No choice School

[number1miss]

Please give me some hope!

we did not get any of our choices, all choices were about 15mins away, however we were offered a school more than an hour way! I just don’t get it!

we want to appeal, any advise, tips?

can we apply to other schools, if so, how?

please help my baby is so devastated I feel like I have failed her

Where is child on waiting list ?
If a place becomes available & he's top of the list, it will be offered to him.

There will be lots of movement up to even the beginning of September

The first thing you need to do is check there hasn't been a mistake. Have they put your daughter in the correct admissions category for each school? Does the home to school distance look about right?

If there has been no mistake, to win an appeal you will need to show that the disadvantage to your daughter from not attending this school outweighs any disadvantage to the school from having to cope with an additional pupil. The fact the allocated school is over 3 miles away is irrelevant for appeal. You need to show specific things that are relevant to your daughter that she will miss out on if she isn't admitted to the appeal school.

@prh47bridge what do you mean by ‘mistake?’ I called admissions to check my paper work sent was correct (it was)
we would fall under criteria for distance as we don’t meet any of the others I.e siblings ect.. the home to school distance is about right looking at last years offers. How do people usually measure? What site or app?

You’ve done the basic checks - sometimes errors are made where (say) the LEA overlooks that there’s a sibling already at the school.

People don’t generally do their own measurement, because LEAs generally use a computer package which measures from a data point at the school to a data point on the home and you can’t duplicate that with (say) Google maps. But it’s still important to double-check the LEA’s measurement as much as you can. Most LEAs use straight line distance but if (say) the LEA uses safe walking route to measure the distance, make sure that they haven’t overlooked footpaths (as happened in a batch of appeals I heard years ago).

There are free map tools that do a radius from two postcodes which is a decent sense check. Hopefully you'll get in on wait list

@PanelChair Interested in your reference to measuring distances using footpaths. I wonder how many of those CYP actually used the footpath on a dark day in Winter. Did you ever follow up to see if any families had then argued it was unsafe to use the footpath so they needed free home to school transport?

Calculating distance via footpaths is now obsolete, at least around here, as most (if not all) LEAs now measure in a straight line. The issue in these appeals was that the LEA had measured the safe walking route only via pavements. The parents argued that, as the footpath (which cut off a large corner of their walk to school) was lit, it was safe and so should have been included. Even the LEA agreed, as the footpath had only been excluded because of an error in the software. The LEA remeasured the distances and at least some of the children were admitted because this was (in infant class size terms) an error which had cost them a place.

The places weren’t awarded on appeal and it isn’t the panel’s role to follow up. Whether the parents used the footpath was up to them. The point at stake was that the calculation of distance should have recognised the footpath, it didn’t and so the LEA was in error.

Our LEA very rarely pays for transport because distances are generally too short for anyone to qualify.

IME you won't get transport provided / paid for as local authorities only have to provide transport to the nearest closest possible school. As soon as you are at one further away, there is no obligation for them to provide any form of transport.

I'm not sure about that as they allocated it .. it wasn't one of the OPs choices which were closer...i thought if they allocated it they did pay over 3 miles but not if you chose it and there was a closer one.

There is if you wanted your nearest but didn't get a place!

DS is at a school just over 3 miles away. He gets a bud pass from the LEA. In reality I'm not sure the bus is much quicker than walking because it goes all around the houses, but he's at least warm and dry.

Accept the place you have been offered and then put yourself on the waiting list for all your preferred schools. You live close enough that a waiting list space may well come up. If not, if you're over 3 miles away you should have transport funded as it's not your choice to go to a far away school - it's where you have been diverted to.

If you chose a school that wasn't your nearest, you won't get free transport. However, if you named your nearest school as one of your preferences and ended up being allocated a school more than 3 miles away from home by the shortest safe walking route, your child is entitled to free transport by law.