Secondary school appeal - was admission policy applied wrong?

[mumofdragons]

Hi everyone,

I was hoping for some advice. My sons secondary school appeal is coming up next Monday. On the schools argument they said I applied for a community place but as part of my appeal I include faith documentation. I have ALWAYS applied on a faith basis and I have that on my supplementary form. It specifically says I am applying on a faith basis and I attached my DC baptism certificate.

DC is my eldest, I've never been through this so I don't know if I am correct. Could someone shed some light on this please!? I don't want to call the school and ask cos I don't want them to know that I know this information.

Thanks,

Arriving late to this and can only agree with others.

This school that allocates a number of places on faith grounds and the rest without reference to faith. You can make a case around a mistake if, and only if, your son was not considered for a faith place and would have got a faith place had he been considered.

The paperwork suggests your son was not considered for a faith place, but it may just be sloppy wording on the part of the school. You need to confirm if that is true and, if so, whether he would have got a place had he been considered. Since they use distance as the tie breaker, you need to find out the distance for the last child admitted on faith grounds and the distance they've got for you.

I think, from what it says there, that 50% of the places are reserved for faith applicants, in order that the school maintains its ethos. So they admit the 41 kids in the faith category who come highest on the other criteria. Then they look at everyone who is left, and admit the 40 who come highest of those.
When it comes to appeals, if they have their 41 "faith" kids, they no longer need to admit any more to maintain their ethos, so possibly those are done without any regard to faith. The reserved places seem to be for the purpose of maintaining their ethos, rather than for the purpose of offering children of that faith preferential treatment.

If your child would have come in that top 41 in the faith category, then that suggests a mistake was made and they should be admitted on appeal. But if not, their appeal is probably considered on the same basis as a child without any faith.

I don't want to call the school and ask cos I don't want them to know that I know this information.

Technically, you are not allowed to present new evidence at the appeal - all your evidence, and the rationale for your appeal, should be in the appeal statement that you have already submitted. If you're lucky, the Chair may allow it. But the school can object. I'm the presenting officer at appeals for our school, and if a parent suddenly produced significant new evidence at an appeal, I might request that the appeal be adjourned, so I could check it with the school.

Paragraph 2.10 - An appeal panel must decide whether any material not submitted by the specified deadline is to be considered, taking into account its significance and the effect of a possible need to adjourn the hearing.

As a panel chair I would always consider allowing parents to submit any relevant extra evidence on the day of the panel providing that it was relevant. Having said that I would also give the school / LA every opportunity to consider the document, which may well mean an adjournment.
At the end of the day panel members have to recognise that for most people coming to an appeal hearing it is a really difficult experience so they should be given every opportunity to present the best possible case for admission to the school.

The OP waa talking about written material - her supplementary form and baptism certificate. She says she submitted these as part of the original application. But it seems that the school may not have received them or, at least, not processed them properly. If the OP produces them for the first time at the appeal hearing, the school's presenting officer will need to go back to the school to check whether they were received or not.

It says "material", not "written material". The word "material" includes information in any form. The basic principle is that neither side can ambush the other in the hearing. New arguments are generally fine, but the appeal panel may give them less weight than those in your written submission. New evidence, verbal, written or in any other form, is another matter. It may be allowed, but the panel may refuse to consider it or insist on adjourning the hearing to allow the admission authority to respond.

On a more general note, as supplementary forms usually need to be submitted directly to the school, rather than uploaded to the LA's coordinated admisdions systems, it must be quite common for them to go missing. Emails can remain in outboxes, be sent to incorrect addresses, or be filtered by over-zealous spam detection. Probably best to also send a hardcopy by mail, using a "signed for" recorded delivery service, so you can prove it was received.

I note that my local CE primary insists on the forms being submitted by the clergy, not the applicant - I expect that causes some issues too, and I'd be interested in opinions on whether it could be challengeable, as it seems unreasonable to me.