Secondary School Third Choice Allocated - can we appeal?

[kdandml]

Hello, I hope someone can help.

We recently learned our daughter has been allocated her third choice school. This school is close to us but has a bad name, which is why we put it as third choice rather than first or second.

All her current school friends are going to her first choice, and our child is distraught. We had reasons for choosing the first choice as we did and we feel there is a grounds to appeal on those bases, however I am not sure that the distance rule has been applied correctly in any case.

Her friends do all live closer to <FIRST CHOICE> than us, but it seems that crucially, they don't live too close to <THIRD CHOICE>. We emailed the admissions team at the council to say we weren't happy with the offer and below is an extract from the reply, with the schools redacted. It appears that we have been penalised for living too close to a bad school, which is bizarre, Is this right?

Thanks in advance.

Extract from the reply:
<FIRST CHOICE SCHOOL> was oversubscribed and we had to apply the oversubscription criteria in order to allocate places. The last person offered a place at this school lived 2.56 miles in the nearest school criterion and you live 1.55 miles from the school in the distance criterion. <THIRD CHOICE SCHOOL> is your closest school, therefore your application was refused on distance. <SECOND CHOICE SCHOOL> was also over subscribed and the last person offered lived 1.82 miles in the distance criterion. You live 3.41 miles from this school and this application was also refused on distance.

As the 2024/25 policy isn't on the website, it's worth taking a screenshot to prove that.

The admissions policy should have explicitly said "23-24" on it, not "24-25", which would have shown you which admissions year it was relevant for.

However, it is a legal requirement for the relevant policy to be on the school website, so if it really wasn't there somewhere, that could be something to cite in appeal. It wouldn't win an appeal on its own though.

Is it definitely not anywhere? I had a case last year where the previous years policies were in one place - the obvious page - and the new one somewhere else completely!

I can't find it @PatriciaHolm . There's all sorts of messy. On the policies page only 2023/24 is present. Google doesn't bring up 2024/25.

The LA page states the oversubscription criteria for the County, but specifically mentions the first choice school as being excluded from the criteria and to contact the school itself for criteria.

Then, further down the page, under criteria 4 (nearest school applied to) it specifically states that first choice school uses site A rather than site B as the 'location' (which implies that it does use the same County criteria).

Then, the policy itself refers only to distance, but in the tie break section refers to criteria 4 (nearest school applied to) when in fact criteria 4 is stated as 'Children of permanent staff'.

Furthermore, the school website says that X County Council manage the admissions for the school.

Re paragraph 3, I dont think this does support the county criteria in fairness. I took this to be referring to the distance criteria they refer to on their website, it could refer to distance and nearest school of course - but the school doesnt even mention "nearest" in the criteria.

They do in the tie break:

(a) For those children who have applied for a place at the nearest school to their home
address (category 4), priority will be given to those living closest to the nearest school

measured by the shortest walking route.

However, the mistake is that category 4 actually refers to "Children of permanent staff".

What I was saying about the County page is that on one hand that say 'First choice school is nothing to do with us, contact them.', then they say 'First choice school uses site A to determine distance.'

Do you know how far away from the school you are as the crow flies - have they got the numbers the wrong way around?

I have no idea which school and which LA we are talking about, but this sounds like a mess. The school's published admissions policy sounds a bit like they intended to follow the LA in prioritising children for whom they are the nearest school, but didn't actually achieve that. The information from the LA suggests they have indeed prioritised children for whom this is the nearest school.

The important point is that the school, as admission authority, must follow its published admission arrangements. It can't say, "that isn't what we meant" and do something different.

no, the detail on the email is definitely correct. I totally appreciate why people keep questioning it. That's why I am on here. What a brilliant source of help it is though.

Extract from the reply:
<FIRST CHOICE SCHOOL> was oversubscribed and we had to apply the oversubscription criteria in order to allocate places. The last person offered a place at this school lived 2.56 miles in the nearest school criterion and you live 1.55 miles from the school in the distance criterion.

<THIRD CHOICE SCHOOL> is your closest school, therefore your application was refused on distance. <SECOND CHOICE SCHOOL> was also over subscribed and the last person offered lived 1.82 miles in the distance criterion. You live 3.41 miles from this school and this application was also refused on distance.

—

What this email is trying to say - badly! - is that FIRST CHOICE SCHOOL allocations never made it down to “distance” criteria, because the last place offered was to a child under “nearest school” criteria. It would have been better if they had said that without including 2.56 and 1.55 miles, since those are confusing. But I assume it’s auto filled.

From Lougle’s posts and yours, it sounds like for any other school in the LA, this would be right, but for FIRST SCHOOL, their published policy was badly worded and looked somewhat like it was just based on distance.

I’m sorry, OP, this is rubbish and unclear and I am keeping my fingers crossed you get FIRST SCHOOL.

That's exactly the situation. Either the school has accidentally deleted the Category 4 "Children who have applied to their nearest school" when they added "Children of permanent staff", or they intended to remove the category 4 "Children who applied to their nearest school" and have left reference to it in their tie break information.

