Secondary School Appeal

[user1490699822]

My daughter didn't get any of the preferred school but given a faith school which is not acceptable for us so we rejected. She didn't get admission due to distance as we live out skirt of the town. The first choice is single sex school. Can anyone help me what documents do I require and what grounds? it says docs can be submitted 7 days prior to hearing. am I very late to prepare appeal. I couldn't do it earlier due to my health.

Can I ask what do you propose to do if your appeal fails. As you rejected the school place offered the local authority has no duty to come up with another one that is acceptable to you. Will you be home educating?

Never reject the place, they are under no obligation to offer you another one! Accept it as,a backup

You need to show that the detriment to your daughter of not attending is greater than the detriment to the school of admitting another pupil.

What does the preferred school offer that make it exceptionally suitable for your daughter? Subjects, sports, etc - things that matter strongly to her that she can't get elsewhere.

Things like distance or wanting a single sex school aren't grounds for appeal unless there are documented medical/social reasons for these being very important.

Showing that the school has gone over its PAN in previous years with no detriment can help, so ask what the current year group sizes are.

As PPs have said, if you aren't in a position to Home Educate or send your daughter to private school, you could find yourself school-less in Sept if you have rejected the offer you have been given.

From personal experience - you need to do a lot of research.

Get trawling the internet and find out any relevant information from the school.

We used the single sex argument on philosophical grounds and also found things on the curriculum our preferred school offered that our allocated one didn't. You're not there to criticise other schools - just to prove not attending would be to the detriment of your child and her admission would not adversely affect the school.

In our case, one of the school's arguments against admission was that there would be overcrowding at whole school assemblies etc, so I found some stats on actual pupil numbers and could argue against this as some years higher up in the school had vacancies.

I looked at national comparators wrt classroom/building sizes and was lucky enough to find an old official adjudication in which is was decided that this particular school could accommodate more pupils than the PAN.

Basically, going in prepared with loads of facts to support you will help massively. I spoke for an hour at our appeal - I think I ground them down!

ArriettyClock1 can I pick your brains re your comment on appealing for single sex on philosophical grounds. Do you have any insight you can offer? We are appealing for a girls school and haven't really used the fact that it's single sex as a grounds for appeal (there are lots of other reasons we are appealing) but there is a factor that we have mentioned and evidenced that that means DD would prefer a girls school. Any tips you can give would be very welcomed. Thanks

Rudi44. I will confess that I didn't really believe in single sex education, but for the purpose of the appeal, I was its biggest cheerleader. But now, a few years on, and able to compare with my friends' experiences, I totally believe that a single sex education has been the best possible experience for my boys.

I found as much statistical and research based info on the advantages wrt to different learning and emotional needs, adapted learning environments, gender specific techniques and attainment.

Our preferred school is single sex (obv) and the allocated is mixed, so I felt it was a very strong point to use.

I don't know how much this affected the result as I wanged on about so many things, but it was mentioned in the summary of the decision they sent me afterwards.

Good luck!

Thanks for your reply and well done on winning your appeal.
Sorry user149... for hijacking your post, all the best to you too. I wouldn't want my DD to attend a faith School either for what it's worth.