Withdrawal of high school place after 11 weeks

[Mel198]

Hi, I'm wondering if anyone can give me some advice at all please.

My daughter is due to start year 7 in September, she was offered her first choice place on the national offer day. Roll on 11 weeks and I recieve an email stating that her place has been withdrawn due to a change in circumstances.
At the time of the application and the offer, her sibling was attending the school. We have only recently transfered him to another local school which fits better for his needs.
We are also in the process of buying a property within a 5 minute walk to the school, I haven't sent all the proof from the estate agents and solicitors letters, but all the local authorities keep saying to me is that this isn't sufficient enough evidence and I need to be permanently residing in the property and have a council tax bill with our names on to even reasses my daughters position kn the waiting list.(she's 88 on the waiting list)
We are absolutely distraught, my daughter is extremely shy and suffers with anxiety. She is really struggling coming to terms with the decision.
I've spoken to the local authority and they aren't being helpful at all. I've explained that I've read the School admissions code and under their grounds of withdrawing a school place, none of them apply to my daughter's situation.
All of my daughters friends are going to said school and we have bought uniform. I just can't believe this.
As a gesture of goodwill(or so they say) they have agreed to hold my daughters place for 4 weeks to give us time to move into our new house. This is ridiculous as 4 weeks is never going to happen as we are in the early stages!
I have put a complaint in with the ombudsman'slast I'm not able to appeal yet.

Can anyone help me with some advice please
Thanks so much.

On Hertfordshire's website it says: A sibling must be on the roll of the named school or linked school at the time of application (and when child starts), or have been offered and accepted a place

Listen to what @PanelChair is saying. Have a Google online for the case law she is talking about.

When did you start the process of moving your eldest? When did you start enquiring at other schools? If the council have found out that you were intending to move the eldest then you knew there would not be a sibling on roll by the time your youngest started the school. This means you would have applied under sibling link criteria when you knew there would not be a sibling on roll. This information is key. WHEN did you start seeking to move the sibling?

Also WHEN was the sibling offered a place at the other school (not May when they started).

When we applied for a reception place we moved house after being offered the place (further away) and almost lost it. Luckily we still managed to get in based on distance but only just.

If the place is withdrawn and you move to your new house in the summer you will hopefully be at the top of the waiting list? It's a feeling of uncertainty but chances are a place would come up anyway.

I think my youngest was admitted by mistake on sibling connection! My eldest left the school later that year because he had completed his A Levels and people who lived closer didn't get a place. That was four years ago so too late now.

The problem is what you’ve done is similar to what people do when they’re making fraudulent applications. Leave the sibling there to secure a place for the other sibling, then move them straight away. If you knew your other child was going to be moving then you have completed a misleading application, haven’t you?

I haven't mislead with any information whatsoever. I've been completely honest throughout the whole application process.
Older sibling was having many complex issues at the school and it was agreed in a meeting with thr headteacher that another school would be more suitable for his needs.
Which then was a managed transfer for him. This Happened in March, he was on trial at new school to see how he settled and if he was happy there. Trial was complete start of May and that's when he was offically taken off the schools roll. 3 days later I recieved an email stating my daughters placed had been withdrawn.
I had no idea my son transferring to a new school would affect my daughter's place as at the time of application and offer my son was on roll st the school.

Why do you think that sibling places exist? They are so that the parents don't have the extra hassle of taking two children to different schools.
That's why you were given the place.

That's why they are only necessary if both siblings actually attend the same school.

You were very short sighted not to realise that by taking the place after the sibling had left, your daughter was taking a place that she did not deserve. If you were a parent who had just missed out on the distance criterion, how would you feel to know that another child who lived further away and had no siblings there was attending the school?

It does unfortunately look like the kind of thing that someone trying to game the system would do.

That said, you do need to look carefully at whether they have followed the correct procedure here, because there must be some cut off point for withdrawing offers in order to allow people to make alternative arrangements.

I guess it depends whether sibling criteria required still being on roll when the second child starts in September. If the LA think you deliberately waited to withdraw him until your dc2 had a place then it could be regarded as fraudulent. It is a long time since though. Your future address cannot yet be taken into account.

I’m confused. You must have lived within catchment of the school and (originally) met the entrance criteria to have got your son a place there? Or did he get a place on priority with a EHCP?

This is from my local authority, obviously each may be different but, as an example, it is pretty clear that attendance of the sibling on the date of admission is what counts. What does your say?

I don't think that it's relevant that you may not have known at the time of applying that your son might be moved.

Why have you bought uniform already?

The school was a brand new school and just opened when we applied for my sons place so I think the catchment area was alot bigger. Now it ks a very sought after school and so they've reduced the catchment area greatly.

Why not? The PTA may run a second hand uniform sale for new starters this term, for example.

Not all schools have catchments. Some allocate places according to distance and it depends on the makeup of the applicants- in some years the last place will go to a child who lives further away from the school than in a previous year.

So if OP's son applied in a year when there were fewer applicants who filled up the list in front of him he may have qualified on distance. But this year there are more applicants ahead of her daughter.

(And more people nabbing sibling places, which are higher priority than distance, mean that the distance of the furthest away pupil will shrink).

Why would I? We have known about the place for 11 weeks. Its good to be prepared! What a silly question.

I really feel for you, OP. It’s clear you applied in good faith and things changed for your son well after application

PanelChair and the other admissions experts are the best help.

Its the same situation as someone who applies from the current address, then gets the Section 21 from the landlord, and has to move after allocations. Technically the school could say they no longer meet the requirements... but morally its wrong to punish a child for a situation beyond their control, bearing in mind that all schools may now be full or they've missed out on a waiting list place elsewhere.

This is interesting, it is the specific sibling criterion for one of the non-community schools in my borough.

You can see from this that the condition is that at the time of application it was reasonably expected that the sibling would be on the roll at the time of admission.

So if yours is worded similarly you may be able to argue that when you applied for your daughter you did not expect you son to be moved. (Only if this is true of course).

I had no idea they could do this! If the offer was correctly made at the time of offering, then I think it should be honoured.

There is a lot of incorrect advice on this thread.

An offer cannot be withdrawn due to a change in circumstances. The Admissions Code is clear that an offer can only be withdrawn if it was made in error, or the application was fraudulent or intentionally misleading, or the parent has not accepted the offer in a reasonable amount of time.

The offer was clearly not made in error, and you have accepted it, so the only grounds on which the place can be withdrawn is if they can argue that the application was fraudulent or intentionally misleading. Their justification, therefore, would be that you intended to move your son when you applied. Assuming that you genuinely expected your son to stay at this school, the place should not have been withdrawn.

This is similar to LAs that withdraw places when the parents move after receiving the offer. They regularly lose appeals because they aren't allowed to do that. Unfortunately, they carry on because they know that some parents aren't aware that they can't do this and won't appeal.

I don't know why you say you can't appeal. You can. You should do so. Provided the appeal panel accepts that your application was genuine and that you didn't have any intention of moving your son, you should win.

What does it say on your LA website OP re siblings? Or if the school has its own admission criteria, what does that say?

Yes, I know all that. I was lazily using “catchment” as a shorthand, meaning near enough the school to have been accepted on distance in the first place.

The local authority in charge admissions have stated that they have withdrawn the place under 'made in error' as a change in circumstances will come under this. I'll try and post the email from them onto here. I'm new to this website so not 100 percent sure how to use it.

Here is the email I recieved back after questioning them that a change in circumstances wasn't one of thr grounds to withdraw a place...