Help please. Faith School Appeal.

[Rachel234561]

Hi, my daughter is wanting a place at an over subscribed faith school where children with 30points plus got a place. We have 40points. However, we moved from a different authority so couldn’t apply to this one before the closing date. We would have got the place if we had moved in time before the closing date. Do you think we may have a good chance at appeal? The housing market caused lots of unexpected delays. Thanks

You should be high on waiting list. Not sure about an appeal though.

You could have applied for the school from any authority - if it's the one in the other thread, address would only come into it if children had the same number of points. A lot of children are likely to have had 40 points though so you may or may not have got a place, but you could have applied. Are you on the waiting list now under your new address?

An appeal simply based on your move date won't be very strong at all - you need to find other key reasons why this school suits your child, and why the detriment to her of not attending is greater than the detriment to the school of taking another pupil.

Hi, no we couldn’t, I tried to do this. But it had to be in same LEA as address

Do you have evidence of that? It sounds like a possible breach of the Greenwich Judgement (see here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_judgment). If so, you would have a strong appeal case.

If both LAs are in England, then if they actually told you that you couldn't apply, that would be against the admissions code which has the force of law. You apply through your own LA, but you absolutely should have been allowed to apply to any school from any English address.

Sometimes you need to do it on a paper form as the online portal will usually only have schools in their local LA, not all schools in England, but that should have been available. Did you ask your local LA how to do it?

Agree with @PatriciaHolm. You had to apply through the LA where you were living, but you were entitled to apply to any school in England. If your LA refused to allow you to apply to this school or the school's LA refused to process your application, you have good grounds for appeal. However, if the school's LA simply told you that you had to apply to your own LA and you assumed that meant you couldn't apply to this school, I'm afraid you won't win an appeal on these grounds. That doesn't mean you can't win, but you will need a different approach.

Was the information that you could only apply for schools within what was your own LA at the time of CAF submission published on that LA's - or the school's LA - or the school’s - website? Or conveyed to you in response to an email sent to one or other LA's admissions team, or the Admissions Officer at the school? If yes to either, then you will be able to submit evidence to this effect to the independent appeal panel.

Unfortunately, a little more difficult to evidence if you were only given the (incorrect) information during a telephone or personal conversation (although if with someone at the school, you can at least challenge the school's Presenting Officer during your appeal, if one of the panel don't do so first, based on your written appeal submission).