School appeal in year admission Year 10

[friendlyflicka]

My daughter is currently in year 10. She has suffered from an anxiety disorder to the point where she is not currently attending her school and is being treated CAMHS. The school handled the first stages of her panic very badly and now there is no possibility in her mind of returning to the school.

Another school locally has 2 year 10 places. I applied. Because there was an attendance issue, it went to the Fair Access Panel. The school refused to take her because it has high need students in the year. But my daughter is not high need. CAMHS are just recommending a graded return to school. She has always worked to her expected level and has no behaviour issues.

I am going to appeal but wondered if anyone had experience of this issue. Obviously time is moving on and I am paying for tutoring and she is working from home. She is still on the roll at her current school. They are obviously keen to move her on as well!

What I am asking really is: if a school has places, does it have any kind of obligation to take on a student who needs a place? Or are academies just allowed to act as they wish, especially in the crucial years of GCSEs

This is where the problems of different LAs operating different versions Fair Access Protocols come to light. FAP is supposed to be for pupils who have no school place. You do have a school at which your daughter is registered, so certainly in my LA this situation would go nowhere near FAP.
If the school has 2 spare places below the PAN, then in theory they cannot refuse you the place (para 15d of the admissions guidance). However what they are claiming is that they have so many high needs pupils than admitting another pupil with high needs would prejudice the education of all other pupils in the school year, even though they are not at PAN. This assumption that they can refuse the request to admit is based on para 3.8 to 3.15 which talks about FAP but is headed children with challenging behaviour and those who have been excluded twice. The school I suspect is confusing challenging behaviour and your daughter's SEN /medical issues and frankly I think that is a very poor case and you should definitely go to appeal.

Agree with Admission. This should not be an FAP case. It should be treated as a normal application. They have places. Your daughter has not been permanently excluded twice so they have to give you a place. Appeal on that basis.

thanks. That is exactly the sort of information I need. Thanks so much.

Thanks so much for your help. Emailed with a lot of aggressive copying in. Head saw my daughter today and has given her a place. Very very relieved. Definitely worth pushing if anyone in a similar situation.

That is good news but you should not have needed to push so hard, it should have been a shoe-in given they had places. Hope that it is the impetus your daughter needs to get back into full time education and resolves her anxiety issues.

I know it shouldn't. I got completely outraged about the whole thing. This has really opened my eyes to the way schools are operating and seemingly allowed to make up their own rules. And it is really only when you challenge hard that you can get any clarity and justice. Nobody actually seems that clear on the rules, and LEA seem very worried about contesting decisions. This seemed to be the Fair Access Panel making up their own reasons for refusal because they thought the first school should have dealt with it better (which it should have) and we were going across the county border. We are at the edge of 3 counties so very difficult not to do that.