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?

How do you suppose somebody from a school circumvents the waiting list data that's held by the local authority and has been since at least the first week of January?

They'd notice if a school hacked into parts of the computer system they don't have permissions for / access to in order to make changes to locked data.

How can thst be reason though as kids moving from private would be below op in priority categories as they haven’t come from feeder school? The Sen criteria only applies if child has an ehcp and even then the school won’t end up being filled up with children with ehcps as the school can refuse a child with ehcp if they say they can’t meet needs, one of the reasons for this being that they already have a significant number of children with ehcps . It’s also unlikely that most children moving from private with Sen have already got an ehcp as the system just doesn’t work like thst, they would most likely be turned down by the la and appeal is a year wait

Alternatively, private diagnoses of ADHD and autism have no waiting lists.
This is completely untrue.

If you think your DC has anywhere near the diagnostic criteria for either of those may be worth dropping a couple of grand there. It's move you up a group.
I have no words.

OP I wish you luck and hope your child is successful in getting a place. I can totally understand your frustration.

Just picking up on something you said in your original post OP. You mentioned that you had it in writing on more than one occasion that the school had said that children attending the feeder would automatically have a place at the secondary.
I think that this is grounds for appeal. A few years ago a number of children won their appeals for admission at our local secondary, which had made much on its website about the local partnership of schools - this included primary schools which were not actually feeder schools. The impression was given that children who attended these schools would have priority over other applicants. It was a bit ambiguous, but enough for the appeals panel to rule that there had been maladminstration of the admissions process.

"Alternatively, private diagnoses of ADHD and autism have no waiting lists. If you think your DC has anywhere near the diagnostic criteria for either of those may be worth dropping a couple of grand there. It's move you up a group."**

@MissHollysDolly Untrue. Though perhaps this misconception is behind the current boom in diagnosis. A diagnosis will not give any priority for a state school. Only an EHCP will do that. It can take a long time to get an EHCP and it has a very high bar. One of the criteria is that they have to be 2 years behind their peers in terms of their development or academic progress.

As others have said having a diagnosis doesn’t get you up the list only having an ehcp, it’s not possible to “go private” for an ehcp as you wait like a everyone else and being as though op child doesn’t sound like she has sen she is very unlikely to get an ehcp even through tribunal.

also ehcp isn’t a way of bumping you up a priority group the ehcp admissions process is outside of the normal admissions process. A school is consulted by the local authority and they then have to consider the ehcp and say if they can meet needs or not. One of the reasons schools often give for not being able to meet needs is that they already have too many children with ehcps in which case the place would be denied unless the local authority chose to force the school to take. So just having an ehcp doesn’t put you any higher in the admissions criteria or mean you will definately get in at a school above all others it’s just a different way of allocating places

That isn’t one of the criteria in the code of practise

The code of practice uses the phrases "behind expected levels" and "behind their peers". They obviously have to be significantly behind. Two years is the usual benchmark for significance.

It's always happened when we are this issue happens every single year. In fact it has got less bad because the birth rate has declined every year since 2010.

@JimJamJim is your dd the only child from the feeder school not offered a place at the secondary school?

Where is that phrase used in code of practise?

it includes the phrase “has a significant greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age”.

this doesn’t mean they have to be two years behind or even behind at all they could be ahead academically.

code of practise even includes the following paragraph about not needed to be behind.

The code of practise 2015 6.23 states "it should not be assumed that attainment in line with chronological age means that there is no learning difficulty or disability. Some learning difficulties and disabilities occur across the range of cognitive ability and left unaddressed may lead to frustration, which may manifest itself as disaffection, emotional or behavioural difficulties."

I accept that some local authorities will interpret and have in their criteria about needing to be two years behind but it doesn’t stand up at tribunal

"Where is that phrase used in code of practise?"

Try a text search. It is in reference to getting a referral rather than the assessment itself. But whether right or wrong, perhaps don't derail the OP's thread by going down the rabbit hole. The OP doesn't have a child with an SEN diagnosis. The topic only came up because a previous poster flippantly suggested it might help her to get one.

There is a big difference between:
A) being 2 years behind being one indicator that needs are not being met
B) being a requirement

Or you push everyone down a band to fit them in. So your 9 goes into band 8. The lowest scorer in band 8 goes into 7. This assumes they can fit in siblings and feeder within the overall number before going by distance.

