School offer withdrawn

[Khushi12]

My daughter got admission in a faith school for year 7. We accepted the offer on March 5 by calling the school directly (kept a snap-shot) in my mobile. The school said everything is fine, and they will inform us about all the procedures by month of May. Friday, 9th March, we got an email attachment stating that offer has been withdrawn due to administrative error. My daughter is devastated and so do we.

Today morning, at 9:02 am, we called the LA admissions Team and talked. LA School admissions Team informed us that the school as a faith school decides about the admission. LA informed us that contrary to what the reception of the school has mentioned yesterday, the administrative error was on part of the school admission team and the school had informed the council about this error. LA even said that the school is not being honest to us.

We have written to the school and the LA about this conversation.
What should we do next?

Oh what a surprise the school blame the LA and the LA blame the school and all everybody wants is for you to go away. Which is exactly why you need to see this through to the end in terms of admission appeals and getting answers.
Agree with what tiggytape is saying. You might try to establish from the LA whether this is an alleged mistake solely to do with you or whether there are a good few of you who have had places withdrawn. The reason for finding this out is that knowing whether it is just you or 20 pupils with the same problem will to some extent dictate what you might say in your appeal letter. Obviously the more there are in this predicament the more difficult it is to argue the right thing to do is to admit.
My suspicion would be, looking at the timeline, that the school suddenly started getting phone calls from parents who expected to get a place and they then realised that there was a problem. In their panic they have resorted to trying to resolve the situation by just withdrawing places so they can accommodate those that have a right to the school places. What should have happened but now seems to have been ignored by quite a few admission authorities is to retain all who were originally allocated places, work out how many pupils have been disadvantaged by the mistake and offer them places over and above the number originally allocated places. Obviously the more issues there are the more difficult this answer becomes to implement. The problem with the method used is that the pupils who have been incorrectly offered a place now have to be allocated places in the school that would have been your second preference if at all possible. This may then displace other pupils from that school and so the cascade goes on. It can become an absolute nightmare if there are a considerable number of pupils involved in an area that has mainly full schools.

There are more - perhaps around 20.
Given our request of an appointment with the head-teacher yesterday, we got a call from the school that we can meet him tomorrow. Any suggestions about what should we tell the head-teacher

Lastly we got the following given our email to LA, they responded with:

The error made was in the number of places allocated to each priority of the oversubscription criteria at the school resulting in children who met high priorities of the admission policy not being offered a place, and children who met lower priorities being offered a place in error. .. The School Admission Code (2014) provides under 2.12 that places must not be withdrawn unless they have been made in error, as applies in this situation. There is no timescale defined in the statutory School Admissions Code for this decision to be made or notified to families in the instance of an error being made.

The Local Government Ombudsman decision (99c01876 is the one we have referred) was made in 1999 and is no longer available to review. -- .. must highlight again that there is no statutory timescale for the withdrawal of offers, and the Local Authority has acted swiftly to correct the errors."

The LGO decision has the basis of law to back it up and just because it goes back to 1999 does not mean it is any less relevant now than it was in 1999. To say it is no longer available to review is just rubbish.
The whole purpose of precedents in law is that they are considered to be appropriate until somebody else in the judiciary says they are not. Not simply because it does not say it in the latest version of the admissions code.
Their explanation for the mistake is also woeful as an explanation. What does it mean? The number of places allocated to each priority of the admission criteria was the error? There will be an admission criteria which says all those who are LAC and of the faith, then all those of the faith in various guises. Surely you admit all who fit in a criteria unless the admission criteria says we will admit 5 who are fire-eaters, followed by 10 who can do back-flips etc.
Did the admission criteria have any such restrictions?
I would be very interested in seeing the admission criteria OP if you could PM me the school and the LA involved.

Further to my latest post, now we got a generic email from the LA: this shows that there are more people involved.

Dear Parent or Carer
Admission to secondary school for academic year 2018 to 2019
Following our letter of 8 March 2018, we wanted to contact you again to provide further detail about the circumstances surrounding the withdrawal of the offer for a place at ...
After offers had been made, it became apparent that an administrative error had occurred when allocating places at ... The school admission policy outlines the number of places to be allocated against Priorities 2 (faith1) , 3 (faith 2) and 4 (faith3). Any available places are then allocated in order of the remaining priorities outlined in the policy. Unfortunately, the number of places allocated to the different priorities of the admission policy had not been updated in the coordination system to reflect the applications received this year. The numbers allocated reflected the applications and allocations for 2017 in error. This meant that some children who met higher priorities of the oversubscription criteria were not offered a place, while children meeting a lower priority were offered a place in error.
Your child’s place was withdrawn was because when the applications were all ranked in accordance with the published oversubscription criteria, and then the correct number of places were allocated to each priority group, the school filled with children who met higher priorities of the admissions policy.
When we are made aware that an error has been made, we are obliged to correct this, to ensure that the admissions policy is appropriately applied to all applications and places are offered fairly in line with school’s policy.
When the offer was withdrawn, LA Admissions Team returned to the position prior to the 1 March 2018 to review your applications and consider whether you had qualified for a place at any of your preferences. As such, the offer made on 8 March is the offer you should have received on 1 March. This is the school place which your child qualified for when your application and preferences were considered at the same time as all other applications.

Thank you tiggytape.

we are meeting the head-teacher today (got an appointment) - what should we tell the head-teacher. I think we should be polite at this stage.
we also put her in WL and will go for appeal.

2nd preference school in general is not over-subscribed. We do not know whether the LA withdraw places from people offered our 2nd preference school on March 1st to give us as we qualified more than they did.

someone will come

as I said the second generic email with attachment sent by LA but it has names of both LA and Head-teacher at the end of the letter.

