Secondary school appeals help

[ForLilacSheep]

Hi, I am appealing for a place at our preferred school to start in year 7 2025. I have other questions regarding our specific appeal however what I would like to know in the first instance is this. I have contacted the LA (Lancashire county council) asking questions and for information. They are not willing to supply me with any answers at all to any of the questions related to PAN numbers, annual reviews of GPA, questions regarding how many applicants the school had this year, how many children from within the gpa who had this school as first preference were refused a place, how many children were admitted last year in year 7, the list goes on. I would like to go to the appeal hearing with a good knowledge of their case in advance so I can prepare sufficiently. I have done a freedom of information request but obviously this is a slow process. I feel they are not being transparent. Could anyone offer any advice or ideas of how else to obtain this information? I have also asked the school some questions and they have also failed to respond. Thanks in advance :)

What are your grounds for appeal?

You can find out the PAN from the admissions policies. It will be detailed just before the oversubscription criteria.

The appeals code makes it very clear the admissions authority must comply with reasonable requests from appellants for information.

remind the authority of this. If they still refuse, bring it up at appeal that you were hampered in preparation thanks to this.

much of what you are asking should be easy to supply - PAN, applicants, etc. TBH I am not sure how useful it will be - evidence they admitted over PAN would be, but the other information less so, unless you are trying to show an error has been made. First preference, for example, wouldn't have any relevance I can see in for a general appeal as it's not taken into account for allocations unless the child qualifies for more than one offer.

Also you will be sent the schools case in advance of the hearing.

@PatriciaHolm thank you for your response :) so we already know that the whole school pan is 900. The latest data available shows the school is currently at 853. We know the pan in previous 3 years was 145 per year group. Each year they would take 10 pupils on appeal to take it to 155. We know that this year they were allowed to increase their pan to 150 for year 7, and that subsenquently only 5 places would be available for successful appeals. It would be helpful to have the latest data when we go to the hearing. We think we have a decent case for appeal based on suitability of the school to our child and various supporting evidence for this. But what I am curious about is that I have seen it mentioned before that “the local authority must comply with reasonable requests” however I have read the entire appeals code and cannot find this line anywhere. I would like to refer to that but cant see where it says that? We know they will provide their case 2 weeks prior but really just want to feel fully informed and ready earlier than that to ease some of the crippling anxiety that we ware now suffering.

I think there are some misunderstandings here.

The school, or admission authority, has no control over how many appeals they accept. That is down to the independent appeals panel. It is not a given that there will be 5 appeals allowed this year - it could be more, or less. The school cannot leave places unfilled if there are applicants, just to leave space for appeals. They might try to say in the appeal "we can take X without prejudice..." but that decision is made by the panel who could easily decide they can take more.

Have they officially changed their PAN to 150, or just offered that?

That phrase comes from the Schools Standards and Frameworks Act 1988, which says that local authorities "shall comply" with the wishes of a parent in expressing preferences for a particular school(s), unless compliance would prejudice the provision of education or the efficient use of resources - which is precisely what the admissions authority will be arguing.

So parent do have a right to express a preference for the school/schools they want their child to attend, but do not have a right for their child to attend that particular school, or indeed any of their preferences.

@PatriciaHolm i appreciate what you’re saying. But we know this is what has happened in the past, and this information has come directly from the headteacher of the school. I don’t know whether or not that is correct procedure, but this is precisely why I want all the information regarding past numbers admitted etc because it is relevant to our appeal and will help us to argue that the school can in fact admit more students than their pan without prejudice as they have done so before without causing any harm. So how do I get the information when nobody is willing to provide us with it?

@PatriciaHolm i don’t know if they have officially changed their pan to 150. The latest data from 2023/2024 states it is 145. But I was told that the LA have allowed them to admit 150 this year.

That sounds as if they have just voluntarily offered over PAN this year, rather than an official change, which they are allowed to do. It would help you if declined places mean they have less than that accepted atm, because you can argue they must have been prepared to take them, but you would need to ask that on the day for the most up to date number.

Do you know how many forms that is divided into?

You do need numbers on how many students were admitted into Year 7 at the start of the year for the last few years; I would go back to them quoting paragraph 2.8 of the Appeals Code.

