Secondary School Appeal

[RCBOn]

Please can someone help with secondary school appeal. We are appealing on the basis of admin error / miscommunication.

-10 October: Contacted the admissions team and asked them if its acceptable to supply only the rental agreement before the deadline as we would not have last 3 months Gas / electricity bills as mandated on the website, response was - That's fine, we will work with you to gather all the remaining documents.

• Moved on 28th October and submitted rental agreement - 6 months contract
• 17th Nov: Admission team asked for 3 documents - standard document evidence list from website ( Rental agreement up to March 2022, Disposal of old property / no access and at least other two other documents out of DL GP Registration Usage bills etc.
• 19th Nov: we responded with what we had - DL, GP Registration, and reason why we can not rent our property - Had survey done and it required extensive building work and was worked upon by builder initiated in early Feb but delayed due to covid and the time the builders take to respond, plus the fact one of us were furloughed , we mentioned of our intent to extend the contract in shorter interval if possible.
• 14th Dec: Admissions Authority - Individual - She was not satisfied with the address evidence we submitted and asked for usage bills to satisfy address evidence.
• 15th Dec: we provided usage bills as requested in the same reply to her email
• 12th Feb: Admission Team generic email id not the Admission Team official who previously asked us the documents in December, responded to 19th November email mentioning acceptance of DL,GP but require Rental document up to Mar 2022.
• 17th Feb: our response was a big surprise to get it very last minute
• 17th Feb: Now Admission Authority - The official and not generic email id, responded with an apology that she then accept the evidence we sent through so far, and the admission team was not CCd.
• 17th Feb to 26thFeb: we didn't think we needed to provide anything more
• 26th Feb: Admissions team generic id - asked for a contract extension again at 15.30PM
• 26th Feb: we responded to check if there is a miscommunication and if this was going to affect our offer on Monday. Admission team official's email was on auto response on out-of-office and no response from Generic EMAIL ID in any form till March 9 on that.
• 1st March: Looking at the offer we assumed that you are waiting for contract extension document.
• We sent several email explaining all the previous communication and review and offer the place.
• 9th March kind of Authorative email, having gone through all communication and correspondence, we ask you to provide Disposal of old property document in addition to Extended contract agreement referring to November email which lists all the documents but not considering to mentioning above review in December or their address evidence acceptance email on 17th Feb. and for admissions purpose they will consider us from old address only till we submit further evidence, but they will be happy to review the situation if we provide further evidence in future.
• taking additional burden having to pay rent and mortgage, we took the risk to extend the contract till April 2022 in one stretch, and since we were in touch with letting agent after last month's email from admission team, we could now get the extended contract in couple of days and submitted but work on Previous property was ongoing, which the authority knew, hence we could not submit this before 15 April deadline.
• Building work was completed on 12th April and contract document signed with Agent for letting out property and a copy of this submitted to Admissions authority to show our intent and update on progress.
• We rent out the property on 28th April and submitted the Lease Agreement on May 4th and requested Authority to review the situation and offer the place.
• Now a standard response we are receiving from Authority saying DS is on Waiting list and that we have lodged an appeal will process that request accordingly.

SO, I am not sure if I fight my case based on the fact that they Confirmed our address evidence document as Acceptable so should have considered for first round allocation, and should been consistent with the review, as we missed out second round and third round as well.

DS is allocated a school place which is near our old property and 7 miles from current property. Whereas our first choice school is 100 feet away in catchment.

Any help and guidance is much appreciated.

It is the LA that deals with admissions. They run the co-ordinated admissions scheme that covers all schools in Buckinghamshire. Whether the school can admit your child without the LA's approval depends on which type of school it is. Most Buckinghamshire secondary schools are academies, which means they could admit your child without the LA's approval if they accept that a mistake has been made. However, even if there was a mistake, it definitely wasn't made by the school so I would be surprised if they were willing to step in.

In Bucks it is the local authority who deal with admissions, phoning the school will not help.
I thought they sent out a new waiting list in April? I can't remember all your timings, but was that after you submitted the final documents?
You said the school had admitted more pupils. Where did you get that information from?

@Nonamenoclue,
The waiting list was drawn on 30th April, final piece of document I submitted was on 2nd May. I will have to contact them again to check the current Waiting list number.
Appeals team have sent the paperwork which shows how the allocations were made. Which shows LA made 3 more allocations after 1st round of allocations. 2 for admin errors within catchment and 1 for looked after child.

It’s not about getting help.

I rang the school admissions to get clarity

And I was provided with that clarity

[quote RCBOn]@Nonamenoclue,
The waiting list was drawn on 30th April, final piece of document I submitted was on 2nd May. I will have to contact them again to check the current Waiting list number.
Appeals team have sent the paperwork which shows how the allocations were made. Which shows LA made 3 more allocations after 1st round of allocations. 2 for admin errors within catchment and 1 for looked after child.[/quote]
This is your problem. If you were still sending information in May, then the LA didn't have that information to decide whether to treat your new address as your home address until that point, which means they had to decide based on the information you did provide.

@Lougle,

Content copy pasted below is repeat of what I have already posted

First review they did in December 15 and did not accept the address evidence, and asked for usage bill as an additional document and they confirmed the address evidence acceptance very late on Feb 17.
Second review done after allocation day on March 9 asked for Extended contract.
Third review done after allocation day on April 12, they asked for Extended contract and No Access to Previous property.

Extended lease agreement document that we provided in March and No access to property document that we provided in May is not a late submission, not a missing document, not even the late move after October deadline but it was only a document that LA wanted from us, as they said that they were happy to review the situation and this was only asked by LA after offer day

Its quite complicated to explain in bits and pieces !!

I read 'happy to review the situation if you provide more evidence' as "We're going to use your old address unless you provide other evidence to support the new address, but if you do provide more evidence, we'll then consider your new address from that point.'

I'm really sorry, but I think you have misunderstood the LA.

I think you are right to appeal because a panel could be sympathetic and decide that you had reason to believe that you had provided enough evidence. However, if it was a panel I sat on (I used to sit on these panels regularly), I would conclude, from the evidence you've posted, that you didn't provide the required evidence at the point of the deadline and that the LA, working with the evidence they had, were right to use your old address.

Having said that, you could still win on prejudice grounds, so I would throw everything at making a strong argument that your child needs a place at this school. It will need to be strong, though, as they are already 3 over PAN.