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?

When 90% of London children (for example) have been offered one of their top three preferences this year? Not seeing much in the way of any private school exodus causing a breakdown of the entire system there.

Is the secondary school very small?

Usually here a primary would have 30-90 kids per year. Secondaries have an intake of around 200. So how can one school's year 6 not fit?

The secondary school must be small if every child in the year group wasn't allocated a place at the only feeder school (unless there is more than one feeder school).

The first thing I’d be doing here is checking that your DC has been considered under the correct category.

Unless the secondary school is very small, it seems odd that they can’t absorb one primary school’s worth of pupils after SEN / Looked after children / siblings.

Or are there several feeder primary schools?

After pupils with an EHCP and looked after children, are the other categories linked to a catchment or geographical proximity, e.g. siblings living in catchment in the same or a nearer address than the parents applied from for the first child? If not, there is a danger families live on the doorstep to get the first child in and then move further away for a bigger house but retain priority through the sibling link over children without a qualifying sibling link living much nearer to the school.

This is a bit off topic for op but you wouldn’t see the private school exodus at the on-time offer stage. Parents tend to apply for state and private and then see where they get in, last year my child was number 1 on the waiting list between March and the second week of September for the most popular school in the area. Private school parents don’t tent to inform the school that they aren’t turning up, they accept the place and then don’t turn up in September. There were 15 kids in a PAN of 190 who just didn’t show up at my daughters school 🫠

OP I suggest that you call the LA and find out how your child was categorised and what position they are on the wait list. It sounds likely that they were miscategorised as not attending the feeder school.

This is a good point. What are the feeder schools and how many children in Y6 at each school. Even if there are more Y7 places than Y6 children, the places might have been taken by higher priority children (EHCP, LAC, siblings) who might not necessarily be at feeder schools.

Do you live in catchment? What's your distance from the school?

There must be some mistake if the criteria is as said and if the secondary is not tiny. As pp have said most primary schools have max 90 in year 6 (most have max 60) and secondary schools tend to be 200+ (our local ones are 250/300). So I can't imagine there is any way that there was 140 children who are care experienced or have SEN or siblings (that were not already in the feeder). It would be very unlikely.
Unless it's a religious school and you have missed that admission point?

I think I'm going to have to explain another part of the admissions process - I didn't bother as I didn't think it was relevant to the question but seeing as everyone's baffled by how this happened:

There is also a banding test, which aims to ensure the school admits a fair cross section of abilities. All applicants take the a test, then they're divided into 9 bands from lowest to highest ability. Then within each of the 9 bands the priorities I've previously outlined apply (SEN, siblings, feeder school, other).

However the bands are based on national average abilities, not local average abilities (which are higher than average). So we end up with a large number of children getting results in the test that puts them in the top band, relative to the number of spaces in the band.

DC unexpectedly ended up in the top band (turns out they are a whizz at non verbal reasoning) and that band only offers 10 places and they're all taken with siblings.

I'd say there had been an error on either your part or the admissions authority. It's very unlikely that 1 and 2 would be full. Ring and find more info and appeal x

Sorry just read your update , ignore!! You could still appeal x

I would appeal on the admissions arrangements are unfair!

That's very silly advice. The only thing the panel will be interested in is whether the policy meets the admissions code. They won't judge whether it is "fair" or not - only the Schools Adjudicator can do that, through a separate process. The OP would need to:

1. Wait for the 2026 policy to be published (by March 15th).
2. Refer it to the schools adjudicator with reasons why they think it is unfair.
3. Wait for an adjudication (this can take several weeks).
4. If the adjudicator agrees it is unfair, only then would the op be able to use it in their appeal, by which time it would probably be a late appeal.

What a strange way of offering places. Surely the band business should be separate from sibling places with the sibling spots allocated first, not that the siblings use up some of those spots?

And you didn't think to mention this before 🤦🏻‍♀️🤣
I would appeal that stupid admissions policy!

@JimJamJim this absolutely explains why you didn't get a place.

All you can reasonably do is hope that their case for being full is weaker than your case for getting a place.

You need to manage your child's expectations on this.

I'm not involved in admissions so I don't know if it's a strange arrangement at your school but it seems it. I have never heard of the way your preferred secondary does it.
It is probably worth appealing but it sounds like the policy was applied correctly. I didn't know that schools set such admissions policies unless it was independent or religious. I thought all had to follow LA set ones. If you do appeal I think you need to create a strong argument as to why your dc in particular would struggle with not being in the school they transitioned in. I get it, I'm not saying it's not understandable but in reality the fact that they believed they were going there and were involved in transition days etc won't be enough. Most dc don't have any transition days and have to get on with it. My own dc only went for a morning once they had been allocated a place. Lots of dc do not get their first choice school and have to get over it. The LA will not accept that as a reason, unless there is evidence it will be significantly detrimental to the dc.

It does effectively exclude the top performing kids from the school, which is a weird choice by the school TBH.

I'd like to be able to appeal on the basis that is unfair, but I'm not sure that's a reason, given as far as I can tell they've stated what the admissions criteria are and then applied them.

My hope was there's a "disadvantage" case as the school justify the feeder status of the primary on the basis of the advantages of shared curriculum etc (therefore not being able to access that places us at a particular disadvantage).

So the school ends up with kids of lower average ability than the average for the local area? That seems crazy! Where are all the other rejected clever kids going? That school must be rubbing its hands with glee!

Ask what percentage of children were in each band, and compare to the number of spaces allocated to each band. It may not help you, but might show how silly the whole process is.

"It does effectively exclude the top performing kids from the school"

No it doesn't. You were just unlucky that there were lots of siblings in that group.

Banding is aimed at having an even spread of abilities. It's a bit marmite, but lots of schools do it.

Well yes that was really what the thread was about, is there an argument that we are disadvantaged by not getting a place at the partnered secondary school because we were at the primary school? Given that the schools boast about the shared curriculum etc.

This isn't a terribly common oversubscription criteria structure but it isn't unique. Holland Park is a notable example of school that admits in bands like this, though they use 4 bands not 9. The goal is to maintain a truly comprehensive school with an even spread of abilities. There are plenty of pros and cons but it's accepted by the Schools Adjudicator and it isn't unfair any more than prioritizing students at feeder schools or students who live close is unfair.

I don’t think there is, unfortunately. Things the school said are one thing, but the final arbiter is the published admission criteria. Those have been followed. Banding like this isn’t massively common, but it’s not unheard of so I doubt appealing the criteria would help.

Try living in parts of Surrey where a lot of those Londoners moved to post-Covid.