Help - preparing for secondary appeal hearing

[Cocosunshine]

Hi all,

We applied for a place at our local comprehensive secondary school under exceptional medical and social needs (due to the ongoing impact of my son's treatment for leukaemia from age 7 to 10 1/2 - application was supported by evidence from two oncologists and two social workers) but didn't get a place. Despite it being our closest school, we're not close enough to get in on distance.

We are appealing, and have been given some fantastic help via Mumsnet on our appeal documents (thank you all!).

The hearing is coming up, and I wondered if anyone could help us unpick the school's statement about why it can't offer our son a place, and help us with what to look into and questions to ask at the Stage 1 appeals hearing, ie specifically about why we believe the school can admit one more child.

Summary of the school's statement is below.

The school is Ofsted outstanding and has been for the past 5 years. It has admitted above its PAN in 4 of the past 5 years, but is currently not above PAN in any year group (very mobile local population).

Thank you very much for any help you can offer!

The school's statement says:

• Our son was not in a priority category [we applied under the exceptional medical and social needs criterion, which is the third priority category after children with an EHCP and Looked After children – this is not acknowledged anywhere in the statement, and no reason for refusing on these grounds has been given. They have previously said they don't accept he meets the criteria, but given no reasons for this]

• He was therefore not close enough to get a place on distance

• Admitting an extra pupil would:

• Put undue pressure on the school’s accommodation and resources in all areas of the curriculum and particularly for practical subjects like science and technology

• Group sizes need to be within limits that will ensure individual attention, supervision and access to resources

• The school is staffed and funded for XXX pupils per year – no capacity to resource additional students so any increase would prejudice current students

• Classrooms are not resourced for additional students, there is not the physical space in most rooms to do so

• Due to budget allocation, not able to financially provide for more students

• School prides itself on pastoral care – even one more student per year group would dilute this for vulnerable pupils

• Corridors already congested. Accidents are rare, but only because of constant supervision

• Dining facilities stretched to capacity, even one more student would make a difference when children are walking around holding plates

• School built to a limited budget and circulation, eating and playground space at a premium/already stretched

• 9 Teaching Assistants supporting students with additional needs. Compares to 30 plus in central London schools. They are expecting 5 children with an EHCP or statement of special needs (this is 2.7%, which is 60% higher than the national average of 1.7%) and they expect an increasing number of students on School Action or School Action Plus. This increases pressure on school resources. No resources to admit any more children with an EHCP. All schools nearby are able to meet children with needs within a mainstream setting [our son doesn’t have an EHCP or any additional educational needs]

• Vacancies at 4 schools in the borough. School believes it would be prejudicial to the efficient use of resources to admit more children

Thank you for your help!!!

Just checked on the government school comparison site, and there it says this school has 20.8 FTE Teaching Assistants (21 headcount) - but they have said they only have 9? Can anyone explain this disparity?

Can anyone explain this disparity?

The first question would be, are they talking about the same point in time? The information supplied by the school for the appeal shoild be current. Learning support staff (unless specifically funded through the provision for children with an EHCP) are often the first to be 'let go'.

Hi, the first thing to say is that this is a typical school appeal document and there is nothing novel at all about what they are saying. What they have said is to ensure that the school can prove at stage 1 of the appeal hearing that there will be prejudice to the existing pupils if a further pupil is admitted.
Looking down their comments I would make the following comments based solely on what the school have said, I have ignored your particular circumstances around them not appearing to have given consideration to exceptional needs as they are specific to you .
Firstly as the school has said that they have admitted above PAN for 4 of the last 5 years, the obvious question to ask is for them to confirm how many above PAN they admitted in each of the year groups. What is not clear is whether the school admitted extra or these are the pupils admitted at appeal. If this is the case of the school admitting then you need to ask why not admit above PAN now and surely history says you can cope with admitting pupils above PAN.
You could ask about the numbers in practical subjects but most schools will be running at 21 which is considered the norm. I would ask how many actual teaching groups there are for maths and English as opposed to the number of pastoral groups which will probably be quoted. Having asked how many groups, ask them for the numbers in the groups, which will vary from probably circa 15 to 30+. That will then allow you to ask why you cannot accommodate another pupil in the groups what are low numbers (low ability pupils).
The comments around finance need to be questioned. Yes whilst there is a lag in funding schools are funded based mainly on pupil numbers. So school funding is from April to April for maintained LA school and September to September for academies. The funding is based on the number of pupils on a set day in the previous October. So whilst there is a lag in funding becoming available for any extra pupil admitted the school they will get funding so it is incorrect to say there is no funding. You might also like to ask whether there is a surplus in the school budget. If there is then you can then ask again why the comments on funding are relevant if the school is holding a surplus.
In terms of rooms, most rooms are set up in size for 30, so a question might be “can you confirm how many rooms the school has that are not capable of taking 30 pupils.” If there are not many then the next question should be to return to the number of teaching groups and again illustrate the number of small groups in rooms capable of holding 30.
I would ignore the actual number of TAs as this will be being funded at least partially by EHC plan funding, the school can too easily bend the figures to suit and some will be on part-time or temporary contracts. There is no such thing now of School Action or School Action Plus, only those pupils with agreed SEND, so ask why they are quoting out of date figures.
Last comment on the school’s case would be around the comment about vacancies at other schools. Ask them to confirm that this appeal has nothing to do with other schools in the borough, it is all to do with the desire for parents to want their child to go to this school.
Just remember you are unlikely to win at part 1, what you are trying to do is reduce the level of prejudice to as low as possible, such that the appeal panel will feel it is appropriate to admit more pupils who have a good case to be admitted.

