2nd Appeal granted Secondary Year 7

[Hayl3e]

Hi everyone,

I have been granted a 2nd appeal in this academic year due to a house move. The appeal is for the same school I lost my 1st appeal to.

This is for year 7 and I have just moved closer by about 2 miles, making us now in catchment priority 1 for the school. The school is oversubscribed overall and currently is at full capacity for year 7, so if I was to be awarded a place on appeal, my daughter would be added as an extra making the appeal harder to win.

This has me thinking that I need to base my appeal on more than just a house move but I'm struggling to know what points to raise.

The school is a SEN school meaning they take more than average SEN registered children so I have that to contend with too. My daughter doesn't have any extra needs or medical reasons I can present.

My daughter is currently 1st on the waiting list for the school and has been for a few months. I have recently been told that the LA have requested that the school admit another child. I understand that this child will have priority over my daughter, and I'm not entitled to know otherwise due to GDPR. It's still frustrating all the same and I feel I'm 'clutching at straws' to get her in. I don't want to make a bad impression and be negative in the appeal.

My daughter is currently home educated and has been since September. The LA take the view that this is acceptable so basically places my daughter at the bottom of the list of priorities. I get less than no help from the LA -although they claim to offer help and advice, I find I get brushed off as she is receiving an education.

Can anyone offer any help and advice as to what I can present in my appeal? I understand I need to convince the panel that my daughter will be more disadvantaged by not being in the school, and that outweighs the problems the school will face, but how do I do that? I'm stuck for what to say other than I've moved and she lives closer.

Thanks

What did you base it in last time?

Is there anything that the school offers that other schools don't that your dd has an aptitude for?
Latin
Athletics squad
Mandarin etc.

Moving closer is not a good enough reason.
Nor is the fact you presumably turned down an offered school and instead you chose to home educate. In fact from what I have read here you doing that could annoy the panel as it smacks of trying to blackmail them 'my poor child hasn't got a school place'.

Anyway, you need to find reasons why this school is particularly good for your child.
e.g.

• She excels in languages and they allow for GCSE
• She has an interest in animals and they run an animal care course as a twilight activity
• She has diagnosed anxiety from the doctor, and the doctor has a supporting letter saying she needs to attend a school < 2 miles from home, and this is the only school that fits the criteria
• She plays chess at county level and this school has a chess club

If the 'only' reason you want the school is because it gets better results then that isn't normally, from what I read here, good enough to win an appeal.

She excels in languages and they allow for 3 MFL at GCSE

The school is oversubscribed overall and currently is at full capacity for year 7, so if I was to be awarded a place on appeal, my daughter would be added as an extra making the appeal harder to win

That is the case for all appeals. If the school wasn't full in Y7 they would have to admit your daughter so there would be no need for an appeal. Your appeal is no harder to win than any other appeal.

For appeal purposes, the fact you now live closer will carry little weight. You need to show that the disadvantage to your daughter from not attending this school outweighs any disadvantage to the school from having to deal with an additional pupil. As MarigoldGlove says, you need to look for things this school offers that are particularly relevant to your daughter and that she will miss out on if she isn't admitted.

Why was no school other than this one acceptable?!

The school she was offered meant she would have to get up at 5am every morning to catch a 6am bus to a horrid city centre (I'm a police officer and work the area), then catch a connecting bus to school and be an hour early each morning for school. On top of that, she would have a worse journey in the evening, getting home 5-6ish if she was lucky. The buses are every hour so the 7 am morning bus to the centre meant she'd have 4 minutes to make the connecting bus, and then being 30mins late for school every day because of timings. No school bus was provided from where I lived and as a single parent, I couldn't afford 2 taxis every day.

My appeal was based on this last time and the option to home school was definitely the better choice of the 2 - MarigoldGlove. The LA would not provide transport as the school was 2.9 miles straight line yet 8 miles to travel to via the only bus route. It is also unsafe to walk due to lack of pathways, lighting and crossings. The area is quite rural.

Butterymuffin- there are 5 schools in the area that she could have gotten to safely and reasonably via school bus from where I lived then and live now. The school they gave her was the only one she couldn't get to. I'd be happy with any of them and am not bothered too much about where she goes, her safety is the most important thing. I'm currently requesting appeals for other schools too.

The LA would not provide transport as the school was 2.9 miles straight line

I hope it was 2.9 miles by the shortest safe walking route. When determining eligibility for free transport it is walking distance that matters, not straight line.

Have you appealed for any of the other schools you consider acceptable as well? The fact that you would be happy with any of the 5 local schools means that really this school isn't the only school that would meet your daughter's needs (its just your preference) and therefore it would seem unlikely that you have enough grounds for an appeal to be successful. Agree also I wouldn't mention that you are homeschooling as an alternative to the school offered as it will look like you are trying to emotionally blackmail the panel.

Prh47bridge - no, there wasn't a safe walking route per se. There was a crossing just further down outside the house and that was it. Beyond that there were no other crossings classed as safe for a mile and 1/2. This was the safest route we could find and all other routes where unlit and had zero paths.

There may not have been a walking route you considered to be safe but the LA should have used a walking route of some kind to determine eligibility for free transport. They cannot deny free transport on the basis of straight line distance.

