Secondary school appeals 2020

[Apollorealm]

Hi hope you are all safe and well.
Can anyone give me some advice please on how and when surrey school appeals will take place this year due to coronavirus and social distancing!
I am concerned that without hearings taking place it won’t be fair on the parents as they may struggle to get their points across.

Any advice would be helpful, thanks

Panels should be independent, no matter who appoints them.

Would it be worth getting legal advice? My D will soon be going into year 11 it’s such an important year and we are desperate for her to be able to go back and take her GCSEs. This seems to be our only choice as we live in a village we have no other close schools. Thank you for your help and advice.

That’s good to know! Thank you

Sorry I was meant to say! @eddiemairswife that's good to know about video appeals going well and parent seem satisfied.

@SK26 - I wouldn't bother with legal advice. Most lawyers don't know much about school admissions. I have seen some shockingly bad advice, even from lawyers who claim to be experts in this field.

If they are below PAN in your daughter's year they will struggle to win an appeal. They absolutely cannot have a policy of refusing to allow a pupil to return. Such a policy would be illegal.

The use of the term "operationally full" suggests they are going to try and argue that, even though they are below PAN in your daughter's year, they have so many pupils in other years that they can't cope. The vast majority of appeal panels simply won't accept that.

I’ve heard Academy’s use their own panel so I haven’t got much of a chance

Using their own panel simply means that they don't use the LA to provide an appeal panel. They use a third party. The appeal panel must be independent. They are not allowed to use people employed by the school, governors, ex-governors, etc. Based on what you have said, you have a good chance of success.

Thank you so much for your advice, my D is so upset and just wants to go back to school and not let this illness ruin her GCSEs.

The PAN for each year group states 120 and they have
Year 7 -113
Year 8 - 99
Year 9 - 95
Year 10 - 97
Year 11 - 80

I’m so nervous about the appeal because if they refuse I will have to homeschool GCSEs.

With numbers like that I would be amazed if you lose. If they were over PAN in other years they might be able to convince the appeal panel that they are too full to take any more but they are under PAN in every year, and hence well below capacity. I don't see that they have any argument for refusing admission. Have you had their case yet? If so, what does it say?

Thank you for your reply. No we haven’t had the case yet, just the letter refusing a place.

The defence that they are operationally full can only be full where it is obvious that other year groups are full and that in the year group in question they have set themselves up with a number of teaching groups that cannot accept anymore pupils.
The school appears to fail badly on the first part of their reason. In terms of current operating groups for teaching the only one that could have any hope of winning an appeal is if they are only running 3 teaching groups for the 97 pupils with each then having more than 30 in it.
The only other issue is what GCSE's does your child want to do and that the school are saying they cannot accommodate her in say Fremch because they are already at capacity of the classroom but that is a very flimsy reason to not admit and most panels would not have any hesitation in confirming that a place been made available.
It will be interesting to what they come up with as a reason.

Thank you for your advice, everyone has been so helpful at a very stressful time. They haven’t asked what GCSEs my daughter will want to take, she only left that school in September and has done most of her GCSE work at the school. I think they don’t want to let her back because she left, she took a chance on something she was interested in and due to I’ll health she has been referred to the hospital for suspected Ménière’s disease she was unable to continue going to a school so far away.

Just to update-
We got the decision letter this morning and the appeal was successful!

We're super happy and relieved and have a very happy child.

That’s fantastic news you must be so pleased 😃
We are still waiting for a date!

Congratulations- we have ours on 2nd July but it is an all written one so feeling uncertain about it.
Seems to have been going on for an age now!

Just to update!
Our appeal was successful 😃
Needless to say we are over the moon!
Good luck to anyone still going through it and a huge thank you to all the experts on here.

Well done.