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?

Really appreciating your insight here.

Obviously I keep hoping if I look hard enough there's some kind of slam-dunk case on a technicality!

Nevertheless it's still incredibly helpful to understand things where an argument might lend some weight to the case. As I've alluded to, there's other specifics to why I believe the school is particularly suitable but I'm trying to keep the thread just to the feeder school issue.

@atriskacademic Yes, certainly. If that doesn't work, MN are saying that PMs will be back soon.

@prh47bridge Great! I fill try to contact Mumsnet, highlighting that you have agreed to change details here.
If they won't do it, I'll wait for PMs to get back.

Is this manchester? Sounds like a familar school

No we're in London - I didn't want to name the school but based on previous responses it's guessable by people familiar!

If it’s what I think it might be, then the feeder school hasn’t always been part of the admissions criteria - I believe perhaps from around 2021?? They’d previously tried to get it as a feeder but unsuccessfully, but obviously now it is. Which may or may not be helpful to you but unfortunately can show that criteria can change over the years and that what you’d been told at one point may not be regarded as something you could rely on. I have a feeling, dredging my memory bank, that this isn’t the first year that not all of the feeder got places because of siblings (purely based on something anecdotal, not any actual evidence). I have heard not all siblings get in either e.g. if you’re on the margins distance-wise and the sibling is in one of the smaller outer bands.

Again, I’m sorry you’re in this position and I hope you find a solution that works.

Re gaming the system

We have a school like this near us that does banding and then within each band students are selected on distance. The distance for each band is published each year and you can see the trends. The distance for the top band is always the lowest.
I have friends whose children have deliberately “flunked” the test to get in. The only issue is that it means initially they were allocated to the lowest sets, but this was rebalanced by the end of year 7.

I do think this year with the backdrop of the VAT changes one could have anticipated that even more high achieving children would be sitting the test and therefore going in the top band (* and pls don’t everyone jump on me for suggesting some private school children wld be in the top band who previously wouldn’t have sat the test - it’s my suggestion based on my experience from many years of seeing the results of the banding test).

Perhaps the large number of bands is designed to mitigate this game-playing.

There are so many absurdities in the U.K. education system.

Good luck OP. It must be very upsetting for your child. I hope you find a good alternative if your appeal is unsuccessful.

I do think this year with the backdrop of the VAT changes one could have anticipated that even more high achieving children would be sitting the test and therefore going in the top band

They might have sat the test but, as the band was full with sibling preference and didn't even get to feeder school preference, it would have done them no good.

@prh47bridge i just want to take you up on this point (& sorry it’s relevant to OP but in case other people are reading this thread later). At the school local to us that does banding, each band has its own catchment so if you are in a lower band you can get in if you live further away from the school than if you are in a higher band. This is a significant advantage. In some years the difference is as much as a mile, which in an urban area is huge.

@north51 by each band has its own catchment - do you mean that each band has a different 'preference area' drawn on a map? Because that would be very odd.

Or do you mean that the tie-break criterion is 'distance' for all bands, but that the distance is greater in lower bands? Which would be likely if the area near the school was of a higher socioeconomic standing then the area a little further away.

@north51 - I'm with @SheilaFentiman. Very odd for each band to have a different preference area, but not particularly unusual for the distance for last child admitted to be very different from one band to another.

That’s what I said to OP when I saw this bizarre system - her kid should have deliberately done worse if you’d known this was going to happen! What a strange admission system. Will others next year now do the same…?

But then if everyone does then that band is also full, and a higher scoring one may not be. Or do people suggest all the parents get together and decide which kids will flunk and which will.pass? 🤔

Hi @JimJamJim , this successful appeal isn’t quite four-square with your situation but might be of interest https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62fbcf2bd3bf7f06e6cef613/ADA3958-3959_ADA3983-4066_and_REF4078-4083_Langley_Park_Bromley_15_August_2022.pdf

Hehe perhaps!
Maybe they should atleast let the school know parents are considering it due to this years results.

Thank you, yes this is interesting! As you say not exactly the same but on my quick reading of it the main take-out is that the adjudicator rules that the schools should increase PAN because the parents had been led to believe that their children would get entry feeder status.

That isn't the outcome of an individual parental post-allocarion day appeal to the independent appeal panel sitting for a school, though; it's the adjudication on the submission of an objection to the Office of the Schools Adjudicator to the determined admissions arrangements for a school, which is different.

However, as we are just going into the window for making such objections for the determined policies for 2026 entry...

...if this is an ongoing issue with the particular school, and the same arrangement is to be used as per the school's recently / imminently to be published policy for 2026/2027, a public spirited parent could raise an objection with the OSA and possibly do something for the current year 5?

@JimJamJim i know we can’t PM at the moment but if you felt able to ask about other local schools on here, do ask. 2014 was a low birth year so you might find you have a better shot at other schools’ waitlists than you might think. (I have a Year 6 child as well as one in Year 7 so have taken one of those sibling places, but I doubt in band 1…)

I get that it's a different context to an individual appeal - though is it not a bit helpful to be able to point to an example where the adjudicator has ruled that on balance the school should increase PAN because parents were misled about having a guarantee of a feeder place?

(maybe it's not helpful at all, happy to be told otherwise - obviously I'm clutching at anything that may help us at all!)

Are you suggesting we raise it with the OSA ourselves? We're already raising it with the academy group in the interest of trying to straighten it out for future cohorts. I hope in this case the schools might actively want to resolve it themselves rather than be forced by the OSA (surely it can't be in their interests to lock out the highest attaining pupils from the feeder relationship? weird message to send to parents of prospective pupils!) but if they don't do something I'm certainly up for escalating it so that future years don't end up in the same position.

Thanks! And yes we're looking at all other options and are on the waiting lists for other schools too.

Raising it with the OSA may help next year's cohort, but it won't make any difference to your case.

There is no harm in raising this with the appeal panel, but there is no guarantee the panel will give it any weight. They may think this case is sufficiently different that the OSA ruling is irrelevant.

The only reasons it won't make a difference to this appeal is that (a) it will be a decision on the 2026 policy (but that is presumably the same as the 2025 policy) and (b) the adjudicator's decision probably won't be made in time - it can take several weeks.

However, if the appeal is lost, and the adjudicator later declares the policy as "unfair", then the op could cite it as a material change, potentially justifying a second appeal within the same year.

The adjudicator will certainly look at the 2025 data, and data from previous years, to help inform the decision.

Just to add, when considering the "fairness" of the policy, the adjudicator will decide if it discriminates against a particular social group. That seems to be exactly what the op believes it is doing.

Just taking it up with the school will have no effect on the actual criteria for 2025 entry (the application and allocation process already having been gone through, changing how places are allocated at this school would have a 'ripple effect' on the allocation of places at schools for miles around). It isn't likely to have any effect on the policy for 2026 entry, as requesting to be allowed a variation of a policy is quite a big thing, for an admission authority (the school itself in this case?) let alone trying to substitute a whole new policy once it has been determined. The outcome of 'just asking the school' may just possibly be, Oh, okay, this is obviously something there's strong feeling about locally, so we'll consider consulting on a change of oversubscription criteria in the October to January window for the 2027/2028 policy and this will potentially change things for that cohort.

Raising an objection with the OSA may at least get things changed for 2026, assuming that the Adjudicator upholds the objection.

I would have thought the outcome of talking to the school would be much clearer messaging about feeder school status not being a guarantee rather than a change in policy.