Are you on the waiting list of all 5 schools?

No I didn't receive any of that. I've tried numerous times to get help from the LA and it's like pulling teeth. Just advice on what my options are and where to go from here has fallen on deaf ears since March. I have my councillor involved at the moment and have a complaint that I'm waiting on a reply for with the LA. I've been studios and not known my rights and options when they mattered. I've relied too heavily on trying to get advice from the LA and the just online.

You are in the right place now. prh and admissions and others will be able to advise you.

prh Could she appeal based on the fact that she wasn't offered free transport before so moved house to get to an accessible school and so now needs a place? ie That the LA screwed up?

OP. can you confirm you are in England?

Did you apply to the other schools closer and easier to access than the one you were allocated?

Because you can appeal to them as well.

The moving closer will help ensure that if a place comes up it is not offered to anyone who moves into the area closer than where you were, but doesn't really assist your appeal.

Waiting list places are held in order of the published criteria, they may have had a place come up but a LAC had very recently been put in the list, or a child with a 'statement' needed a place.

Last year I won a second appeal for my daughter after moving house. I have all the documentation I used and the speech I gave. If you can give me your email I am happy to send it to you so you have some idea of what you can say.

Sorry, this is my first post and I've just signed up. I'm not sure what these acronyms are for. I am in the UK. She is on the waiting list for all schools she can get to safely and 2 extra schools I didn't apply for originally but she can get to them safely via a school bus. I have added her to these waiting lists through an in-year transfer done 2 months ago.

Hello OP. Have you done a transport appeal as well as a school appeal? I have won a transport appeal where the county council claimed there was a safe walking route and then acknowledged there wasn’t, at appeal.

@Hayl3e don't put your email address on here! Send it to @Browniegal13 by personal message (PM)

Could she appeal based on the fact that she wasn't offered free transport before so moved house to get to an accessible school and so now needs a place? ie That the LA screwed up?

Technically no, but I would still use it if the LA refused free transport incorrectly. It helps to undermine the LA a bit.

@Hayl3e - I would be hesitant about using someone else's case. What worked for them may not work for you. I will be happy to take a look at anything you want to send me via PM and advise.

I'm not sure what these acronyms are for

LAC = Looked After Child, i.e. a child who is or has been looked after by the council.

If there is anything else you don't understand, just ask. I'll be happy to explain.

@Parsimon no I haven't. I don't see the point in appealing when there's nowhere to transport to at this time but also it didn't occur to me back in March as I just focused on appeals for a place in a school. It was a lack of info I had at the time also and any advice I tried to get from the LA was fruitless.

@prh47bridge thank you. That's much appreciated. I was just told over the phone by the LA that I need to either contact the bus company and the school about transport. It just didn't occur to me to fight it and my initial thinking was that it would just have led to her having to do the same unsafe route as explained previous, but just paid for. The school and the bus company said there was no transport in place from where I lived and it's the same from where I live now.

Yes, my preferences on the application were based on proximity to the school via a safe route, bus or walking. I didn't get any of them. My closest school was 1.2 mile. The next closest after than is the one I'm appealing now which was 3 miles from where I lived.

Admissions will provide you with information you request.Ask for class sizes for core subjects for last 3 years and compare progress on D fe site and compare to other local schools. see if they are doing better with smaller classes and hence have more capacity.
Look at your job and what support you need and how this may limit your ability to support your child. Look at where she can get this support from if she is isolated by being HS, without friends and support close by, limited by where you live. Look at pastoral support and inclusion at desired school.
Research what your child needs, high incidents of DV in the Police Service, stress of job and anything that can be used to evidence the importance/need of a stronger network of support. That would be my suggestion.
There will be a Council travel to school policy regarding transport. The panel won't consider transport problems because this is a separate issue for the Council to sort. Separate discussions are needed.

@TeenPlusTwenties thanks for the advice. It has given me something to look into.

@cabbageking yes that's something I will look into. My workload and shift patterns do have an impact, that's defo something to consider. Thank you.

Normally moving into an area would generate a second appeal but just moving nearer to the school in question would not, so I am wondering why the LA are allowing a second appeal. As others have said just moving nearer is not going to win you an appeal and the fact that you are home educating at present just reinforces the suggestion you are just moving to get into this school.
In your presentation as to the reasons for appealing you need to explain the circumstances of the original appeal, the completely unacceptable transport links to get to and from the school in time. The other thing I would reinforce at this appeal is that as a serving police officer who is in the area around the allocated school you had concerns about your child's safety if others were aware of your occupation.
That however does not resolve the current situation with you home educating. You need more positive reasons for wanting this particular school, one of which could be that being a police officer but not involved operationally around where you live and the requested school gives you confidence that she can go on available transport to the school without concerns for her safety.
You need to look at the number of pupils in the year group and how far over the admission number they are. If it is only the one that you say has been admitted by the LA then you need to ask for information on the number of teaching groups for main subjects like english and maths along with the number in each of the teaching groups. Hopefully they will have a tiered system which means less pupils in the less able groups which would allow you to argue that it is perfectly reasonable to admit one more student. Please note that teaching groups and pastoral group numbers which are frequently quoted are very different in most schools.