Tips - What to do if you aren't happy with your school place

[PatriciaHolm]

I posted this last year and it seemed to be helpful, so reposting today...

OK, so it's National Offer Day for Secondaries today so I thought it might be useful to do a quick summary post, primarily on what to do if you aren't happy, as I know it will come up a lot today....(FWIW, I sit on Appeals Panels, and also a Chair of Governors. There are several other experienced panelists around too.) Hopefully this will be helpful.

What to do if you get a school you don't want?

1. Accept it. This is does not signal to the LA that you are happy, it just locks in a "last resort" option. It has NO impact on waiting lists - you get no preferential treatment on lists or at appeal if you turn the place down, nor are you negatively impacted if you have accepted a place.

If you turn it down, the LA no longer has an obligation to find you a place, so you will be dependent on waiting lists/appeals. If they don't come through, you could find yourself with no place in September. So ONLY turn it down if homeschool (or private) is definitely an option......

1. Get yourself onto Waiting lists for schools you do want. In some areas you are automatically put on lists for schools higher in your preferences that you don't get into, in some cases you need to ask, so check - your LA website, email, or login portal will probably tell you what to do. You can also add yourself to lists for schools you didn't apply for (some LAs limit the amount of lists you can be on though.). The LA may also have an idea of which schools still have places, you never know there might be something that appeals.

1. Check there has been no mistake. If you are genuinely surprised and you think a mistake might have been made - wrong distance used, sibling link ignored etc - it's worth checking. Your decision letter/portal is likely to have the criteria you were assessed under for each school and, for example, the distance used in the case of distance criteria, so check all is well. If it doesn't, check with the LA. But be patient, lots of people will be calling/emailing today and tomorrow....

1. Think about appeals. You can appeal for any school you applied for and didn't get into. I won't go into depth here as each appeal is different, but essentially you need to show that the detriment to the school of taking another pupil is less than the detriment to your child of getting a place. If you decide to do this, post and ask for help! A number of us here are happy to do so.

If you are happy - great! Accept it, if you need to (some LAs will auto accept for you.) And be patient - most secondaries are a bit busy right now (!) so it may be a while before you hear from your chosen school re. induction etc.

Any questions, do ask. Sometimes it's easier for someone not emotionally involved to figure out the answer or find a detail.

Great post.. thank you. Patiently ( not so ) waiting for the email from the Kent county.

Thank you!

Also waiting for the email from the same county. Apparently it goes out at 5:30pm...

No idea where the emoji came from!

Excellent advice already. I’d just add that - if you’re contemplating an appeal and want MN advice - start your own thread mentioning why (as far as you know) you missed out on a place and what it is about the school that makes you think it is the best one for your child.

Thank you for the advice, please can I ask a question?

We have been given a place at our second choice school. I have accepted this. For our borough we are automatically put onto the waiting list for schools we places higher than the offered place (this is stated in the offer )

For our first choice school, my daughter falls into band 3a (3) with a sibling priority (according to the schools published admissions criteria). I know of 3 children in band 3c who have been given places. It seems that the school haven’t followed their published admissions criteria.

Obviously we may get a place from the waiting list. We live in a borough that has a lot of churn due to people going private.

Is the school not following their admissions criteria good grounds for appeal? My daughter doesn’t have exceptional circumstances to justify the desired school. I want her with her sister, with an easier journey, but I know those aren’t grounds for appeal.

If there’s been a mistake (which sounds possible here) then the LEA ought to correct it now, although many make the parents take it to appeal, for the panel to sort out. Contact the LEA now, to check that they placed your child in the right admissions category and to query why children from lower categories have been admitted ahead of them.

@AuditAngel

The first thing to do is talk to the LA and raise the issue. If they have made an error that cost your daughter a place, what they should do is correct it immediately and offer her a place.

However, some LAs will force it to appeal anyway, because they would rather be able to point to an appeals panel being the reason a school is over PAN, than their own error.....but if you can prove they have made an error, you should win, as that is one of the clear and explicit grounds to allow an appeal.

If you want to PM me I am happy to look at the criteria.

Can I ask with waiting lists how you get the offer? Do you get a phone call or email or a text notifying you of a change on eadmissions? Also the borough we are in says we are automatically put on waiting list for higher schools but what about schools in adjacent borough? Do we need to contact them as I’m sure they are not automatic after some point?

My advice may sound strange but having been there , having put an appeal together , I would strongly recommend ignoring anything your new found " friends" tell you.

Mistakes do happen sometimes but not nearly as often as people make out. There's a higher chance they are lying.

Don't waste time and don't rely on evidence from people who haven't been as clever as they think they have.

@Whatwouldscullydo

My advice may sound strange but having been there , having put an appeal together , I would strongly recommend ignoring anything your new found " friends" tell you.

Mistakes do happen sometimes but not nearly as often as people make out. There's a higher chance they are lying.

Don't waste time and don't rely on evidence from people who haven't been as clever as they think they have.

And bear in mind that those people who you think are in 3c might actually be rightfully in a higher band for another reason that is nothing to do with anybody else but the Admissions Officer and the Board of Governors/Trustees who made the ranking decisions.

After all, not everybody wants to discuss the reason they have been offered a place is because of some serious circumstances or because their child is actually adopted (whether in England or from overseas) and therefore has to be given priority over others by law.

Yes. Strangely people like to brag about how they managed to get their kids in. The "I only listed one they had no choice " or " I live 6 miles away you live 2 miles away there's clearly a mistake " method.

Yes, that’s why I was saying that this should be double-checked with the LEA. It may be an error, or it may be that the children assumed to be in a lower admissions category are in fact in a higher category and were correctly offered places.

I will follow the advice given and ask the LEA how they placed her in the category she was placed in. I was already planning on checking this with the school in advance of the waiting lists to ensure that she was correctly placed, I didn’t consider that this might (on the assumption an error had been made) change things other than via waiting list,

Thank you.

I told my husband that the experts on admissions are all to be found here.

That’s a good approach. As was pointed out before, the key question is not just whether a mistake was made but whether it was a mistake which cost your child a place.