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.

A MAT is a Multi Academy Trust. It means that one board of trustees oversees the running of several academies.

Maintained schools have governing bodies.

The third choice, the school we dont want our DD to go to is already in a MAT.
How ironic.

TBH I'm slightly surprised it's lasted this long as a single academy given it's last OFSTED, though Covid did pretty much put a stop to any academy activity. As @NeverDropYourMooncup says, I would also be thinking it's likely to end up being scooped up by a chain.

It does and leads to disputes about what is a safe walking route. That is why most use straight line distance, although that isn't ideal when there is a major obstruction such as a river that means people are quite close to a school on the other side, but have to travel miles to get to it.

Why did you pick school that you didn't want your child to go to? If you had instead picked a third choice further away then your nearest school then it is likely that you would have got your first choice.

Never pick a school you don't want as one of your preferences.

the third choice was on the basis that we didnt want to end up in a situation where if we couldnt get 1 or 2, we would have to travel to a place tens of miles away. I dont think youre correct tbh, otherwise everyone would just put down one choice and we're all told to put 3, so we put 3.

This is completely untrue. Every applicant is treated as if each of their preferences were their first preference. Only if they can be accommodated at more than one school, does their preference order come into play.

But it is also about what direction the school is.

For the sake of argument lets say all three schools are on the same road going directly north to south with the schools all 1 mile apart.

So school A, B and C and children d,e and f

Child d is 3 miles directly north from School A, 4 miles from school b and 5 miles from school C, so they get the place at school A because it is their nearest.

Child e lives next door to school B so 1 mile from both schools A and C, they are closer to all schools than child d but their nearest school is B. So they are allocated a place at B.

Child f lives halfway between schools B and C so 1/2 a mile to each and 1.5 miles from school A. At this point the LA has to look at the exact distance, if they child is 1m closer to B or C that is the school they are allocated.

@Bazinga007 if the criteria give a priority to “x, where x is the nearest school” over pure distance, you can’t get out of it by not putting down x as a choice. Or everyone would do that who didn’t want x.

Yeh @Bazinga007 what everyone says. It doesn’t work like that, just as well or everyone would just put lovely school X down and no others.

This is so confusing! 😂If the admissions criteria is based on your closest school why do they even give preference forms if this is going to be ignored and you are automatically assigned your closest school??

You aren’t “automatically” assigned any school. In some years, the birth rate/sibling rate/numbers of children going private etc would be sufficient that FIRST CHOICE would have some places left to assign on distance after working through those for whom it was the closest school. In this year, at present, it doesn’t.

(this is notwithstanding the rubbish posting of confusing policies by FIRST CHOICE)

The admissions oversubscription criteria give priority in this LA to children who have shown preference for their closest school over children who have shown preference for a school that is not their closest (notwithstanding that @kdandml 's chosen school have stuffed up their policy and left this out).

If there is a PAN of 270 and only 270 children apply, they will all get their first choice. If there is a PAN of 270 and over 270 children apply, then they use the oversubscription criteria. Those who put school A as their first preference and for which school A is their closest school will be given priority. If there are more children in this group than spaces, the children who are in this group will be put in order of distance and the closest children get the places.

If all the children who have EHCPs, are LAC, etc., and all the children for whom it is the closest school have places, then the remaining children will be put in distance order and the closest children will get the place.

Very minor point @Lougle (and I may be misreading/misunderstanding what you wrote) but can they show priority to those who put their closest school as first preference? If a child put their closest school as second preference and didn’t get a place at their first preference, surely they would have to be put under the ‘closest school’ criterion at their second preference and therefore not be disadvantaged by putting it second?

@ThatBeverleyMacca I don't think you've misread, I think I was careless in my wording. The first preference wouldn't give someone priority if they were applying for a school that isn't their nearest in this situation. I was referring to 'and their first preference' because it is possible that they could put their nearest school as a lower preference but still be allowed their preference for a further away school.

The Admissions Code mandates an equal preference system for admissions. That means that each of the preferences on the CAF has to be treated as their first preference and the preference order only comes into play if the child could be offered more than one preference.

If a child lived closer to school A and ordered their CAF 1. School B, 2. School A, 3. School C, then they would be in category 4 for School A, category 5 for School B and School C. Depending on the popularity of the schools and their locations, it may be that they would be offered a place at School A because they were category 4, and wouldn't be offered a place at school B because they were category 5 and all places went for category 4 applicants, and would be offered a place at School C because although they were category 5, there were still places available at the distance that they live at. They would therefore be give preference 2.

Gotcha, thanks

Because you might prefer another less close school and that school might be undersubscribed by “closest” applicants so you would get a space.

Also if the OP had not put down their actual closest school, that might have filled up with others who did and they would have been allocated another school further away.

I see others have said similar, sorry.

But it’s the same as catchment - you don’t have to go to your catchment school. If you list an unsubscribed school further away, you’ll get that.

Absolutely amazing explanation but there’s hardly a parent on the planet that knows this. So basically DD wasn’t getting preference 1 and what she put as 2 and 3 had no bearing on 1’s outcome.

Although in this particular case they haven’t followed their published criteria and have applied the LAs criteria of nearest school rather than distance, and that is what has cost my child her place, hence the thread.

I can’t pretend to understand the ins and outs for this but if it isn’t just an error then surely there are grounds to appeal on the basis that their admissions criteria has changed and/or not been made clear. It certainly looks like you have been penalised for putting school 3 down which isn’t right. What would have happened if you hadn’t put a third one down at all I wonder.
Hope this gets sorted

There is an error, but it will affect many children. @kdandml have you contact the school or the LA yet?

What would have happened if you hadn’t put a third one down at all I wonder.

Then her DC would have been offered a place at the nearest secondary school with places remaining.
That wouldn’t have been School 1 or School 2 as they’re both oversubscribed. It may have been School 3, or it may have been a completely different school further away than any of OP’s preferred schools.

(That’s ignoring the issue of the muddle around School 1’s admissions criteria, which does complicate things rather a lot)

It's an interesting puzzle how this works in some cases, though - there are still schools in my area (at least primary, not sure about secondary) that have an over-subscription criteron of "children living outside the catchment area who have applied and been unable to gain a place at their catchment area school because of oversubscription" - which seems circular because you wouldn't really know if a child had failed to gain a place because of oversubscription until all the allocations had taken place, but in that case, your position would change, and therefore the allocations might not have taken place correctly.

I know that's not the same as the situation here, but it shows that there are some weird rules around that I'm not convinced actually do treat equal preferences equally, as they are supposed to. It might be that they just haven't been challenged yet!

In any case, I hope OP can challenge the arrangements here, or rather, the publication of the arrangements.

No, as I understand it they haven’t been penalised for putting their third choice school down, just for the first choice school not being their nearest school, as is in the admissions criteria for some of the documents for this LA (but whether it should apply for this school or not is unclear). If they hadn’t put a third choice (or any lower preferences they may have had) down it wouldn’t have affected getting their first choice, but they may not have got the third choice school either and would have been allocated their nearest school with places available after everyone’s preferences had been taken into account.

@ThatBeverleyMacca
ok
i’m pleased the op has help from you guys who clearly know their stuff.