School place withdrawn

[LittleHens]

@prh47bridge @schooladmission and other admissions experts I would be grateful for advice. My daughter received an offer at our 1st preference school on National
School Offer Day (3rd March) which we accepted later that day. Yesterday (20th March) we received an email from the LA to say that her place had been withdrawn as ‘unfortunately, the system did not pick up the out-of-borough address and calculated the school offer based on your old address we had on our system’.
Needless to say my 11 daughter is heartbroken.

We realise she would not have got a place based on the admissions criteria (we are now out-of-catchment) but for the LA to withdraw the offer after 17 days when it is their error (and not a fraudent application) is unacceptable in my mind. Can anyone offer any advice on the appeal process?
Thanks!

That's all irrelevant.

We lived in London, sent DD to primary there, moved out of London in Y1 but kept her at her primary. They knew we now lived over an hour away - that is not an issue, once you have a place you can move anywhere you like as long as you're there for start time in the morning.

You don't lose a rightfully gained place just for moving out of catchment.

When a mistake is made like this, the longer the LA leave it to correct matters the less likely the child will get the place they should have got if there had been no mistake. Also, parents may have started spending money on uniform or entered into other financial commitments based on their child going to the offered school. It is therefore important that any mistake is rectified rapidly.

However, there is no need to justify the reasoning of the courts or the LGO on this. The combined effect of their decisions is that an offer made in error can only be withdrawn in the first three days. After that, the offer stands. Anyone arguing for a longer deadline would need to convince the courts.

A slightly different perspective but my daughter missed her school choice in Kent,she passed her 11+ and we live in a village where historically absolutely no child would miss out at the school.
My daughter the only child to miss a place….husband and I were on a mission and proved that the girls that did get in at appeal had parents who did not live locally,so as a parent I feel very strongly that if you don’t live in the neighbourhood for catchment schools then don’t apply!
Sadly children were then disappointed because their place was taken away.
Sorry but not sorry for the children,their parents need to stop lying!

Fraudulent applications is different to the LA messing up the application. If they make the error, the offer should stand. That is what has been decided is right.

So did you put in an address when you applied online, or did the old address automatically pop up.

I mean lots of people will have moved in the 2 years prior to applying, it seems very odd, and a little implausible that the system does not accept a new address but somehow mysteriously pulls through a previous address from who knows where

Software has bugs. Fact of life. Computer systems therefore make mistakes. The LA has admitted that they used an old address instead of the address on the application. I'm not sure why so many people feel the need to second guess this and imply that OP made a fraudulent application.

How did OP do anything fraudulent? She gave the correct address.

Of course you can apply for schools you are not in catchment for.
You are just less likely to get given one.

The important thing is to use the correct address when you apply so that it is above board. If you get lucky and for some reason you get allocated a place then you get lucky.

What was the judicial review case?

The difference is presumably that OP has lost her child's chance of a place at her second preference, and probably her third also.

You did notice that it was the LA who said their system had messed up, didn't you? It's not something OP has made up.

Can't recall the reference off the top of my head, but it is the less significant of the two cases as far as OP is concerned. The judicial review established that an admission authority can withdraw an offer made in error if they do so on the day it was made. In the LGO case, a head teacher had offered places to 5 pupils incorrectly. The LA attempted to withdraw the offer 3 days later. The LGO ruled that this was too late. The conclusion from these two cases is that an admission authority can only withdraw an offer made in error if they do so within 3 days. In all honesty, you can draw that conclusion from the LGO case alone. The judicial review is often mentioned in this context, but it doesn't really add anything.

The OP’s older child already goes to this school though and she was in catchment when she applied for that first place. Having both children at the same school is often more practical and if she applied in a year there’s less applications there could have been spaces left after catchment allocations. Better to try and see at least!

After all catchment areas are all just arbitrary lines on maps that grow or shrink depending on the local population. They’re not fixed indefinitely.

It happens. One of our year 6 pupils appears twice in the LA's pupils information system with her old address on one and new address on the other. No idea why. The same kind of thing probably happened here, and this is even more likely as the child has been in multiple LAs.

It's in the thread above.

The reason I asked about whether OP had updated the secondary school on the family address was that if the school is its own admission authority and the OP had claimed sibling priority but had not told the school of the updated address for the older sibling, then it is more understandable how the error occurred. If OP has evidence the school was informed of the house move and holds the correct address for the older sibling, I think it would strengthen her case.

Are you saying that a group of people who exercised their legal right to appeal the school's decision to refuse their application, and had their appeals upheld, all used false addresses? Because merely 'not living in the area' would not in itself be a reason for the independent appeal panel not to uphold, if the case put forward by the parent was strong enough to outweigh the school's case not to admit.

Yes, our schools ask for address and medical information update every single year at the start of the school year. We have to update it ourselves online. I just assumed this was compulsory for census purposes. Not sure how small admin teams in schools can change every parent who fails to do so.
If this is another academy siblings loophole, hmm, interesting!

If the system messed up and offered OP a place, presumably it messed up for many more families, so while yes OP should keep her place, what might happen if they've offered way over capacity to many many more children who should also keep that place?

Sorry @LittleHens I don't want to worry you but just thinking it could become more of a battle if they have over offered. Fingers crossed you were the only one and you can sort this quickly.

But the OP hasn’t lied, so it’s a very different situation to your scenario.

It's not basic safeguarding to need to know where a child lives?

As long as OP informed the LA, she is in the clear. It is up to the LA to update schools as required. It is clear from what the LA has said that it was their mistake, not OP's.

This does not make sense. When you appeal, where you live is irrelevant. Unless you are arguing that a mistake has been made, the only question is whether you have a strong enough case. You can live hundreds of miles away and still win an appeal. Once you have won an appeal, the place is yours and cannot be taken away. If the school did take away places awarded at appeal as you imply, they acted unlawfully.

This is, of course, a totally different situation to OP. There is no evidence that OP has lied.

It is highly unlikely they offered over capacity. It is far more likely they simply offered OP a place that should have been offered to someone else.

What should happen in this situation is that OP's daughter keeps her place and any child who has missed out due to this mistake is also given a place. If there are too many people affected by a mistake and the school cannot accommodate them all, the parents will be told to appeal. It will then be up to the appeal panel to decide how many the school can accommodate and admit those with the strongest cases.