Either way, the LA has used the "children who have applied to their nearest school" criteria in their decision making.

This could affect so many children, though, so what will they do when it's raised?

Having taken a look at both the school's website and the LA's, this is a complete mess.

The LA publish oversubscription criteria which they say apply to all academies apart from faith academies. The school we are talking about here is a faith academy and is listed as one of those not covered by the LA's oversubscription criteria. The LA is required by the Admissions Code to publish a composite prospectus including detailed admission arrangements for all maintained schools and academies. They have simply ignored this requirement. Whilst that is bad, it is helpful in this case as we aren't in the situation where the school and LA have published different versions of the oversubscription criteria. If this gets to appeal and anyone tries to refer to the oversubscription criteria on the website, point out that they specifically say that they do not apply to this school.

The school's oversubscription criteria specify a tie breaker for category 5 (and also have a footnote specifying the same tie breaker again!), but then includes a separate tie breaker category. This specifies the same tie breaker yet again for categories 1, 2 and 5, and leaves category 3 without a tie breaker at all, despite the fact that it is more likely to need one than categories 1 and 2. For category 4, it specifies the same tie breaker again, but states that category 4 is for children applying to their nearest school, whereas it is actually children of permanent staff. There is no way of telling what they intended but that doesn't really matter. This is what they've got.

As per my earlier post, the school is required to follow its published oversubscription criteria, even if that isn't what they meant. In this case, it appears from the information you have received that they got it wrong and the LA's oversubscription criteria were used. As this is a clear mistake, they should put it right without any appeals being needed. However, they may insist on appeals, particularly if it affects a large number of applicants. It will then be up to the appeal panel to sort out this mess.

Your case for appeal is that the school has not followed its published admission arrangements. It has given priority to children for whom this is their nearest school, but this is not a category in their admission arrangements. You should also look for other arguments to strengthen your appeal. If the panel agree that a mistake has been made but decide the school can't accommodate all the pupils affected, they will admit those with the strongest cases. The stronger your case, the better.

I am reminded of a similar mess a few years ago. The LA in that case used formal catchment zones to give priority. They decided to change the catchment zone for two schools. The oversubscription criteria did not specify the zones, instead referring parents to a map on the LA's website. They did not specify which map. There were two. They updated one of them, but the other (which was the more obvious one for parents to find) continued to show the old catchment zones. A lot of parents appealed. Sadly, in that case, the appeal panel for the school concerned decided it was too difficult and didn't allow any of the appeals. If this ends up with an appeal panel, I hope they at least make an attempt to resolve the situation properly.

Brilliant analysis here from @prh47bridge and @Lougle and @PatriciaHolm and others too!

What a mess-up indeed.

Best of luck with this @kdandml

Added to that, we have no way of knowing what the 2024/25 policy states because it isn't available on the school website.

I've also taken a look now, and completely agree with @prh47bridge and @Lougle . The relevant 24/25 policy is nowhere to be seen, and the 23/24 one that is there looks as if someone's got half way through amending it but didn't finish - but it's what they have to use.

The LA website shows for 23/24, the last applicant awarded a place was in the "nearest school" criterion - which shows that the policy on the website dates 23/24 is not the policy that was actually used for that year, as the "nearest criterion" isn't on it.

Which further suggests to me that the policy on the website is actually an early draft 24/25 that's been uploaded in error, and still saved as "23/24" - but that's their problem, not OPs.

So it would appear they have used a version that has the nearest criterion on it, but the published 23/24 does not allow them to do that.

(Also - if they wanted to change their admissions policy, they would have had to consult, and I can't find any evidence they did so. So it may be that they realised this too late, aborted their intention to change the policy, and intended to keep the policy as it was - but published the draft in error.)

@prh47bridge Your point about the panel just deciding things were too difficult to do anything about is horrifying. Is there any recourse if that’s how the panel behave?

Interesting one! I'm late to the party but if the school have indeed published something that is a draft and not the agreed policy, how do they answer the question " Is the admissions policy legal and been agreed by the DfE?"

It's all very messy. @kdandml you need to contact the LA and the school on Monday. They may need some time to work out how many children are affected and what they can do about it. If they can't correct it before appeal, then you'll need to appeal on the grounds above.

That looks like it's a single academy trust that is going to find itself in a MAT very quickly, as the Governance & Management has imploded upon itself.

TBH, I'd be rethinking whether I wanted a child to go there, because the potential changes could be rather dramatic.

@kdandml from waht you have copied/pasted you have an unusual part of the criteria in your LA in that they are stating "shortest WALKING route" from the school .... i think it is more common to measure distance by how the crow flies ie. a point to point distance. this must make it quite difficult to work out surely?????

@kdandml huge apologies - I linked to a document that I thought would be helpful to explain this situation, but forgot that it would contain information that might be identifying.

no prob, an accident - i see it has been removed anyway. Thanks

perhaps it does make it more difficult but it's not my policy, im just quoting it.

whats a MAT? This whole process is awful. Truly, it started badly and is only getting so much worse.