Another appeal question

[beanhunter]

Good morning. Hoping to use the huge amount of knowledge on here to help me support our appeal. I have read so many threads on here!

To summarise we moved in Jan 2023 and therefore our daughter was not allocated a local secondary school place. In fact she was initially not allocated any place. Subsequently she has been allocated a school 10 miles away with a distrous ofsted which states 'children cannot learn due to disruption in lessons' and 'safeguarding is inadequate'.

We are appealing for our closest (catchment) secondary. We have included distance, the significant social upheaval and the need for pastoral care in our initial documentation but I suspect these will be considered nothing special. As we live 1 mile away from this school there is a small chance we may get an offer next week and then not have to proceed to the appeal a week later.

We have now received the info from the school. Each year the pan is 230. In round 1 they agreed to offered 237 places to accommodate all catchment children at the request of the council. There is also reference to wanting the school to remain a 'local school'.

By the reallocation round (when my daughter was offered the other school) they had 12 declines and offered 2 sibling and 3 non catchment children taking them back to 230.
Of note they are above pan in all year group, year 9 is at over 250 which they say is primarily due to children from Ukraine who moved into catchment.

On these grounds how would you approach this appeal? My thoughts is to explain again why we wanted the school in terms of location but to say that they were planning to admit 237 shows that going over 230 clearly negates their prejudice argument and that the same priority they gave to children from.ukraine moving into the area to remain local (who presumably in a number of cases needed increased support) is reasonable to consider for a late mover in terms of being able to accommodate more children?

I'd welcome any advice as I'm horrified at thr prospect of sending my fairly short daughter to the offered school where I think her academic progress will falter (she's working at greater depth in all areas) and I'm worried for her safety let alone her emotional wellbeing and happiness.

Thanks in advance if you've read this far!

I was in this exact situation. We should have moved in the Jan but ended up end of Feb because of all the delays so didn’t get the school in the first round but were well within distance criteria so I knew we would in one of the next rounds of offers. Kept the council informed throughout and everyone reassured me that as soon as they had proof of new address they would update it. The original application had both addresses, obviously they need proof of new address before they change it.
I sent in all the address proof on the day we moved.
There is only one way to change address on a school application and that is by emailing the school admissions email but they don’t have enough staff in the office to deal with them. The phone people said they had a massive backlog of emails. Offered to take the proof in person, but that email address is the only way.
I rang every day to see if it had been updated and there was nothing anyone on the phone line could do so I was stuck in limbo.
It took 6 weeks and I only got it changed because someone emailed me to ask why I hadn’t accepted the other school place (I had) and I replied saying please change my address this is the ticket no for the docs and it was sent on X date. Got a reply saying yes I just have (I am SO grateful to this person) and then got offered a place in the second round of offers days later.
But if I hadn’t been sent that email by a random human being in the office then we would have missed out on the school place because we were on the waiting list at our old address.
They didn’t actually tell me we had the place though, they emailed and said the appeal had been cancelled with no further explanation. Last thing on a Friday.

So we did get the place but only because an error somewhere made them contact me.

Got another email mid September saying a place has come up do you still want it, so they didn’t even update the waiting list to remove the kids who already had a place.

So we moved much later than you in the process and got a place in the second round of offers. I can’t believe that your council have a policy where they refuse to update your address for the next round of offers, it isn’t reasonable and I would appeal on those grounds. As someone said above, they can’t allocate places based on the time you join the waiting list and they seem to have prevented you from being on it.

I work in higher Ed and I thought we were shit but fuck me the school admission system is total chaos. They don’t have the staff capacity to process the number of enquiries they get.

Good Luck

What is the oversubscription criteria for the school? How do they deal with siblings? If it is something like:
LAC & EHCP
Catchment siblings
Other catchment children
Out of catchment siblings
Other out of catchment children
Then that makes sense that 3 siblings were admitted later as they were out of catchment, although you might want to check this.

If it is:
LAC & EHCP
Siblings
Catchment
Out of catchment
Then I would question when the siblings who were admitted in the second round applied, as this would point to late applicants (I.e. they forgot). If any late applicants were offered a place, there is an argument your new address should have been used. Otherwise you have essentially been penalised for applying on time, rather than doing a late application once you moved.

So she should be group 3 as catchment if address updated.
The subsequent admitted siblings in category 4 and 2 children from feeder primaries I'm category 5.
She actually also attends a feeder school but again this was not updated until after 31.3 reallocation round.

I've written to the adjudicator as suggested above too.

Devastated this morning. Was really hoping for an offer today but no joy and position 4 on waiting list. Appeal next week and feel totally demoralised that there are 3 who have also been late applicants and live closer than us and aware if any appeals succeed ans ours don't we effectively are even lower down as children over PAN would have to leave before waiting list offered.

I feel a bit like I've ruined my child's life by moving house.

And the schools adjudicator have said they will not consider my objection as related to thr Council and refers to 2023 entry and that window has closed and that thus is Bucks policy so that avenue seems closed for appeal.

And yes - ruined her life is overstating in but pretty down right now.

@beanhunter so much can change between now and September. I haven't been through an appeal myself but I am waiting for a school so understand the worries (we didn't get any preferences so slightly different to moving). It will work out one way or another, just keep positive you are trying your best.

Someone we know was offered a place in a a heavily oversubscribed school a week before the summer holidays. The girl went to transition days with the allocated school etc, a bit touch and go but they are so happy they got their preferred school in the end. So it can happen! The closer it gets the more people get settled with their choices and don't want a waitlist space.

Am sat here in tears. We won. The school did not win their part 1 and all 4 admitted. It was like watching a house of cards come down and while I didn't expect it to end there I felt we'd have a good chance in round 2.We asked questions around safety and attajnment in the years over pan and they had to say there were no issues. The classroom argument fell apart too. I can't believe it's over.

Oh wow congratulations! Fantastic news! You must be so relieved 🥳

Great news! Very pleased for you. Their system felt unfair, so glad it is sorted.

Great news op 👏

In fairness to the school, it's the LA policy/procedure that was at fault, not theirs, as the LA was refusing to update the details/take them into consideration.

And, to be honest, they know full well that with a PAN of 230 that there will easily be 4 withdrawals by the first day of term, so it's not a disaster for them to have these extra places - they probably expected to either offer on appeal or for places to become available over June-July-August-September in any case. Doesn't mean they could do anything about it, but it doesn't sound like they were fighting particularly hard in any case.

The important thing is that you have the place!