Secondary school appeal help

[ForLilacSheep]

I’m just writing to ask for a bit of advice. We have done a lot of digging into why we weren’t allocated a place at our local school mainly due to the fact that it was such a shock, and that we know that anyone from our address would have been offered a place at our preferred school for the last 10 years at least. For context there are only 6 schools within our education district and all are within the reasonable travel time for secondary schools from one end of the district to the other. From this investigating we have found out the following:

There was a “primarily unforeseen slight shortfall” of secondary school places within our district this year. (This has been confirmed to us by our local authority school place planning team)

As a solution to this the council asked each school in the district to take 5 children over PAN. (We’re not sure at what point this was decided or why they did not do what they state in their planning strategy, which is to put a bulge year in a single school to meet the need temporarily.) We are also fairly sure that the shortfall in places across the district was somewhere between 2 and 8 children.

We know that 18 children from within our preferred schools GPA (geographical priority area) were unable to secure a place at our preferred school based on their original PAN of 145. This subsequently reduced to 13 children once the additional 5 places were given. Only once before (in 2023) have they not been able to allocate all the children from within the GPA to our preferred school and this affected just 1 child.

We have now found out that the school we have been allocated, which has been deemed suitable for us, has not allocated all its places this year. It’s PAN is 150, and only 138 places have been allocated there for September 2025. We know that atleast 2 of the 5 schools within the district have offered 5 places over PAN. (Confirmed by the schools)

What we cannot understand is why some schools have been made to go over their PAN by 5, when there is a school in the district that has been deemed suitable for us which is undersubscribed and still 12 under PAN?

We believe that in doing this they have not only made it harder for people to appeal to those schools as the schools are able to say they are already 5 over PAN. But also that if there is a school which is deemed suitable for us, we cannot understand why those 12 places that are still available at that school weren’t allocated to children before they made other schools exceed their PAN? The schools that we know for sure have accepted 5 over PAN are community schools controlled by the local authority.

Please can you advise on this situation as we see this as being hugely unfair. If the local authority have asked schools to go over PAN to accommodate parental preferences, leaving one school undersubscribed, they must have done so because they deemed the school they have allocated us to be unsuitable for some children but not others.

can anyone shed any light on this situation?

To make it clear, we have a very good stage 2 argument to put forward specifically for our child but I’m trying to find out how this has been allowed to happen as it doesn’t seem to comply with the admissions code as it doesn’t seem fair, clear or transparent.

Thanks in advance.

Equal preferences mean that the school considered the applications equally, i.e. they don't take everyone who lists it first over those who list it second. Sane as every other LA in England.

The "GPA" is what is colloquially known as Catchment... a fixed area from which families get priority.

OP... you may find you are entitled to school transport since the allocated school is so far away. That is separate to your appeal though. Do you know where you are on the waiting list?

@RareGoalsVerge 😂cool. Thanks for your input.

OP just means they clarify there is no disadvantage to putting a school second in terms of how the application will be treated - as is standard.

I can’t comment on your case Op, and you haven’t asked anyone to, but I’m not sure why you didn’t include any other school, particularly as you say the SEN were diagnosed after the application went in. It shouldn’t, but it might seem to the panel that you were trying to circumvent the system.

Hopefully the extra 5 won’t mean that no appeal gets to stage 2.

OP just means they clarify there is no disadvantage to putting a school second in terms of how the application will be treated - as is standard.

Thanks for clarifying!

Tell me you know nothing about non-ICS appeals without telling me…

@TheNightingalesStarling we would be entitled to free school transport. I’m sure of this. But did you know that if you have free school transport you are unable to take part in any extra curricular activities after school? Because you are only allowed the free transport immediately before and after school? (This is specifically stated in the LA’s free transport policy) Therefore meaning you don’t have access to the same high school experience and opportunities as the other children who go there or other children who aren’t relying on free school transport. Is that fair?

I think by not listing 3 choices you have put yourselves behind the people who did make use of these slots.

Unless you can prove otherwise, the LA applied the oversubscription criteria and PAN+5 Children ranked higher than you for your preferred school.

You may well have ranked higher than others for the other schools in the +5 group but as you didn't name those schools, you were not offered them.

You were offered the nearest available space.

While you now have evidence of higher need, you did not supply that at the time of application and places have now been allocated. You now have to appeal and the school needs to prove that making an additional space for your child would be of greater detriment to them than to you. You need to argue the opposite. As the school have already taken +5 over PAN they may be able to easily argue their case. You then need to hope that your additional supporting evidence places you higher up the waiting list and wait for others to move away or turn down a place as they're going private etc.

I think that you were maybe under prepared and under informed about this process and whilst it is natural to be worried and want to fight your child's corner, you do also need to accept that your lack of understanding has played into the situation you now find yourselves in.

You misunderstood. Treating all preferences equally does nor mean that they assume you don't care which of the 3 you get. You will slways get the most-favourite school that you name and meet the criteria for. Equal Treatment means that if person 1 lists school A first choice, school B 2nd choice and school C 3rd choice, but person 2 lists school C first choice, school B 2nd choice and school A 3rd choice, then school A is not allowed to treat applicant 1 more favourably in the allocations than person 2 if person 2 meets the allocation criteria better, and school C is not allowed to treat applicant 2 more favourably in the allocations than person 1 if person 1 meets the allocation criteria better. However, if either applicant meets the criteria for more than schools, they will always be given their higher choice.

