Admissions experts please help X
Very complex 6 week long nightmare with school admissions has resulted in catastrophic situation and I am at completely broken by the process.
My 10 year old is under the care of CAmhs and the GP for long term anxiety disorder and mental health which is recognised as a disability.
She is very vulnerable, this unfortunately leaves her open to bullying. In Jan of this yr I was forced to move her schools in year 5 after a 2 year long period of sustained physical and emotional bullying that led to a complete breakdown.
No matter how much I went to school, had meetings, sent emails they just did not support her enough or stop the bullying.
She moved in Jan which although difficult and led to a worsening in her symptoms is a more supportive school with less bullying. 4 weeks ago I did the rounds on school open evenings with my emphasis being on the schools that could best support mental and emotional health.
Met with all the Sen's and one school fitted our need fantastically well with a separate unit for mental and emotional issues, weekly self esteem counselling, weekly anger management and daily support in the unit.
2 other schools were not too far behind so we decided these were the ones we would list.
I was staggered to see that in the previous year the council had introduced s feeder school system. Being a bulge year where the council is currently trying to add ports cabins onto schools as they do not have currently enough places and going off the previous years statistics no schools in our area went further than feeder school criteria.
This is where it started, all schools had between 3/5 feeder schools except for my daughters ( which is the biggest school with a 3x class intake per year) and is in a deprived area, her school had only one choice.
This school does not cater to my child's additional need , the Sen admitted this.
I contacted admissions to ask why we only had one choice ? And to say I felt it disadvantaged children from that school especially against neighbouring schools within a 5 minute walk who had 3 more choices ? And if your child had an additional need how could they access the best provision for them with one choice ??
Also why had a secondary school in the same town added feeders further away and in other towns but not us ? At 1.5 miles away I feel this discriminates.
Admissions advised secondary schools choose their own feeders and they can't control that, but I advised her surely they are administering a system that isn't fair ?
Raised with director of education, same reply nothing could be done. I asked for my daughter to be considered as an exceptional circumstance as she had spent 6 years at the feeder school for 2 of our choices and was there when the criteria was introduced , and had had to move through no fault of her own.
My Councillor and MP also sent a representation - same story no.
I was advised I would have to apply under social and medical need with supporting letters from Camhs and GP.
Took me 2 weeks to get these letters and was now only a week away from submission. Upon registering on the online application I was shocked to see that this criteria meant the school had to be named as the "only " one that could fit the need of my child.
Rang admissions again to say I couldn't make this criteria fit as realistically if she didn't get passed on this criteria which they had already told me was very rare I would only be left with the one school that didn't cater.
She advised it was school specific so I would have to get the letters again with the top school name.
However as I advised my top choice was a community school so if the council considered this eveidence and refused it, my 2 nd choice academy who may view it differently now couldn't as the evidence would have the first school name on.
The criteria of one feeder school choice just does not a fit a child with a disability but no EHCP And I was being shoehorned into a category that wouldn't fit.
I was now left with a week to secure the letters again which isn't easy, also 2 days before when going online I saw they also expected me to fill in a statement for medical and social need and exceptional circumstances for these 3 schools max 3000 words each. This was a huge undertaking. And wasn't mentioned in their booklet- only " select the criteria and send in your letters "
I did this as soon as the last letter came on deadline day, it was very difficult as the Window for the 3000 word document was 3 lines wide.
Upon finishing and print previewing it had wiped off half the document and I couldn't see it. So I had to re do.
This is when the nightmare began, I clicked submit - Error, tried again Error. Re checked everything Error. There were no guidance notes except on the registration email it only stated trying to download MoZilla and google chrome as you had to use the most up to date version of the browser.
I was getting desperate now downloaded both programmes both on my laptop and Ipad - same result.
Regardless of trying on my laptop, phone, iPad nothing. The application form was 15 pages long and I had no idea what the error was and assumed the system
Must be down.
At 23.45 15 minutes before close of submission in a total panic attack I emailed the admissions team telling them I had tried to submit all night and just couldn't , advising all software had been done, different devices tried and I was at a complete loss as to what to do.
I screenshotted the screens of my laptop and iPad as evidence.i felt completely broken and at a loss as to what I could do I felt is tried everything I could .
The following morning the admissions team emailed me to advise they had received submissions until 23.59 and they could see I had been in the application at 4pm so it was working fine.
I sent her the screen shots as proof and she said she'd contact IT but I would now be treated as a late application.
I felt completely and utterly broken and haven't slept since, IT advised they can see I tried over and over to submit it but have sent off to Capita to download data and read it.
I am just completely at rock bottom with this and my daughter is extremely upset. she will now be allocated the worst school. I'm just beside myself I don't know what the error is and I don't know how I could know what the error was to correct on a 15 page 6000 word document with no indication of what was wrong.
I know from last time her school place broke down this year she won't cope again,
I'm so sorry for such a long post just wondered if anybody knows anything else I can do apart from appeal ?? Will my chance at appeal be zero because they will just say you would t have got a place anyway because you didn't apply on time ??
Thanks so much for your time X