"2.8 Admission authorities must comply with reasonable requests from parents for information which they need to help them prepare their case for appeal"

and if they don't, then make it clear in your written submission that your case has been hampered by their refusal to provide this information.

It would also help to have current numbers in each year, though it sounds as if they are undersubscribed overall? Is the 900 for years 7-11, or does it cover sixth form too?

It's not uncommon, unfortunately, for a Head not to understand how appeals work.

@PatriciaHolm thank you I really appreciate your input. The whole school pan is 900. Latest Net capacity assessment was 902 minimum and 1003 maximum (whatever that means) they have a sixth form and the pan for 6th form, years 12 and 13 is a total of 150. This means that each year from 7-11 is also 150. This is split into 5 forms in each year. I will go back and ask the question referencing the appeals code, thank you for pointing that out to me I completely missed it. The local authority told us on the phone last week “don’t get bogged down in stats and data, just go an tell them why your child should go to the school” it all just seems very shady to me. I spoke to someone on the phone this morning who said they would find the information for me and get back to me today. Then they immediately sent me an email saying they couldn’t send me any information. It’s very frustrating.

Does this document help?

acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:26b5d9a0-7a0c-4751-a7f1-e448a212bf43

They may be thing you not to get bored downwind dataas they will be hearing lots of appeals and what matters is being the strongest.

No idea what that is meant to say, but I would say personally that it woukd be a very poor Independent Appeal Panel that didn't explore with the school's Presenting Officer whether the school had previously had to go over PAN, for what reason(s), and how the higher than planned numbers had impacted on the workload for the staff, timetabling, quality of education experienced by the cohort(s) involved etc.

Its supposed to say bogged down in the data @MarchingFrogs. Apologies.

But every case will have the same data. They need to know why her case is more important than the others.

@TickingAlongNicely hi, I understand what our primary focus is at the hearing. It isn’t any data. It is why the school is the best school for our child. But it becomes relevant when we want to ask questions about whether they can evidence harm to previous years. So however minor these points are, they are still relevant.

@ForLilacSheep all the information you have requested is likely to be in the school's written case, which you will get in due course. Your case should focus on your child, not on undermining a case you haven't seen yet.

When the school's case is published, if you have questions, you can ask them at the appeal. If they are the sort of questions that might need some research to answer, you could contact the school to ask them in advance, but a sensible school will include everything that you and the panel are likely to need in their document.

@MarchingFrogs thankyou for sourcing that I appreciate it. Although we do know that they have admitted 150 this year already. Possibly voluntarily as @PatriciaHolm stated they were allowed to do.

That’s not good. My admissions authority gave me every bit of information I requested and I used so much of it in my appeal statement. I totally bored them at the hearing with stats and data, as well as philosophical reasons, curriculum content, extracurricular opportunities etc.

I spoke for over an hour.

I don't want to worry you, but doesn't the window to appeal close today?

I'm not in your area, but the offer day is national and was the 3rd March.
Last day to register for an appeal in my area is today.
Be careful not to leave it too late!

@crummydeal i appreciate that. However I do not think it’s is fair or transparent that the local authority hold this information now and have months to prepare, whereas we are only allowed to have this information for 2 weeks. Hence why I am trying to source it now. I absolutely know what the panel want to hear from our case. But I want to be prepared for every aspect, and it matters if the school aren’t able to show prejudice or harm from accepting over pan in the 1st stage of the appeal.

You will get this in advance of your appeal. Quite honestly you will get everyone’s back up with this line of attack. Concentrate on building your case and why your child should go to the school.

Do you think there has been an error in your case? Realistically that’s the only way you would need such detailed information in advance. In order to win your case needs to be strong, build that instead of knocking down their likely standard and. Has followed procedures case.

@PrettayGood and did you succeed? 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻

You're being very unreasonable. All the appellants will get the information at the same time. The school representative will not spend "months" preparing - they will sit down to prepare their case shortly before their deadline. It will be the same case for all appellants and will say why they believe they are full.

@thismummydrinksgin please explain how I am supposed to know if there has been an error in our case, if I am unable to obtain any information at all from the LA regarding admissions?