I don't think they (LA and school) will tease out anything more. We went to school on 12th morning and then as school said "administrative error is not something that the school (admission authority in this case) can throw any light on and we need to talk with LA and we need to talk with LA. The school also said they also came to know similar things from LA almost at the same time that we did (9th March)". 9th March evening (Friday) we got the email although the letter was dated as March 8. We called LA on 13th morning and the LA representative said contrary to what the reception of the school had mentioned to us on March 12th, the administrative error was on part of the school admission team and the school had informed the LA about this error. Our guess is that on Thursday, March 8 but we do not know that for sure. But it must be after March 5, Monday as we called the school and accepted the offer. The school at that time March 5 (3 days after the offer day) verified my daughter's name, my name and took my email address once again so that the school can send all requisite for admission requirement.

So far the email from LA to us, they will not reinstate the offer quoting The School Admission Code (2014) under 2.12 as we have mentioned to LA about LGO 99c01876 requesting them to reinstate the offer.

When we are made aware that an error has been made, we are obliged to correct this

They should correct it by admitting the children who missed out incorrectly. They don't have to take away places that have already been offered.

Paragraph 2.12 does say that they can withdraw an offer made in error but so did the previous version of the Admissions Code. I remain of the view that the precedent applies. I hope an appeal panel will agree. The problem the panel may have is that there may be more pupils affected than the school can physically handle but we don't know that at this stage.

Would I be correct in thinking that this school allocates a limited number of places to the faith1, faith2 and faith3? In other words, being in the faith1 category doesn't guarantee you a place even if there are enough places for everyone in that category? That is the only way the explanation for the error makes sense. If you are unclear, PM me the name of the school and the LA involved and I will take a look. To be honest, I'd like to know anyway. It would help to make a bit more sense of what is going on here.

It says out of say 200 seats 127 to faith 1, 48 to faith 2 and 10 to faith 3. Then the remaining places will be allocated.

I've taken a look at the school. It has one of the oddest set of admission criteria I have ever seen. They do indeed give very odd numbers of places to each category. There doesn't seem to be any explanation as to how they came up with these numbers.

For admissions this year they award 158 places to faith 2, the next 58 places go to faith 3, the next 12 go to faith 4 then any remaining places go to faith 2, then faith 3, then faith 4 before we get onto non-faith applicants. For non-faith applicants they prioritise those who complete their SIF over those who don't which seems dodgy to me.

Overall I would say that these admission criteria are an open invitation to errors due to their complexity, especially if they change the numbers for each faith category annually. It looks like what has happened is that the numbers for each faith category were different last year and they have used those figures instead of the ones for this year. What a mess.

With such complex admission criteria it is impossible to guess how many children will have been affected by this error. If it is a large number it will make things difficult for the appeal panel. They will have to figure out how many the school can handle and compare the cases to figure out who is most deserving, so it is important you make the best possible case as to why your daughter needs to go to this school and will be disadvantaged if she doesn't. However, if only a small number of pupils have had offers withdrawn the appeal panel may simply decide to admit all of them.

they award 152 places to faith 2, the next 58 places go to faith 3, the next 12 go to faith 4 then any remaining places go to faith 2, then faith 3, then faith 4 before we get onto non-faith applicants - but how that is our question. the same was there for 2017 and this year. I do not get your point on non-faith applicants "they prioritise those who complete their SIF over those who don't which seems dodgy to me". The number of people from whom the offer has been withdrawn is 30 according to the head-teacher. Given it is a secondary school, our understanding is that they do not need to have fixed numbers.

Hello

I think it look strange to Prh47 because the whole point of a SIF form is that you would need your priest to sign it. For the school to prioritise applicants with a SIF form over those that dont has you wondering how you can fill it out if you are not religious

We are Sif applicant in category 4

Whats that

Without giving away too much, category 4 is children of another faith living within the priority area.

Khushi12 - dipsydoo22 is right. Normally you don't have to complete an SIF for a faith school unless you are claiming priority on faith grounds. The SIF for this school is also primarily about faith. The few other pieces of information they request is stuff they should get from the LA. So it seems very strange to insist that non-faith families complete this form to get higher priority.

Given it is a secondary school, our understanding is that they do not need to have fixed numbers

I'm not sure what you mean by that. PAN (the total number of children being admitted) is a fixed number. The number of children in each category should also be a fixed number or there should be a clear formula for calculating the number. They cannot change the numbers on a whim. They have published numbers for each category in their admission arrangements. They have to stick to those numbers.

Their published admission arrangements state 152 for faith 2, 58 for faith 3 and 12 for faith 4. They used the same numbers last year and the year before. The explanation for the error really does not make sense. The numbers in each category should be the same this year as they were last year (and, indeed, the year before - and they are going to be the same next year) and are not dependent on the number of applications received. The explanation of the error does not make any sense at all.

I would go back to the LA and query their response. Point out that, according to the school's published admission arrangements, there is a fixed number in each category which is not dependent on the number of applications and the numbers were the same this year as for at least the last two years. Therefore, if the LA used last years numbers, the result should have been correct. Can they please provide more information on the error.

At the moment, based on what I can see, this is starting to feel like there was no error. The error has been correcting a non-existent error by withdrawing places from people who were correctly offered them. They cannot do that. However, it is still possible that there was an error and the problem is that the LA has not done a very good job of explaining it. But they still shouldn't have taken your place away.

As prh says: according to the school's published admission arrangements, there is a fixed number in each category which is not dependent on the number of applications and the numbers were the same this year as for at least the last two years.