School Appeal

[Beckyisgreen82]

Hi, My son did not get into the reception for our catchment school due to over subscription. I discovered that a another child was offer a space who lives further away from the school but still in catchment. The school admission team have admitted that there was a system error which lead to this child getting offered a space.

Where do I stand with this, as they have broken the conduct code. My child is currently 9th on the waiting list ( a total of 38 children sit on this this list)

I have a daughter that I will be applying for in intake for 2023, and as we are out of catchment for the school my son has got into, it means we have no guarantee they will be in the same school...

Legally I'd have then thought every child who should have been given a place before this other child should win their appeal however wait for the experts to see your post for their opinion.

If it's a primary school you may want to get this moved as you've posted it in secondary education.

Unless you can prove your child was the one who should have got a place and hasn't as a result of the misallocation, it won't help; given you are 9th on the waiting list, I suspect that was not the case.

What have the school done so far? If the error has only recently come to light, they are too late to withdraw the place for the child allocated in error. Ideally they would offer a place to the child who missed out, but many admissions authorities will push them to appeal instead. However, if your child wasn't the affected one, that doesn't help you.

Under infant class size legislation, one of the only things which will get through an appeal is maladministration so you need to have written evidence from the admissions team.
How many children per year group are admitted each year?
It's usually 30 or divisible by 30.
It it's less than 30 with mixed classes then they might have some wriggle room.

For most families two children in different schools makes a massive difference to family life and logistics. If nothing else at least one of the schools needs to have wrap around childcare and at least one parent needs to have some start/finish time flexibility...

If the admission team at the LA have admitted that a mistake was made and this child was offered a place by mistake, then in my opinion, they should accept that the mistake was genuine and not remove that place. However the child who was next in-line for a place has been disadvantaged and should be offered a place. That would be allowed and if it was an infant class size situation then the place would be considered as an exception and the school would have 1 over PAN.
As far as OP is concerned unless you are the child that has been disadvantaged there is no connection to you. You are 9th on the waiting list as I understand it, so this issue has no impact on OP and you probably need to consider that you are not likely to get the offer of a place at the school.

It’s exactly as admission says. If the error had deprived your child of a place, then the LEA would be obliged to rectify the error by offering you a place (even if that took pupil numbers above the PAN) but that seems not to be case here.