Appeal Advice

[Beau25]

Hi

We are re-locating to a new county and our daughter has been refused entry to the local secondary school (Year 7) as the school has reached its admission limit. The nearest school with an available place is 10 miles away with no direct public transport links.

The transport team have advised that it will cost them about £2000 a month to send her to school by taxi, the transport team have already questioned admissions whether they can justify the expenditure but as it stands we are having to submit an appeal.

I was wondering if anyone had any experience/advice on what arguments might be help us in our appeal?

Many thanks

I am amazed the transport costs so much. Isn't that like £100 a day!?

When you say, 'no direct public transport links', do you mean that it's not doable by public transport (no connection which is compatible with getting to school on time), or that it can be done, but involves changing buses / trains? Some of DD's and DS2's friends do similar or longer journeys involving train and bus (admittedly through chooce as at grammar schools).

£2000 per month for a taxi does seem excessive.

I would hope the Fair Access Protocol would be invoked to force the local school to take your child. If they are already investigating taxis then I would assume there is no feasible public transport.

A family at our school successfully got in and pushed an infant class size to over 30, as the alternative was the LA committing to taxi fares for 5 years. Right decision.

It is unlikely the FAP wouid be involved as a place within a reasonable distance has been found (10miles driving would probably be under 30mins, which is well below the rue-of-thumb 45mins)

That is nothing to do with appealing for a place - which you have to do as they cannot admit over the permitted admission number unless the prospective pupils falls into an 'excepted' category (must or can be admitted without counting in the numbers) or wins an appeal.

Do you know if the school is just full, or if it is already over numbers? Can you find out how many they actually have in each year group in the last few years? (To see if they can actually cope with being somewhat over)

This is I am afraid one of those situations where the different education departments work in their own "silos". The admission team and the school are saying the preferred school is full but there is a school 10 miles away that you can have a place at, whilst the transport team is solely looking at the cost of the transport to school, which they know they will have to pay given the school 10 miles away is the nearest school with a place.
You need to look at the appeal for your preferred school as the only game in town as resolution of the internal politics within the LA needs to be seen as a long term unlikely outcome .
As such you need to be looking for all the things that the preferred school has that can form the basis of an appeal apart from the fact it is the nearest school. So are there sports or clubs that your son would be interested in, does the preferred school offer subjects that are different and your son would want to do.
What you also need to understand is that the decision to not admit is quite possibly a standard reaction to any request for admission where the year group has reached the PAN of the year group. Schools are wary that by admitting a pupil above PAN voluntarily they will open the "flood gate" to all appeals being agreed to the appeal panels because the school let pupils in. The school may well loose most appeal cases but it is better that somebody else agrees it rather than the school. But you do need a decent case for admission appeals, so start looking for good reasons for the school.

Hi
Thank you for your posts so far, the transport team stated that public transport from our area to the school stopped in 2015 and advised they would have to look at a taxi and stated would cost £100 a day.

The school have only stated it has reached it's admissions limit, we asked for information on their admissions numbers for past 3 years and they confirmed that this year was 256 (8 × 32) where as last year was 8 x 33.

All advice/suggetions gratefully received

You need to find out why they have reduced the admission number. The fact they have done so may give you an argument that the school can cope with additional pupils but, without knowing the reason for the reduction, it is impossible to be sure.

Apart from that, as Admission says you need to look for things this school offers that are missing from the allocated school and are of particular relevance to your daughter. You need to show that the disadvantage to her from not attending this school outweighs any disadvantage to the school from having to cope with an additional pupil.

Your council should pay the taxi. I had a 6-month battle with my council over paying for a taxi to school and won. The council has a duty to ensure that your child can get to school. Here is the statutory guidance for councils on the government website: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/575323/Homeetoschoolltravelanddtransportguidance.pdf

I quoted sections from this.

PM me if you like.

Given that you have two different figures for the actual numbers in the year group, you need to establish what the actual Published Admission Number (PAN) is for the school year.
You can find that either on the school's website or alternatively by looking at the LA admission information, where all admission criteria and PAN data will be found.
Most schools have a PAN which fits to the number of pastoral groups that the school runs and typically this is a multiple of 30. It would therefore not be surprise if the PAN is 240. Having 256 or even 264 in the year group is not that unusual in a largish secondary school given that whilst there may be 8 pastoral groups there could easily be 10 or even 12 teaching groups. If the PAN is 240, it is a positive for you in that appeal panels are clearly believing that the school can take more than the 240 in the year group.

Hi there!

I don't have any experience with secondary appeals - haven't got that far yet and optimistically we live in catchment so hope it will be fine.

However, we didn't live in catchment for our 1st choice primary school and got offered our 2nd choice which was a very nice school but I felt our 1st choice was right for DC.

I decided to appeal and my main argument was that I didn't feel the school had followed its own admissions criteria. I got a book out of the library called "How To Win Your School Appeal" by Ben Rooney. I read it cover to cover and it was SO helpful. It will assist you in ascertaining whether you have a decent argument and if so how to make your case, what information to ask for from the school and how to present your appeal.

You are probably wondering whether I was successful or not and I can't actually give you an answer to that. Before my appeal was heard we got a place as the school unexpectedly increased its PAN by 2 and we got one of those places. However, I will say this... I spoke to the lady at the LA whose job it is to help families with appeals. At the beginning of the call she told me I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell. By the end of the call she had offered me a job! (which I didn't incidentally take).

Good luck!!!