Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

In year school appeal

3 replies

Slonce0911 · 23/10/2021 19:27

Looking for advice for in year school appeal. Year 8. I have applied as advised on council website, earliest you can for next term. Now council did not process application for nearly 50 days, despite many calls their only excuse was being busy. 99 days we had wait for response and refusal based on prejudice as school is oversubscribed. This was only after escalation to admission manager! Otherwise god knows how much longer we would have to wait. What's the best approach to argue prejudice?
We meet all criteria, moved back to catchment area ( only out due to housing issue caused by gazoomping) and he was in feeder primary school, got all supporting sport based letters ( sport school). School is part of the same trust...
It is so hard watch him every day looking at all his friends walking to school we can see and hoping he can get there soon! Feeling like total failure in being a parent 😔

OP posts:
meditrina · 23/10/2021 21:20

Have you been offered any school?

Fitting the entrance criteria fir the main admissions rounds isn't relevant.

What you need to show at appeal is that despite the school doing full, the detriment (referred to as 'prejudice') to your DS is not attending this school is greater than the detriment to the school and its existing pupils by going over numbers.

The first thing that you need to do is establish what the permitted admission number for his year group is (known as PAN) and his many pupils are currently in that year group. As they are full, the actual number will be at least PAN (because if there was a vacancy, you'd have been offered it) but you need to know if it is higher and if so by how much. It would also be useful to know what the actual numbers are in other year groups currently in the school.

What I'm getting at is if, for the sake of argument, the PAN is 150, and his year group has 152 pupils that looks a bit over-full. But if every other year group has 155 pupils, then you would have the makings of an argument that they can cope with that number and the prejudice is insignificant.

At the same time, you need to show what this schools offers that is especially important to your DS and not available (in the same way or to the same extent) in other local schools. You have the start of a case with soort. Just saying that DS plays sport (with references) and the school has a sports specialism might nit be enough. What sports does this school offer that are not available elsewere? Or does it have a coaching programme that he wouid particularly benefit from? Or fixtures?

Ditto for other interests - availability of choirs, orchestras and ensembles for the musical, regular plays and productions for thespians, particular languages not offered elsewhere, triple science etc

Slonce0911 · 23/10/2021 23:22

Ahh thank you. I will find out PAN obviously if school will provide it considering current communication.
For school option it's the only secondary for town next one within 5-10 miles, and yes sport as such field hockey is not very popular ( except private schools) and not offered in his current one. Top that with school music group ( he plays piano), we tried to get to music lunch class in current school but always fobbed off. He has no competition, being top of the class just need different environment...i know it may sounds rubbish but coming from local if you not born in the area you just can't get to area..school just can't get the most of their students, and many more issues

OP posts:
Mumsybud · 10/02/2022 00:56

how did you get on?

New posts on this thread. Refresh page