Secondary school appeal hwaring advice please

[Pinklash]

Expert advice very much appreciated please. So we have our hearing next week and received the school report. It states that pan is 232 but still allocated 251 places on the 1st of March in anticipation that 19 families will opt out. Reason given is to avoid further anxiety from families going through appeal process, they know a lot of applicants will put school as 1st preference but will afterwards accept independent offers which means that then it will go under pan.
Can someone please shed some light? Is this common practice from secondary school?

Thanks

This is done by a school near me (Chestnut Grove) as a lot of families do apply for it but then go private, it is a wealthy area. So they over offer by say 20 places knowing that at least 20 will decline every year - that way they’ve saved 20 families from waiting list anxiety.

I don’t think it is common practice among state schools, only where this particular pattern happens every year.

It doesn’t mean they take more pupils than the PAN - they have calculated their offers to end up with the PAN after declines, if you see what I mean.

Does it make a difference to your appeal? Are you arguing that since they admit 251 they should be prepared to actually teach 251?

It's fairly common in areas where there are number of private schools, where schools can usually predict as they say - a number of pupils will drop out to go to private in the end. Several schools around me regularly do it. Mostly it works, sometimes it doesn't!

The issues for them at appeal is that appellants can indeed say, well, you offered 251, so you have to be prepared to deal with that - which is true, to an extent, but it doesn't mean there wouldn't be prejudice to the education of other pupils to do so.

A PAN of 232 suggests 8 forms of 29. 251 would suggest something like 9 forms of 28.

The interesting point comes where acceptances drop back to, say, 236, meaning 4 forms now have 30 - so an appellant could say, well, what would be the prejudice of adding 1 more to another form as well? There would be some, but the argument could well be made that it was low.

A question to ask on the day would be what are their current acceptances to date.

That was one of the question that we were going to ask but then we were sent a list of questions with answers (questions from appeal panels to school authority) and they gave reasons why this is done.

So up to date 233 have accepted so they are 1 over pan. But they also said they responded to oversubscription and increased demand for places by provisionally allocating 240 places in Year 7.
I am trying to understand why they are not offering off the waiting list then. DS is 4th on waiting list so can get in from there.
Would it be valid question from us then at hearing?

@Pinklash in our area this is very common and is done in consultation with the local authority. If schools didn't do it there would be many more children without any place at all on National Offer Day. It is a risk though.

How do the 251 and the 240 fit together?

They offered 251 on offer day, yes? So where does it say 240?

They have effectively offered to 19 families on the waiting list ahead of you. If they hadn't, you would have been at number 25. The numbers will probably eventually stabilise at 232.

Thank you very much it does help. Very new to all this so it helps to know that some schools do it this way

I am trying to understand why they are not offering off the waiting list then. DS is 4th on waiting list so can get in from there.
Would it be valid question from us then at hearing?

They don't have to offer out over PAN. If the official PAN for the year is 232, they don't have to offer until acceptances hit 231.

It may be that they are saying they offered 251, and provisionally made arrangements to cope with 240 as they thought that was what it would drop to. However it's gone down further than expected. The argument to make in that case is that given they were fully prepared to have 30 per form, the prejudice in now adding one more pupil would be low.

But they also said they responded to oversubscription and increased demand for places by provisionally allocating 240 places in Year 7.

I’m not sure how a PAN of 232 fits together with “provisionally allocating” 240 places for year 7. But I would have thought this gives you a good basis to say they can take 240 without detriment. Maybe they don’t really want to (ie it was only intended as a back up plan) but it sounds like they made arrangements to make 240 work if they had to.

@PatriciaHolm @minipie thank you for those insightful arguments.
I was sat down there this afternoon full of despair thinking whether we even stand a chance. Now am up and ready to fight 💪

Does the school include room sizes in its statement? A usual argument is that the classrooms, or a high proportion of them, are so small that they couldn't possibly shoehorn in another desk / there are x pupils requiring additional help in each class, so the presence of an LSA has to be taken into account in the 'body count' etc. But if the school's contingency is taking 240, they must have considered all this (and yes, they would have to have considered the 'what if' that practically every parent in that cohort is so spooked by the inevitability of Labour taking power snd imposing VAT on school fees that they ended up with the whole of the over-offered places 'sticking'). So unless the school has another rabbit to pull out of the hat on the day - and the pane agrees to accept it - it would appear not to have a strong case.

@MarchingFrogs another uplifting comment! Thank you! Will definitely focus on building up our argument now with all these helpful comments and keeping everything cross till then

@Pinklash is the first stage of the hearing a group hearing, or individual?

Yes stage 1. It is individual. It looks like it's a 2 in 1. With no stages mentioned other than it is going to be 30 minutes. The school will put forward their case and appeal panel will question, we question and then we will be allowed to put forward our case

That implies there are no other appellants, which is good news for you.

If it had been a group hearing, it wouldn't be enough to show the school had spaces - if there are more appellants than spaces you need to a stronger case than the other appellants.

That's interesting. I had thought there wouldn't be many appellants but didn't think we would be the only one.

30 minutes seems short though.

My school's appeals are normally up to an hour for the grouped stage 1 (depending on how many parents/questions), then half an hour for each of the individual stage 2 hearings.

It's interesting that they've sent the school questions in advance - I haven't heard of that before.

My only knowledge of appeals is through the countless threads I've read here. I thought it peculier but didn't really question it. Maybe getting in touch with LA/school would shed light? I may explain I am concerned we may not have enough time to question or to put forward our case