Anybody been successful appealing for secondary school

[lotti37]

Hi has anyone been successful appealing for a secondary school. We did not get any of our choices . Very upset about it all . Thinking about appealing but wanted to speak to people that have been successful and get some advice .

Thank you 🙂

No we weren't unfortunately. There were 90 at our appeal and not one was successful. We eventually got a waiting list place after starting at the allocated school. On average one third are successful apparently.

Arkwright what did you use as your case for your appeal ? One third seem quite high . Thank you

We successfully appealedmformdc's school. You need to jab
CE evidence why your child is suitable,for that particular school, not why dc's is not suitable for the school,you were given.

Eg. Is your dc sporty and does the school,have a sports specialism

OP, on what grounds are you going to appeal for a place?

Sorry, not sure what went wrong with typing.

We successfully appealed. You have to prove why your dc is suitable for a school, not why another is unsuitable.

Our appeal was for a grammar school, and ds just missed the score.

We provided evidence that he was academically able for this school.

Also, school has an IT specialism, so we proved he was good at computers.

Basically, you have to decide on what grounds you are going to appeal, and then get evidence to prove this.

My Dd is very shy I got doctors letters and one from her teacher. I also used a GCSE that the allocated school didn't do. It was a foregone conclusion. They never allow appeals for this school.

My friend appealed for another local school with similar circumstances. She had no letters to back her up and her appeal was granted.

My son is also shy and all his friends have been allocated the school that we didn't get .he really struggles with change and I know the school he has been allocated will not be suited to him. We all wanted him to go to a single sex school and he really wanted this but we're not offered a place .

I even had letters from a counsellor she had been to.

You can never tell how it's going to go. Every point we made they came back with a counter argument.

Arkwright what made your friend win her case then if her situation was very close to yours ? Thank you

No idea to be honest. I think she got a sympathetic panel. She did cry she said during it.

Around 27.5% of secondary school admission appeals are successful, so a little under a third.

I'm afraid the grounds you state are not particularly strong. A lot of parents will claim at appeal that their child is shy and needs to stay with their friends. Unless there is evidence from professionals that he has a very much stronger need to stay with his friends than other children of his age this is unlikely to fly. The same is true of arguments that he struggles with change. Wanting a single sex school is not relevant to the appeal at all. It is about what your son needs, not what you or he wants.

In order to win you need to show that your son will be disadvantaged by not going to this school and that this outweighs the problems the school will face through having to cope with an additional pupil.

If you want to appeal you should do so even if your grounds are weak. Sometimes the school's case for refusing admission is so weak that almost any appeal will succeed. But unless you can come up with a stronger case you need to be aware that an appeal is a long shot.