Please Help with appeal for Secondary school

[Mara10]

Hi, My DD didn't get the place in the first school of her choice. We want to appeal on the grounds of social emotional wellbeing. In her primary school she has had toxic friendships "frenemies" and we would like for her to go to a different school community in order for her to have a fresh start.
We are wondering If this would be enough reasons to appeal. Do you think we stand any kind of chance to win? What sort of proofs can we submit to the appeal? Also this school she wants to go is oversubscribed (22%), we are not in the catchment area or full fill any of their admission criteria .There are only three schools in the area and the other two have not good OFSTED reports and have very low academic results. Many thanks!

In short, your grounds for appeal have a close to 0% chance of success. You would be better to look at all the positive features of your preferred school and look at how your DD would benefit from them.

Most secondary schools are fairly big and the pool of pupils from primary school will be diluted, so it's unlikely that a general 'frenemy' situation would be successful as grounds. It might be different if it was severe, persistent, targeted bullying.

From my limited knowledge, no, that reason won’t stand up on appeal.
If you are in England and you are referring to the places that were confirmed this month, then you have 2 rounds of continuing interest to go through before you could start appealing. I think they are both during March.

The general advice at this stage would be to accept the school you have been given and go on the continuing interest list for your higher ranked schools. Once this has happened you’ll have a better idea of where you are.

@Lougle

In short, your grounds for appeal have a close to 0% chance of success. You would be better to look at all the positive features of your preferred school and look at how your DD would benefit from them.

Most secondary schools are fairly big and the pool of pupils from primary school will be diluted, so it's unlikely that a general 'frenemy' situation would be successful as grounds. It might be different if it was severe, persistent, targeted bullying.

Hello Lougle, thank you so much for your reply. The Relational aggression has been severe (Incidents every week and mostly this academic year) and targeted (one child is always targeting my DD) the school has intervened and did put some measurements on place for my DD to feel safer. Some of these behaviours have cause anxiety (my DD had been referred to an anxiety management class within the primary school) But yes, we have some ideas of what the preferred school would be better for our DD in academic terms.

You have to appeal based on their admission criteria. It doesn't sound like you have any grounds for appeal beyond preferring that school.

You are confusing different things.

Forget the Ofsted judgements. Focus on the clear necessity of avoiding catastrophic bullying. But it will be a a mountain to climb; and you'll need evidence.

That does not sound like it would fulfil any possible reason for an appeal. Friendship groups often change at that age. A secondary school is far far larger than a primary and so it’s unlikely that the same dynamic will persist - although even if it does, “some other children are mean to my child”, even if that’s been making her miserable, isn’t anywhere close to appeal grounds.

The fact that you aren’t in catchment and don’t fulfil any of the admission criteria also mean you surely have no chance of her going to that school.

@CarbonelCat

You have to appeal based on their admission criteria. It doesn't sound like you have any grounds for appeal beyond preferring that school.

You don't. For infant schools, there is a strict limit of 30 on class sizes except in very exceptional circumstances and so realistically it is only a mistake being made that will get you a place on appeal. For junior and secondary schools, the class size limit is not as strict and to win an appeal you need to demonstrate that the decision not to offer a place is more unreasonable than the reasons your child has for needing to go there, which can be based on things like the subjects studied at that school, extra curricular activities offered and many other things. I probably haven't worded that well and am far from an expert on appeals, but at secondary level there is far more that can be considered than just whether the admissions criteria was applied correctly.

Ignore CarbonelCat. The admission criteria are only relevant for appeal if you argue that a mistake has been made. Whilst that is the only way most primary school appeals can be won, it is different for secondary schools.

The "frenemy" argument won't get you anywhere, I'm afraid, unless you can show persistent bullying. You need to find things that the appeal school offers (subjects, facilities, extra-curricular activities, etc.) that are not available at the offered school and are particularly relevant to your daughter. You need to show that she will be disadvantaged if she is not admitted to the appeal school. If you can do that, you have a chance.

Hi @Mara10 Just to say, whatever you decide to do about appealing, do speak to your allocated school early on about the problems your dd has encountered with this group of children and the need to keep them apart. Secondary schools are much bigger than primary and it is far easier to keep children apart. Our secondary is so large that each year group is divided into an a and b half and the two never share lessons at all.

Sorry for being inaccurate!

I think the point remains that this is not going to go in the OP favour though. All the other people who applied and didn't get a place at the school had the admission criteria applied and didn't get a place. Just wanting the place isn't a reason to be given it. In our area, an overwhelming Social or Emotional need WAS one of the high ranking criteria so you'd have to argue you supplied evidence that was ignored or that it was new evidence.

"In our area, an overwhelming Social or Emotional need WAS one of the high ranking criteria so you'd have to argue you supplied evidence that was ignored or that it was new evidence."

This isn't true either. There is a huge difference between meeting the extremely high standard of medical/social needs through the admissions criteria and convincing an appeal panel that, on the balance of probability, the benefit of your child being admitted to the school outweighs the difficulties it would cause the school to do so.

There is no way that saying the child has 'frenemies' will help. But the OP can present a case that says X would benefit from these things school A offers and it would also be helpful that she wasn't at the same school as these children because there is documented evidence that she was bullied by them. The main weight would need to go towards the benefits of school A rather than the frenemy situation though.

Ignore all the misinformation and wrong advice.

You are very unlikely to win an appeal on friendship issues alone, as the LEA will argue (and the panel might agree) that in a secondary school it won’t be hard to distance your child from the frenemies. Better to look for other aspects of the school that would benefit your child, as prh47bridge outlined.

