Urgent appeal: Faith criteria incorrectly applied

[aquarimum]

Hi,
A school we are on the waitlist for has incorrectly applied the faith criteria- it changed this year to prioritise baptism over siblings, but siblings have gotten in ahead of baptised eldest children. How do we challenge this?
Can provide links if necessary
thanks!

well then should be game set and match and many parents in same boat

If they admit they made a mistake, they should admit immediately without appeal.

However, if a number of children have been affected, this gets more complicated, as @prh47bridge says. If they decide there are too many to admit, they will force you to take it to appeal.

The waiting list needs to, by law, be ordered using the same criteria as the admissions criteria so yes, what they should do once they realise their mistake is re-order the waiting list accordingly. I would advise you get this in writing if it comes to this.

If they accept they made a mistake, they should rejig the waiting list order immediately. The waiting list is irrelevant for appeals, so leaving it until after appeals simply opens the way for more appeals.

Posted without noticing that @PatriciaHolm had already answered!😀

Thank you all for the support. We are getting more information from the school to build our case for appeal and I have one more question for the gurus.

I understand that an appeals panel has to admit if criteria were not correctly applied, unless there are a lot of families appealing because of the mistake, and admitting everyone affected by the mistake would be too many for the school to cope with. In this case, the appeal has to go to Stage 2, where we have to justify why our child should get in above other.

Do we get advanced notice that we are going to stage 2, and to build a case for why admitting our child would outweigh the prejudice to the school?

No, you won't get any advance notice. You need to build your case on the assumption that you will need to show that you have a better case than others affected by the mistake.

Thanks for the speedy reply. And will we have to make a case compared against those who are appealing and would have got in had they not made a mistake or against all of those appealing because of a mistake, whether they would have been admitted or not?

The panel should compare your case against those of everyone else appealing who would have been admitted but for the mistake. However, you won't see anyone else's case so you simply have to prepare the strongest case you can.

Sorry I hope I'm not hijacking the thread but I'm interested as I'm going to be making an application based on faith grounds.

If a mistake is made and the child should have been accepted above other children, if the class is full does the child now just move to the top of the waiting list? The school won't can't remove the places from other children that were incorrectly given places?

It doesn't really matter who else you are being compared with really - you just need concentrate on making the best case you can that your child would be disadvantaged by not going to this school. You don't see the other appellants cases, but you are likely to be all together for stage 1.

At this point, admissions authorities should not be removing places, as it's too far after the initial offer - 3 days is the rule of thumb. Some may try though.

What they should do is offer a place to the child/children affected even so. However, if a number of children are affected, more than the school believe they can cope with in addition to the existing offers, schools will often push it to appeal. If they accept their mistake, the waiting list should be rearranged immediately though.

Thanks all. It’s frustrating that even in the case where admission criteria incorrectly applied, the appeal will still weigh up the prejudice element. It would be fairer if they decided that the school could cope with X extra people, and then admit X out of those who have appealed in the correct oversubscription criteria.

Time to build the appeal. From emails that the School have sent, I think they have misapplied the over subscription criteria in the full knowledge of what they are doing.

I am not one of the admissions experts on the thread but I think this is more or less what they do do in cases of a mistake? But if the mistake affects 20 people and they decide that they could take 10, they have to see which 10 have the best case

I am sorry you have been messed around.

OP. Do you think the school applied the over subscription criteria they thought was” fair”, rather than the published oversubscription criteria? If it helps something similar happened at my DC primary school and with the help of the MN experts we won the infant class size appeal.

Hamsterdamn - that’s pretty much it, they’ve applied what they wanted the policy to do, not it actually states. But their doing so has affected so many children, that they almost certainly won’t be able to accommodate everyone who appeals.

And then there’s a double whammy, because at appeal we then have to justify why our kid should get in over all the other kids denied a place, rather than via application of objective criteria.

I’m so sorry you’re going through it. I remember it as the most stressful experience. Ours was an infant class size appeal. Hopefully secondary schools can be more accommodating?

In our case the school also thought it was fairer that siblings got in but the admissions said something different.

Are they reordering the waiting list to the correct order now? Our school refused to do so, so a few places were given over the summer to children in the wrong criteria.

Another question - the past 2 years, the school have admitted 10 over PAN, and the number of children admitted on appeal has dropped accordingly. So I think they are deliberately over admitting on offer day so they have "better" grounds to refuse anyone on appeal. Is a panel likely to think the same way and to realise that the school is trying to game the system? And if so, how would a panel react to a school behaving like that?

A school is allowed to admit beyond PAN. If they are doing so consistently, they ought to update PAN. However, as far as appeals are concerned, this simply makes appeals harder to win. This isn't regarded as gaming the system. It just means that more pupils get in via the admission criteria and fewer via appeal.

As @prh47bridge says, they are not trying to game the system. There is no advantage to them either way - they are likely to end up with the same number of pupils either way. If pupils drop out from the initial offers of PAN+10, and there a number of appeals, it's actually likely that some appeals will be won, as the school won't be able to make a hugely strong case against admitting up to that number - but if no pupils drop out, fewer or no appeals will be won. It doesn't make a difference to the school either way.

Overoffering on PAN is a normal thing to do in many areas, to ensure that all pupils in the area get an offer on offer day. The usual plan is then to drop down to PAN before offering any more places, but that's not always the case, and it doesn't always happen anyway.

However, it is an interesting point because if the school thinks they should offer an extra 10 spaces, but they have made a mistake in their handling of the admissions process, so an applicant has been denied a place that is rightfully theirs, then going over PAN makes it even harder for that applicant to get a just resolution at appeal, because if the school is sitting at PAN + 10 and there are 15 children who have wrongly been denied a place, then there is an even greater prejudice to the school to admit further children.

@lougle Yes - though on the flip side, if they over offered but have dropped back to PAN, at least 10 getting in on appeal in those circumstances should be very likely!

@aquarimum I'm assuming the school so far is not budging and pushing you all to appeal?

Thanks all. Yes, we've been made to appeal and they haven't updated their waiting list to reflect the correct criteria. I don't think they have been dropping back to the PAN as people decline offers, as the waiting list has seen significant movement. I don't think the waiting list would have moved so much had they just dropped back to the original PAN.

@Lougle that's where I'm coming from. I feel we've been doubly disadvantaged - once because they've screwed up the criteria, and secondly because they've then over admitted, which means that they will claim they have less scope to rectify their mistake.

they won't be made to rectify their mistake anyway, once a child has been notified they have a place they can't then take it away because of their error. unfortunately it is what it is.

They can be made to award a wrongly denied child a place on appeal. The problem is that if they have gone over PAN in the main admission round, it is likely that a panel would decide they are 'actually full' rather than 'nominally full' and either decide that they can't admit any more children at all, or only one or two. In that situation, the OP would be relying on having the very strongest case for needing the place.

If the mistake hadn't been made in the first place, the OP thinks their child would have been awarded a place in the main round.

Yes, they can. Places awarded in error can be removed, but the admissions authority only has a very limited time in which to do so - generally agreed to be a few days. It is absolutely possible though.