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!

The frustrating thing is we had pointed out the mistake (and had the evidence from the school) well within the 3 days thought to be the limit for correcting errors. The school didn’t want to know.

Essentially you need to show your “prejudice” of not getting in is worse than the schools of having to provide an extra space… which as you’ve pointed out, is impacted by them being over-roll.

I have sat “in”* appeals boards before lots of times but always for Reception places where the rules are totally different.

In the case of reception the LA can’t really force the school to go over-roll because the class can’t be more than 30. But even then we did need to show that the school had followed the rules correctly or we could have lost. Usually people appealing didn’t understand the admissions criteria (complicated faith school criteria) and thought because they lived closer than a friend who got in they should have got a place.

*as a school governor representing the school

Does anyone know in an appeal situation, whether the Block 1 part of an appeal is for all appeals submitted, or would there be a separate block 1 process for appeals where we are showing that the criteria was incorrectly applied, and one for appeals where the appellant is just appealing on more normal grounds?

If they have a combined hearing for stage 1, it will be for all appellants.

Thanks for the speedy reply. Does a panel actually take into account that criteria were unfairly applied then? Because then it all comes down to the block 2 case, and it then doesn’t matter that the admission criteria weren’t correctly applied :(

If at stage 1 the panel considers that not all applicants (whether their case concerns maladministration or not) can be admitted without prejudice, the appeal must proceed to stage 2.

Obviously part of your stage 2 case will be that the criteria were incorrectly applied and that this has cost you a place. However, the panel has to consider all the cases it is presented with whatever their grounds.

It may be that there are just too many maladministration cases for the school to cope with, and so the panel would admit those with the strongest prejudice cases, and/or it could decide there are non-maladministration cases that have significant prejudice too.

All you can do is make the error as clear as possible with proof that you should have been allocated a place; and reinforce that with a case for prejudice.

As a panel, in these cases you do want to make it right for the applicants, but not at the cost of the education for all the students in Year 7.

Do you have any idea how many appeals there are, and what is the PAN?

Thanks! No idea how many other appeals there will be but I suspect there will be quite a few as it’s a popular school. There is at least one other appellant that is using maladministration as a case that we know of.

Frustratingly the school has a PAN of 180 and has for the past 2 years admitted 190 so will certainly claim that it’s too full. But there are 6 classes in each year group and some of them are smaller than the others (as 190 divided by 6 isn’t a straight split) - and they’ve clearly had the opportunity to admit at PAN if they were too full but gone ahead and over admitted anyway.

We’ve tried to make our case for admission anyway as strong as possible as this school offers things that no other school in the region does, and have letters of support from clergy and others to say why it would be beneficial.

We got an email this morning offering us a place, so we've accepted that and the appeal's been withdrawn. Thank you to everyone on this thread, particularly @PatriciaHolm @prh47bridge

Brilliant!

Phew, and hurrah! Great news.

That's great news.

Fantastic news.

And @Lougle how could I forget you! thanks again for all your help!