Ie you adjust what scores needed for each level slightly.

I wonder if the way to approach this is to query the way the test was marked? Usually for schools with banding systems a relatively small proportion come into the top marked band, with the majority going into the middle bands. It does seem statistically unlikely for so many children to be in the top band, and for so many of them to be sibllngs. So it rather looks as if they have marked very generously, and maybe the marking scheme or practices needs to be reviewed?

So In effect they do an easy test? And lots get high marks.
which means that most of the top cohort can't get into the secondary school, even assuming no siblings?

Ie 100 students in primary -24 get top marks but only 10 could have gone anyway to the secondary school.

There are a number of different banding schemes used. Some will end up with a relatively small number in the top band, others aim for roughly the same number of children in each band.

OP says they have used national scores to set the bands, but children locally perform better than the national average. That does happen sometimes. Unfortunately, I don't know which school this is (and, with PMs disabled, I have no way of finding out), so I can't comment on whether OP's understanding is correct.

This is probably not the school OP is referring to (it doesn't seem to have a named feeder primary), but Harris Academy Greenwich also has a PAN of 180, also has 9 bands, also has the fewest places in band 1 (and band 9), used "a national formula to establish how many places we offer in each band", and also had all band 1 places taken by siblings last year.

This phenomenon might not be so uncommon around London.

I live in London and it isn’t common around here but I know if schools that do it like Grey Coats.

I found this example outside of London. 9 bands using “national distribution”. This school doesn’t have feeder schools though.

there is a school near us that has feeder schools in their catchment and they used to numerically limit those. So only 60 kids got “feeder” spaces but there were over 100 year 6s in feeder schools year 6 classes. In the end they changed the criteria to not limit it as it was ridiculously complicated!

Just picking up on something you said in your original post OP. You mentioned that you had it in writing on more than one occasion that the school had said that children attending the feeder would automatically have a place at the secondary.

I am not an admissions expert, but it seems from the posts that this was said by the primary school rather than by the secondary school, which may make a difference in a panel's view vs the example you cite where it was the secondary school's website which was unclear.

ETA: more detail

I was going to PM you to ask for details of which school this was but the PM function is disabled at the moment - I don't know if you'd be prepared to share in the thread which school this was.

My understanding was that we don't have any grounds to appeal on that basis, but if there's any precedent I'd be v interested explore!

Where we are ourselves is:

-it seems that the intent of the admissions criteria when they were written was to assure children from the feeder school a place at the secondary.
-we do have written correspondence dating from the consultation for feeder status that says children from the feeder school would "automatically" get a place
-however, the actually admissions criteria themselves do not make any such promises and we have no reason to believe they've not been applied correctly, only that the outcome wasn't foreseen in their design.

I'm going to do some more digging around to see if I can find anything from the secondary school which is more definitive on these lines - as we got all our comms from the primary school I don't have as much detail about what the secondary said.

Definitely appeal based on this
it seems that the intent of the admissions criteria when they were written was to assure children from the feeder school a place at the secondary.
-we do have written correspondence dating from the consultation for feeder status that says children from the feeder school would "automatically" get a place

and STAY ON THE WAITING LIST

good luck!

Appeals don't set precedents unless they go to the LGO, ESFA or judicial review. The fact that one appeal panel has made a particular decision is not in any way binding on other panels.

Promises made by the primary school are irrelevant. However, an appeal panel may consider statements made by the secondary school to be relevant.

The fact that the outcome of the admission criteria does not match the intent is not grounds for appeal. A sympathetic appeal panel may give some weight to this, but they are only supposed to consider whether the admission arrangement conform with the compulsory requirements of the Admissions Code and have been administered correctly. The fact that the outcome is not what the admission authority intended isn't a factor they are supposed to take into account.

@prh47bridge Sorry for annexing this thread. We have been 'conversing' on another appeals thread last week. Given our experiences last year, and what I am reading this year, I am currently considering ways of supporting parents through this process as well as other processes that are administered via local authorities, e.g. SEN etc. Would be be happy for a 1-1 chat? We are not able to PM at the moment, but perhaps contact details could be exchanged via Mumsnet back office if you agree.