Some schools try to manipulate their reputation incorrectly by telling parents thar they must make sure they name that school as first choice of they won't be considered in the first round - that is illegal and schools aren't allowed to do this. They have to calculate who they could offer places to from among all the applicants who named them 1st 2nd or 3rd. The LA then work out, if a child has met the admissions criteria for more than one school, which school was most preferred on their preferences list. They get offered that school, and the other school(s) are able to make an additional offer to someone else that was previously just below the cutoff line.

That's the same as all schools. Parents are expected to make alternative arrangements if their child is involved in sport or drama etc. What would be the alternative?

@titchy you can suspect a Sen need without having a diagnosis, do you know how long the wait is for an assessment currently on the nhs for Sen needs? I’ll tell you it can be up to 5 years. We had no control of the timescales of this.

@ForLilacSheep of course, but the point is that it couldn’t be taken into account at the allocation stage because you didn’t have the info then.

Anyway.

You sound like you have quite a good case for appeal, and 5 over PAN is not insurmountable, but you are not going to get anywhere with the argument that the school/LA has behaved against the code by creating the extra spaces in the first place.

@BinBadger under prepared possibly, naive definitely. But it wasn’t unreasonable to expect to get a place in this school, we looked at the data, and we would have been offered a place in this school any other year ever since the school opened 40 years ago based on our address. So yes, we genuinely didn’t think about it in too much detail at that time other than knowing the other schools in the area weren’t suitable for our child.

@SheilaFentiman thank you. That’s all I needed to know with regards to my original post. It was only a fact finding mission. Not a grounds for appeal.

Rude. You aren’t trying to understand let’s be honest. Maybe you should calm down and not attack people because they don’t agree with you to say something you don’t like.

Good luck with your appeal 🤣

Yeah I do know very well thank you. So was your question just to test my knowledge?

i do know that the 5 extra allocated were given it based on it being their first preference

Are you sure of this? If you are sure they did this then this is absolutely against the admissions Code (para 1.9c).

And if you can prove that you would have got one of the 5 places if they’d applied their published oversubscription criteria instead of giving it to “first preference”, then you have a very strong argument for your appeal.

However, I didn’t understand your explanation about how you know they must have done this? Can you explain again please?

@Calmdownpeople 😂

But you can get free transport to school and assuming that your child won't be doing extra curricular activities every night he can get free transport home and the public bus the other days.
It's horrid that not everyone gets their choice of school but you should have put more than one school on your preference form - when you are filling it in it usually tells you to.
Hopefully you are on a waiting list too.

@minipie i didnt word that very well sorry. I know the 5 people who they allocated over PAN will have put that school as their first preference based on the proximity to the school and that if they had put any of the other schools in the area as first preference they would have gotten those instead. But they haven’t been given those places purely because they put it as first preference. Just that they were the closest for those additional places.

@Sgreenpy i still don’t regret not putting any other choices down as genuinely none of them would have been suitable. And if we had been given any of the other preferences we still would be in this situation as I wouldn’t have been able to send him to them anyway.

Are any of the schools you didn’t list in any way better than the one you have got? If so, it is possibly worth going on the waiting list for it/them.

ETA doing so doesn’t disadvantage you at appeal

Determining a school's PAN will depend on a number of different factors and which factor or factors are most important in determining a school's PAN will determine whether the PAN can be exceeded. For example one school's PAN might be to do with the number of children it's reasonable for a teacher to teach so number of classes X 28 say, but having 30 or 31 children in a class is possible. Other schools' PANs might be to do with numbers of people allowed in certain spaces for ease of emergency evacuation, which is NOT ok to exceed. If it is felt that there is a particular reason for a school to exceed PAN, it will be individually evaluated to see whether it is reasonable in the particular circumstances. It might also be that a schools PAN is exceeded to make room for extra children who need a priority place, e.g. with an EHCP or in care, without breaking the number of geographically local kids that get admitted. You can't know why this was done without knowing details about the schools.

@SheilaFentiman honestly they are not better. There are only 2 others. 1 is a catholic school and is VERY catholic. Whilst acceptable for some people and obviously for catholics, it is not right for our child, and he wouldn’t be able to make the journey on 2 public buses. The second one is better attainment wise, but this really wasn’t a concern of ours anyway, it is the same distance away as the allocated school and also 2 public buses. We would not qualify for free transport if we were to get a place at either of those via the waiting list, and genuinely couldn’t afford the fares without the free transport. I understand it looks like we are being too picky. But we weren’t trying to get into the best school in the area, as it is only the 3rd best out of 6. Just the closest to us that our child would be part of our local community and meets his needs.

You would have the legal right to withdraw him from religious education at the Catholic school.

@Unexpecteddrivinginstructor its irrelevant because that school is also fully subscribed. But even if he were to get a place there, what do you do with the child who has been withdrawn from 3 hours of RE each week? They don’t offer those children another subject to study. And you are isolating your child from the rest of the children in the school. That’s why I would never choose it or accept it in the first place.