You said, "There are only three schools in the area and the other two have not good OFSTED reports and have very low academic results"

If the 'frenemy' concern is so strong that the offered school would be unacceptable to you, would you consider putting your DD onto the waiting list of one of these other local schools, if they are not oversubscribed?

Sorry Lougle, are you saying that getting a place on appeal once the places have been allocated and there's a waiting list would be easier than using that admission criteria in the normal round? That makes absolutely no logical sense to me at all!

Getting a place at an oversubscribed school elides people who go to great lengths to provide evidence of higher ranking admission criteria. It surely can't be a lower bar to go to appeal?!

By definition, the people exercising the right of appeal will not have met the school’s oversubscription criteria (or not met them to the extent they needed to get a place). For them, it’s a different kind of bar; they have to satisfy the panel that the prejudice (detriment) to their child if not given a place outweighs the detriment to the school in having to cater for an additional pupil.

@CarbonelCat

Sorry Lougle, are you saying that getting a place on appeal once the places have been allocated and there's a waiting list would be easier than using that admission criteria in the normal round? That makes absolutely no logical sense to me at all!

Getting a place at an oversubscribed school elides people who go to great lengths to provide evidence of higher ranking admission criteria. It surely can't be a lower bar to go to appeal?!

Sort of. As @prh47bridge says, the 'bar' is different.

All applicants for school places are assessed against the oversubscription criteria and ranked. If the PAN is, say, 300, then the first 300 children get in and all others are rejected.

All those remaining children are on a waiting list, in order, and in the normal scheme of things, as children leave the school, the first child on the waiting list gets offered the place.

With appeals, all of that is thrown out of the window. There are two main routes to appeal. 1. The admissions arrangements didn't comply with admissions law, or were not correctly and impartially applied, and if they had been, the child would have got a place.

1. Prejudice - the child's need for a place outweighs the school's difficulty in providing the place.

If several children appeal for a place, the admissions panel needs to decide how many children the school could take, if any, and then decide which children have the strongest case for admission. That means that someone who is number 1 on the waiting list because they live close to the cut off distance of places offered could find that someone who is 27 on the waiting list wins their appeal because their reasons for needing the place were compelling.

Hello
please could someone advise me on the appeal for the secondary school ? We have informed the local authority admissions of our change of address to be considered for the second round allocations in May 23, having submitted all the requested documents before the deadline of 11 April my son didn’t get a place even though we are close to school within the first priority area . We have been told that the reason of not offering a place was the date of 16 April on the tenancy agreement . My argument is that when I submitted the documents on the 28 March the date of 16 April never being raided by the school admission officer and we never received any information regarding missing the second round on the 28 March! We have had all the flexibilities to move in even early April and I believe that the process has not applied impartially. If we had known of this we could easily move in earlier and the lack of transparency resulted in missing the second round in May that I want to make an appeal against the decision based on miscommunication and lack of transparency and direction

would be great and helpful if could receive any advice
thanks
Mahla

You should really start your own thread. You may find that others respond to the OP rather than you.

Whether you have a case depends on the details of the LA's co-ordinated admissions scheme. It is by no means certain that refusing to accept the change of address was a breach. However, even if it wasn't, you can still make the case that the disadvantage to your son from not being admitted outweighs any disadvantage to the school from having to cope with an additional pupil. Look for things offered by this school that are missing from the allocated school and that are particularly relevant to your son.

Have you checked where you are on the waiting list? If you are at or near the head of the waiting list, there is still a chance of getting a place that way. However, if they haven't taken your new address into account and have admitted from the waiting list, that may give you an argument for appeal.

It would be better if you started a new thread for your question.

To be clear, because there are a lot of dates here: are you saying that on 28 March you submitted evidence of a new tenancy agreement starting on 16 April?

At an appeal, you could argue that your LEA had been unreasonable in rejecting your evidence of change of address. Much will depend (I think) on what exactly the LEA says in its admissions policies about how it deals with changes of address and the sort of evidence it wants to see, especially around dates of contracts and agreements. You could argue that the LEA was unreasonable in not communicating with you about their concerns about the evidence. You could also highlight other features of the school which would suit your child.

I can’t predict what the panel’s view would be.

I’ve now seen prh47bridge’s post.

One more thing: I don’t think you can argue that the process has not been impartial. I suspect the problem here may be that the admission policy says the tenancy agreement (or similar) has to be current, not dated weeks or months ahead, and so the school or LEA has adhered to the letter of the policy. This is what you need to check.

Thank you so much for your reply that was very helpful . That’s absolutely my point that the LA admission officer has failed to let us know about the date of tenancy agreement. I have all the evidence showing that we could easily move earlier to the new place as it was ready for us to move in. We decided to sign the contract for 16 April just to move smoothly. If this had been raised earlier I could have simply move early April to avoid all the complications. Thank you so much for your time 🙏🙏🙏

That’s exactly what the panel would need to consider. The panel might consider whether the LEA should have accepted that you would be living at the address on the tenancy agreement, even though it was dated a few weeks ahead, or should have invited you to submit more or different evidence. As I said, a lot will depend on the wording of the LEA’s policies and whether the LEA was following those policies.

The admission officer not telling you about the date of the agreement is unlikely to fly on its own. The LA's policy on changes of address will be on their website and you are expected to read that. They are not required to draw your attention to it. The question is whether they have followed their policy. If that says that they will only use your current address, not a future address, they are in the clear. However, if it sets out situations in which they will accept a future address, the question is whether you provided the required evidence. If you did and they ignored it, you have a case. Equally, if they are still using your old address to determine your position on the waiting list and your son would have got a place some time since the second round had they used your current address, you definitely have a case regardless of what their policies say.