead to that conclusion, on balance.

Thanks for your PM.

I note that this LA says that they can withdraw a place if they find that parents have not notified them of a change of address. I believe that is a breach of the Admissions Code. Paragraph 2.12 clearly states the reasons a place can be withdrawn. Simply failing to notify a change of address is not one of the reasons. If the change means the application is fraudulent or intentionally misleading they have a case but not otherwise.

I suggest you argue that you gave the correct address at the time of application. You subsequently sold your house but your purchase fell through leaving you with nowhere to live. You therefore moved in with relatives whilst searching for a new house. The LA's admissions book states that temporary moves to live with relatives may not be accepted so, since your move was indeed temporary, you believed this meant that you did not need to notify the LA of this. I think you can argue that the paragraph in the admissions booklet which states you must notify any change of address appears to conflict with the paragraph stating that temporary moves to live with relatives, leaving it unclear what parents are expected to do in situations such as yours. You have now found another house which is near the school and expect to move there in June. If this move falls through you will continue to search for another house. The LA has withdrawn the place as a fraudulent application without carrying out adequate checks. If they had taken the trouble to contact you they would have discovered the full circumstances. Had they known the full circumstances they would have realised that withdrawing the place was unreasonable. Their failure to investigate properly was also unreasonable. You therefore request that the panel restore the original offer which should never have been withdrawn.

If your appeal is rejected I think you have a good case to refer to the LGO (assuming this is a community school).