Secondary appeal - not offered place from feeder school

[JimJamJim]

Trying to work out if we have the basis for an appeal.

Child attends a primary on the same site as secondary.
Primary school has been designated as a feeder school for the secondary - in practice this means children from the primary are a priority group within the oversubscription criteria (after SEN and siblings).

The published rationale for having feeder school status is talks about things like facilitating curriculum alignment between the schools and primary school children "knowing they can join [secondary] in Y7". At various points we have received written communication from the primary saying things like children will have an "automatic" place at the secondary.

Easing the adjustment between primary and secondary was a key reason we chose the primary, child has always assumed they would go there.

We haven't been offered a place! Currently no reason to believe the admissions criteria haven't been applied correctly (though we are looking into it).

There's various other secondary reasons that the school particularly suits the child in terms of ethos, curriculum etc. But would the simple fact of it being a feeder we were encouraged to assume was a guarantee, and both us and the school preparing the child for that transition, be a case we could argue?

It's not disadvantage Vs the school offered, it's the disadvantage that would occur if your child didn't get a place at your preferred school, which might be because of things that are different at the offered school. The distinction is quite important because panels are simply not allowed to say or imply that a particular school is worse then another. They can only say that for this child, with the circumstances as stated in the bundle and any oral evidence, their need for the appeal school outweighs the prejudice/difficulty/hardship to the school to make space for an extra pupil.

So it's never school A Vs school B in the sense of 'which is best for this child'. It's 'we believe the child needs x, y, z provision and our preferred school can provide that and the offered school can't'. Or, rarely, 'external factors mean that although the offered school is perfectly fine for our child, their circumstances mean that the location, cohort, etc., makes it unsuitable, so our child should go to our preferred school instead.'

That makes sense. And I guess it works to torpedo any appeals that are just along the lines of “we’ve been offered a terrible school that will be a real pain in the arse to travel to” as you simply couldn’t have a system that worked like that (however heartbreaking it must be to be in that position).

Our argument was very much “there’s nothing wrong with the school we’ve been offered, it’s a perfectly good school, but there are context-specific reasons why the school we want better meets DD’s needs”. So hopefully that was the right approach (though as I say, not expecting to win).

Did you hear back? I’ve been thinking of you

Thanks for thinking of us!

Still waiting!!! Slightly losing our minds at this point, it has been over three weeks!

I’ll update when we hear, surely can’t be too much longer! We were told to expect longer than the standard 5 school days because of the number of appeals being held but I didn’t think it would be this long.

Wow that’s crazy! Have you checked your junk mail folder? I can’t believe they’ve left you waiting that long!!

I really hope you get good news :)

We get a physical letter through the post. I know other parents appealing snd none of us have heard so it’s not just our letter that has gone astray or anything.

Wow - I hope that no news is good news and they are seriously contemplating how to rectify this. It does seem like an unintended consequence of an awkwardly designed admissions policy. Do you know if there are 30+ appeals/waiting list kids. Maybe they could do an extra class.

It took 2 weeks for a letter from my bank to reach me recently - so it might be a postal issue!

Well, it might be a sign they're looking at taking in a bulge class/form of students if schools are oversubscribed in the area...

Well it wasn't good news - just received the decision letter in the post and we were unsuccessful.

Ultimately I'm not surprised, though I was hoping the letter might provide some insight into how the panel made the decision, which it doesn't at all. And the summary of our stage 2 is really quite terrible and doesn't really reflect our argument at all.

Which just leaves me feeling rather frustrated - I'd like to have been able to walk away from this thinking "that's not the decision we wanted, but at least I understand why you made it" and now I'm left thinking "did you actually understand why we were appealing at all?".

ah, I'm sorry to hear that

I’m really sorry to hear that.

@JimJamJim Sorry to hear that. You put so much effort into this - I have been following you all along. I seem to remember that you are reasonably happy with the place you have been offered. I hope that's the case and that your child has a good start there.

Thank you! It really has been a lot of work - I've not really gone into DC's needs here (partly because this whole thread is quite identifying, I know some people have figured out the school involved) but there's been lots involved in gathering evidence on that front.

But yes the school we've ended up with is one that wasn't originally on our radar and has a lot of good things going for it, so maybe everything happens for a reason?

Sorry to hear that.

I really don't get "fair banding" I actually fair.

Sorry to hear this. I hope things work out well in the school you’ve been given (if it’s one you didn’t know well, feel free to pm me in case it’s one I know anything about).

Thank you - I've only heard good things about the school we've been offered so hopefully it will work out.

So having caught up with other people who were appealing as well, my observations are:

I think we were somewhat disadvantaged by having made our second choice school our "insurance" option rather than ranking simply best>worst (however unlikely we were to get a place). If we'd put the insurance in 6th and made our 2nd-5th preferences schools we stood no chance of getting into we might have had a better argument. The panel clearly came back to the fact we'd be offered our second choice school: in their mind - why put it as second choice if it wasn't suitable?

I also think they gave no/very little weight to the fact DC has an existing relationship to the school - that was the central theme of our argument, which I thought was quite well evidenced (both in terms DC's particular need for stability, and in terms of how the "all through" education the schools' offered provide that stability). But that didn't seem to factor into their decision, so that left us with quite a weak case (given we were happy to concede there was little objectively wrong with the school we accepted, it was the absence of familiarity and consistency that was problem).

Were any of those appealing succesful?

I also think they gave no/very little weight to the fact DC has an existing relationship to the school

Excluding the specifics on your DD's needs (which I know you want to keep private) - I think it would be difficult for a panel to generally give weight to this. Through schools are quite rare and I believe panels are loath to find any one type of school as 'better' than another, given so many children won't be at a through school (or in other cases, a religious school etc).

I think this is the only thing that makes sense, as I initially couldn't really understand how they'd summarised our case in the decision letter - it doesn't explicitly say that hey discounted the argument, it just largely ignores that we made it.

It's not technically a through school, they just tried to make it effectively all-through via feeder priority. But I can see how a panel might have treated that in the same way.

(I don't want to say what other people's outcomes were as I don't think it's my place to say, given small numbers involved and fact that some people on this thread know the schools involved)

Just coming back to this thread with an update.

The original situation was we were appealing for a secondary place at a school where DD was at a feeder primary school with priority in the admissions criteria, but didn’t get a place due to school’s use of a banding test. We didn’t win our appeal.

As expected, there was never any movement on the waiting list within the top band (despite lots of movement in other bands) so amongst the nearly 1 in 4 applicants who got a top band score and didn’t have a sibling at the school already, none ever got a place.

Thr secondary has just announced they are planning to remove the banding test for future years (but retain the feeder school. Which having written to the head and governors asking them to review their policy, I will take as a win (even though it doesn’t help us).

DD is settling in well at their new school so we have made peace with it.

Thanks for updating @JimJamJim . It does sound like a bit of a win that other families won't have the same issue, and I'm pleased your DD is settling in ok.

@JimJamJim- love it when the OP gives as update, thank you!

They obviously agreed with you.; so have changed their policy. Good to hear that your DD has settled into her new secondary school.

Ww are a good comprehensive. Nearly half of our applicants have stated SEN needs. If SEN ( in any degree) gets priority, then I can easily see how this happens.