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.

It happens especially when there is a high birth rate. If you want a different school just pop their name on a waiting list, but if you’re happy with the school you have I’d leave it especially as they sound all in good commutable distance.

Have any of the schools got a slight selective advantage ie being able to play a musical instrument, sport, drama or religion?
Areas of high demand sometimes create more of a lottery for close schools to stop parents buying / renting places in close proximity to certain schools (parts of Berkshire implemented this for Secondaries a couple of years ago, not sure if still valid).

Ah ok thanks for clarifying about “first preference”.

Ok, so I agree with PP I don’t think you can base an appeal case on saying they shouldn’t have asked schools to go over PAN when one school was still undersubscribed.

I understand this looks odd or like an admission that the undersubscribed school is bad, but there may be other reasons behind it, like wanting to share out the extra places equally from a geographical perspective.
Or as pp said, perhaps the 5 extra places per school were agreed before applications were in, so they were going off expected numbers and nobody knew one school would end up undersubscribed in the end. I can imagine this is quite likely as it would be difficult to negotiate extra places last minute.

From a technical perspective a change in PAN or schools going over PAN isn’t a change in or breach of the admissions criteria and it doesn’t breach the admission code. As long as their admissions criteria are compliant with code/law and they followed those criteria in allocating the extra 5 places there is no error or breach you can rely on.

Also - even if it was a breach of code - you would need to prove that your child would have got a place if they hadn’t done this. And it doesn’t sound like this is the case. The only effect on you is possibly making it harder to win an appeal, but that’s not the same thing.

All that said, there is no harm in asking at your appeal why there were 5 extra taken at other schools when your offered school is not full. The answer might contain something useful, you never know.

What is your second stage “balance of prejudice” case if you don’t mind sharing?

OP, there are a couple of reasons why things might be different this year vs prior years. One is if a large amount of family housing near your preferred school recently became available. The other is fewer children across your area opting for private school, given VAT and cost of living.

Is your preferred school your closest school? Do you know how much further awsy you are than the furthest distance admitted?

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).

Well, yes and no - the OP went on to say that the 5 extra offered at one of the schools named that school as first preference because of distance. So say those 5 used all three or however many preferences and were in the top 'PAN plus 5' in ranking for two of them, this school would have been allocated, because they had named it as a higher preference than the other school, because you can't name any school higher than first preference, so to speak.

But absolutely, had the LA said, Okay, so these 5 people named school A as first preference, so they get the extra places (and ditto for the other schools), regardless of where the 5 ranked against the oversubscription criteria, then it would be a breach. I would be very disappointed in an appeal panel that didn't establish exactly how the extra places had been allocated.

@ForLilacSheep if it isn't clearly explained in the school's appeals statement how the extra 5 places over PAN were allocated, and the appeal panel (who will go first with questions) don't quiz the presenting officer on this, then ask this yourself in stage 1 of your appeal.

As you only named the one school (and assuming that all places were allocated correctly at each of the schools taking 5 over PAN), your DC's allocation will have been decided after all those for each of the other schools who had actually expressed a preference for it. So even if you might have been offered a place at one of the other 'less undesirable' schools, had you named it on your CAF, places had all been filled by the time the LA was looking for the nearest school to your home address with a place remaining to offer.

Its also worth noting that whilst a local authority approves PAN, it's up to the individual school to decide what their PAN is. It's quite normal for schools to go slightly above PAN like this.