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 Roll on 11 weeks and I recieve an email stating that her place has been withdrawn due to a change in circumstances.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.

Did you know that your DS was likely to leave his school before 1st March? If not, I would go with:

~DS was in attendance on National Offers Day.
~I had no knowledge that this would not be the case in September prior to National Offers Day.
~The school move was not our choice but the only alternative to permanent exclusion.
~DD should not be penalised for the consequences of DS's situation.

Have you been sent an official notice of the withdrawal with appeal information on it? If not you should ask for the appeals process and get your appeal in.

Huh? If the LA (not the school) weren’t pushing back, there would be no thread. This won’t be an isolated case, eg siblings who have died, been excluded or moved to specialist provision and other LAs judge that a challenge is wrong. Ergo, no thread.

I’ll leave this conversation with you there.

I hope I haven’t derailed the discussion by saying the older sibling started a managed move on 17 March. My short term memory is clearly failing because I’ve reread OP’s posts and can’t find any mention of that date.

OP mentions something happening in March. I thought that was the managed move, but perhaps it was the discussion about the managed move, because OP says the move took place in April and he was taken off roll in May. The appeal panel will no doubt want to be clear about key dates and the sequence of events.

Oh please, you have no idea what you are talking about here. Please move on

Please do not tell people where to post.

I understand you are angry at yourself for getting this so wrong, but there's no need to be rude to people posting on the thread.

You have baselessly accused the OP of fraud, which is considerably ruder than “please move on”

Lougle is correct. Assuming the older sibling’s difficulties in school came to a head after national offer day, that’s a reasonable argument for OP to present at appeal. The LEA are pushing back, but the withdrawal of the place demands a formal notification - including notification of the right of appeal attached to the decision - not just an exchange of emails.

If your son started his managed move trial in April then you must have had a fairly good idea on the offer day that he was likely to be leaving. You've said that the school were considering either expelling or excluding your son, and in my experience it's rare for managed moves to be arranged overnight.

I think as PanelChair says all the facts are required

Mel198 · Today 09:01
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.

The above is the post regarding March

No one wants to be rude but if your Son was on trial at a new school in March ( and obviously decisions made before this that he would be moving) then I assume it would depend if there was discussions already ongoing about the move and the wording of the question about siblings in your application as to wether or not the application was done correctly .

I don't think it really helps anyone for people to be laying into OP telling her their opinion of what she did and didn't know and think at any given time.

She's had advice that an appeal can be brought. The appeal panel will look at the facts and decide. Nothing anyone says or speculates on here will make any difference, save this experts who might be able to advise her how best to present the facts.

Good luck OP.

The school have done you dirty, because there's no way that the admissions team would withdraw the place without being directly informed that the sibling had moved, they would only be directly informed by the school.

When applications are made via the LA the LA then go to the school and say "please can you check, that they actually have a sibling at this school", because believe it or not sometimes people tick the sibling box because they think it might move them up the criteria bandings - but this does get checked. I've seen it where parents have ticked sibling but they actually meant cousin, or they have a sibling in Year 11 - (Y11 does not count as they won't or might not be at the school in September. So some genuine mistakes or misunderstandings in there.

Anyway my whole point is that when the sibling has been off-rolled the school has alerted the admissions team and got your daughter bumped from the list. Possibly that is policy, but I'm surprised it happened so fast. I've worked those roles and I've always just done the initial sibling check and have NEVER (20 years) been told by the school to go and tell the LA anything after the places have been allocated.

Further to that post - you could have a case on the grounds of inappropriate data sharing.

It's completely appropriate data sharing.

I just can't imagine why you would even want your daughter to go to a school that's clearly been shit for your son?!

Sounds more like the OP struggled to get good support for her son from them and the school have decided they don't want "that parent" on their books anymore, so someone in the office has seen a way to get rid of her, by notifying the LA...

Sneaky.

Wouldn't the LA know anyway? I know our ed welfare team etc are involved in arranging managed moves etc

I wouldn't place too much store on any alleged "experts" at schools or even at LAs. I have won several appeals in situations where the school or LA was getting it wrong and helped many parents to win appeals in similar situations.

you mentioned that you are new to this forum so I would urge you to focus on the replies from @PanelChair @PatriciaHolm @prh47bridge and follow the advice they have given.
They are experts in this topic and have given invaluable advice to many over the years.
Agree with this advice.

Whilst having a sibling on roll at the time the youngest child starts is fairly typical for admissions criteria, I suspect what will matter in the OP's situation is the exact timeframes surrounding the managed move.

The 3 posters above are excellent in their ability to advise on cases that aren't black and white.

Well said.

I think it is difficult for those who are new to this board to know the qualifications and expertise of those posting, so for those at the back,

"I would urge you to focus on the replies from @PanelChair @PatriciaHolm @prh47bridge and follow the advice they have given.
They are experts in this topic and have given invaluable advice to many over the years."

And a huge thank you to all of you for your time and expert opinions on these matters, they are very much appreciated.

I want to say it's actually usually in the admission policy. Our (in Hampshire) says Children living out of the catchment area of the school who at the time of application have a sibling (see (iv) in Definitions) on the roll of the school who will still be on roll at the time of admission.

This means the OP place will be withdrawn because it no longer meets the admission criteria. It'll really be dependent on what hers says.

That admission policy is unenforceable. They can insist that the sibling must still be expected to be on roll at the time of admission, which I suspect is what they mean, but they cannot withdraw a place just because the sibling leaves the school. The Admissions Code is very clear as to the situations in which an offer can be withdrawn. This is not one of them.

Not necessarily, for example if the information about the sibling leaving the school has come from the education welfare team then arguably the personal information has been used for a purpose beyond the scope of what the education welfare team should have been using it for.

Purpose limitation of data is one of the seven principles of GDPR.

Yes, that policy typically means a sibling not in year 13 (or year 11 if planning to leave after GCSEs) - ie circumstances that would be very clear at the time of application.

“Purpose limitation of data is one of the seven principles of GDPR.”

well said

As always, prh47bridge hits the nail on the head.

That proviso is intended to deal with the foreseeable scenario that the older sibling is in Y11 or Y13 and will have left the school by the time the younger sibling would start. It’s not intended (to the best of my knowledge) to deal with unforeseen scenarios such as the older sibling being permanently excluded or joining another school on a managed move.

The school can’t (in my view) keep reviewing the situation up to and including the start of term. There comes a point (and I would argue that it’s national offer day) when the matter has to be considered settled and offers have to stand. If the LEA unearths an error, previous case law suggests they have three days in which to withdraw the offer.