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?

Sorry I was far too casual with my language when I wrote the original post, I simply meant EHCPs. And I've just bumped the thread with an update so the situation is now resolved - the failure to get a place had nothing to do with the number of children with EHCPs/SEN, they were not unusually high, nor were the number of siblings.

The only reason DD didn't get a place was because they were in the top group in the school's banding test (as were more than 1 in 5 children who took the test) but the school had so few places top band (below 10) that the only children who got a place in that band were those that already had siblings in the school, and not even all of them got in.

Yes I do definitely feel vindicated! I'm surprised the school let the situation carry on as long as it did really - to be in a situation where the school is supposed to be comprehensive, but you basically can't get in if you're in the top 20%+ of local kids, was just a bit absurd.

DD isn't even in top sets in secondary, it's not like it's just cutting off a few exceptionally high performers it's a huge chunk of the local community that it was cutting out.