Admission: who decides if a child meets the “exceptional medical and social needs”
Criteria? How is it evaluated? I’m really curious.

Who decides if the evidence given by parents/professionals is acceptable to meet the criteria - or not? Are there guidelines? Is this worth questioning? Is there is list of illnesses or circumstances or is it rule of thumb?

I am genuinely not sure this criteria is administered professionally due to the subjective nature (in educational terms) of the circumstances described by parents and professionals and admissions officers/schools might have a variety of views on the severity of the circumstances and therefore need. Would it be a problem that the DS isn’t currently receiving treatment? I just feel this is a minefield for parents and very confusing.

We won an appeal last year on the grounds our child had a psychological/social need that had been missed, and the selection procedures had discriminated against them due to that need.

From what I understand appeals rarely succeed on stage 1. But it's important to ask general questions about the selection process etc. at that point.

Do you know if your child's medical need has been rejected, or have they just missed it? If it's the latter then you could win on that alone. You probably wouldn't be able to discuss this at stage one (at our appeal they were very boundaried about not allowing questions specific to individual cases until stage two). Ideally you would find this out before appeal day.

If it has been acknowledged but rejected then you can challenge that decision asking for info as to why etc. I would be asking what they do consider a medical need if your case was rejected despite evidence from professionals already being provided.

It's important also to put a case as to why one more admission won't prejudice efficient education for all, if your child doesn't have any SEND this shouldn't be too troubling. Like you our school wasn't at PAN for every year.

The exceptional medical or social reasons admission criteria is a can of worms in many instances. The first problem is that it is frequently not administered well. If you have such an admissions criteria and you as a school insist on the evidence being supplied by a set date then it seems only fair that this should then be reciprocated by the school. That having made a decision as to whether to allow the application or not, then the school should respond in writing. In my experience most do not and the parent is left assuming it will be taken into consideration when in reality they only find it has not been put into that category when the places are allocated.
As to who administers the decisions as to whether that should be included under the medical admission criteria that should be stated on the admission criteria arrangements. It is frequently not anybody with a medical background and the "get-out" clause is a comment that medical opinion will be sought as and when necessary. It is very easy to see why parents who supply medical information are upset that a non-medical person is then making a decision of this magnitude.
I have started to ask at appeals when this comes up (which is not that often) where the minutes of the meeting are that confirms that the application was considered and rejected as not meeting the required high standard, which is the normal response.
Personally I think that it is best that schools do not have such an admission criteria but on the other hand I do know that many potential pupils do have medical issues which do need to be considered.
There is no simple and easy answer to this problem and it will continue to be a problem for families in feeling they are not being treated fairly.

Sorry for the slow reply everyone, and thank you very much for your replies.

@admission - thank you for this very thorough and helpful response. I'm going to read it properly and digest it, and if I need to, would it be OK if I came back to you with questions? I was interested by your point about schools not telling parents whether their application has succeeded in meeting the medical/social needs standard - do some schools ask for this information early? We had to provide the evidence when we made our application, and we only found out they hadn't accepted it when we didn't get a place (in fact we still had to ask if they'd actually assessed under this criterion, as they didn't refer to it at all).

@BubblesBuddy - in our case, the decision was made by the school principal and members of the governing body, no medical expert involved. They haven't given any detail on why they came to this decision, just that they didn't accept we meet the criterion.

In terms of him finishing treatment, our application is based on ongoing health issues - unfortunately while chemo saves children's lives, it also damages their health, and there's a big mental health impact of going through this, particularly at such a young age.

@bourgeoisfishwife I'm glad you won your appeal. When you say that your son's need was missed, do you mean they processed his application as if you hadn't applied under those grounds? So it was a clear error? I thought that might have happened to us because they made no reference to it, but they eventually produced minutes to say they'd discussed it. They didn't provide any explanation or detail, which makes it very difficult for us to appeal and generally doesn't feel right.

Admission is right, it feels very unfair and it's a really rubbish system - how can unqualified people possibly understand my son's medical situation, and how can they over-rule his oncologists and social workers?

It's all very difficult and stressful. All we want is for him to go to his local school with his friends.

It was an assumption that the school might have looked at treatment dates and reached a conclusion. Again it really shows how difficult this criteria is and I’m glad admission agrees! I’m sorry your DS has continuing Heath issues.

I do think that schools need to publish data and typical examples as to what might qualify. I guess one of the difficulties is that they might have been too focussed on Educational need and nothing else. It makes you wonder how they did evaluate the medical and social need. I think I would want to know how many have been admitted in this category in previous years. Also numbers that applied in this category. Does the LA web site give this info? You can certainly ask for it. It might show they are biased against using this criteria. Or are incapable of administering it.

It does seem a very unfair category if it’s not taken seriously and there is no expertise available to schools to weigh up what they should do. Good luck with the appeal though.

OP,
more than happy for you to come back with further questions /comments either here or as a PM

I'm also waiting for an appeal date . Finding it hard to find pan numbers apart from last year's and what else should I know about ??

I'm also waiting for an appeal date. Finding it hard to find info on pan numbers etc apart from the last year's. What else will i need to know ??

Sorry new to this 🙃

As much as I do feel for you and hope it all works out- however your statement of how can unqualified people understand your boys medical needs - they are not qualified to do so, but they are qualified to know their school - they may be saying how can someone who’s not stepped into their school be qualified to decide.
1 more pupil does make a difference , especially those with needs - we have had it at our school- and it amazes me how much time and money can be dedicated to one student.
This post isn’t meant to come across argumentative - it’s just stating that some schools can not simply just cope with 1 more xx

@WoWsers16 since we applied under exceptional medical and social needs, we wouldn't have needed an "extra" place, he would have been allocated a place ahead of distance allocations. However, an unqualified panel decided to disregard evidence from two oncologists and two social workers about my son's needs, so here we are. The appeal process exists because clearly schools can and should accommodate extra children in some circumstances. Otherwise no appeals would ever be won, and that is not the case. Not really sure what the point of your post is. Are you suggesting we shouldn't try to get my son into the school that best needs his needs?

I just didn't like your comment of how the people who know the school are unqualified in the process - as each appeal
Is different , and the amount of care it sounds they already support - maybe they are thinking about their already overstretched budget and overworked staff - I cant re read your post on my mobile as I'm typing this - I wish you luck in your appeal, I really do - I just think sometimes people forget how much 1 more child can effect schools-
your child will be that 1 more child as you are having to appeal as they have not felt the medical need is in the higher bracket- even if they realise they've done a mistake and let you child in.
Honestly I hope it works out and I'm sure with the support of the posters on here they will give you great advice x

I didn't say they weren't qualified to understand their school, I said they weren't qualified to assess my son's medical and social needs - since they have no medical or psychological knowledge or training, that seems a reasonable thing for me to say. My son is just as important as the other children in the school and deserves a place as much as they do. So he would not be an "extra" child putting everyone out, he would be one of the children at the school, just the same as all the others.

No they don’t have that training - just as the medics don’t have school training and they don’t understand how schools work.
Anyway - could go back and forth all night.
Honestly hope it all works out x

@WoWsers16
Yes school staff may "know the school" and see the effect extra pupils have on how crowded the school feels, but, as the OP says, the school is unqualified to judge what cases actually are most deserving in their exceptional social/medical category.
Unless of course they have simultaneous qualifications in medicine, social work & secondary education. Or, they have an arrangement for these applications to be assessed independently by those with a medical degree.

One thing I would raise is that the school had admitted above PAN the last few years so what makes it different this year and why can't they admit above PAN?