Secondary school offer day disaster – independent place but no bursary. Appeal chances?

[Putneyparent]

On offer day my DS wasn’t offered a place at any of the schools we put down. He’s one of only three children in his class who didn’t get a single choice and has instead been allocated a random school by the council which we really don’t want.

He sat a few 11+ tests and has been offered a place at an independent school - but he didn’t get a bursary or scholarship. I’d been fairly confident about an academic scholarship but I completely appreciate competition is fierce. As it stands, I would really struggle to pay the fees.

The indie have given me until tomorrow morning to accept or decline. I do intend to appeal the state school decisions.

My questions are:
• If I accept the independent school place, does that harm my appeal chances? I’m worried the panel will say “well, he has a school” and that will count against us.
• Conversely, would it be foolish to decline the indie place given I have no idea how the appeals will pan out?
• To accept the indie place I have to pay a £2,725 non-refundable holding deposit, which I absolutely cannot afford to lose if he doesn’t end up going there.

I feel completely stuck between a rock and a hard place and the clock is ticking. Has anyone been in a similar situation or has experience of appeals where there was also an independent offer on the table?

Any constructive advice very gratefully received.

Have you looked at 'on time offers' data for previous years for the state schools you would be happy with? How far out were you this year? In my borough the offer letter includes this data - last distance offered/siblings/nearest high school etc. I'm sure you can email the LA for it if they haven't included it. You can also ask admissions for the distance to school calculated for your address. So if, for example, last distance offered was 1.3 miles and you are 1.32 miles you might have a good chance of a place on the waiting list. If you are far out using all criteria you might be looking at an appeals process.

If you're in Putney there is great admissions data available online. Sorry if you've already seen all of this!

www.wandsworth.gov.uk/schools-and-admissions/admissions/school-admissions-statistics/

Totally this. To go to private you have to have a lot of give in your finances, otherwise you will be dreading every new term invoice. That deposit should be like pennies to you, if it’s not then it’s not worth the stress for the next few years.

They even have data on where admissions were at on 31st August in previous years! Sorry, I'm just amazed as I've had zero success getting this information out of my LA.

@Putneyparent don't do this. Phoning schools is not appropriate. They will have one very busy admissions clerk - they are not a call centre. Email them instead. However, you may get an auto-reply with a date when your waiting list place will be available. (In my borough that date is after the second round of offers).

I would struggle to find £2000 tomorrow but if I needed to pay for a child to go to independent school, I could have a proper plan in place which would involve selling capital, working full time, shifting some things around etc.

Of course I am not claiming this is the case for the OP. It just isn’t as straightforward as ‘well you can’t afford £2500 so you can’t afford £25000.’

But it sounds as if the OK never contemplated paying full fees. Her OP mentions expectations of a scholarship (which I assume would have come with a substantial fee waiver?). Her thread title mentions no bursary, so we must assume she applied for bursaries as well. Either way, she was presumably prepared to pay a deposit on the basis of achieving a scholarship / bursary place. With reduced or no fees.

Instead she has the place, without the fee reduction.

It’s a crap position to be in.

OP indicated it was more of a problem if she didn't get it refunded than for her to find the money by tomorrow, but I may have read that wrong.

1. Things tend to move a lot as people accept/decline places. Appeals also help.
2. The private school will still take him in the future even if you don't accept now. So I'd say don't pay the money now. Unless its insanely oversubscribed as a school, they need bums on seats and they'll take your money later..

I can also say that I know how you feel - we didn't get any of our 4 choices either, and were dropped into the pool for the second worst school in the area. I then had to confirm a school because we had to have certainty. So we pay for private.

But the difference is that I could readily afford both the deposit and the fees. It's a bind, but not killer. If you're having trouble with the deposit - you cannot afford the school. Bear in mind that there are lots of extras to be paid as well (trip, exams, uniforms, sports equipment).

You are not "appealing" your place (yet). You are waiting for the next round of allocation. This is very important because you most likely don't have a valid ground to appeal, but the waiting list moves as others accept private school places so could simply be allocated your preferred choice in the next round of allocation in May. You will be asked to submit an appeal letter, but make sure you also ask to be considered for the next round.

It sounds like you can't afford the private school place. Look at the allocation statements / data for your LA and see the likelihood you'll be granted your favourite school in the second or third round. If not, see if you have a ground of appeal. Appeals are only granted (despite what others parents who will mistakenly tell you they got a place on appeal, when in fact it was just the next round of allocation) if the detriment to your child not going to the school is greater than the school being overcrowded.

OP's Plan A was for her child to go to independent school, so needing a deposit is hardly a huge surprise.

I thought the plan was for her son to have a bursary.

She'd still need a deposit.

But not the rest - whic would presumably make finding the deposit easier! I interpreted it as ‘it’s a significant amount of money and so if I put this down we’re definitely committing to the independent school route’, so not necessarily absolutely literal.

Accept the state place and get on wait lists for other preferred state. Decline independent,
you can’t afford it by the sounds of it. Anyway I suspect if you needed the place they may be able to squeeze you in unless a very popular over subscribed school. I think you were naive about the scholarship (rarely a huge amount off) and bursary (again won’t be all fees).

Out of interest, did you apply for state schools you’ve wanted, but maybe realistically weren’t going to get , due to catchment, being very popular etc, assuming you’d get the private place and bursary? What made you so certain you were going to get the academic bursary?

If you do want to appeal, you need to say, and be able to evidence, why that school is more suited for your child (sports interests, orchestras etc) than why others are less suitable.

I know someone in similar position who won preferred school on appeal, keep fighting.

"This is very important because you most likely don't have a valid ground to appeal."

What makes you confident of that @Caddycat ? My experience is that the people who have the best chances at appeal often don't realise it, and the people who think they have a slam dunk case have no chance.

For anyone to say someone doesn't have a valid ground to appeal, they would have to know the characteristics of the child, and the characteristics of both schools.

For children on bursaries the deposits are often very small in comparison to the usual amount. If she was hoping for a bursary, she may well have been expecting to pay hundreds instead of thousands for the deposit.

Thank you so much for all the feedback, and especially to those who took the time to offer encouragement. It really is such a stressful time, and I genuinely appreciate people replying.

Just to clarify a few things - I put down the same schools as most other families in our year group. They’re all faith based and we met the criteria. Almost everyone else was offered at least one of those schools (bar a couple of children), so the choices weren’t unrealistic. It just seems that even where we meet the criteria, there was huge competition. What’s confusing is that someone who put one of the schools as their fourth choice was offered a place, so I honestly don’t understand how the allocation works.

DS is working academically above his age - he’s very bright and also very sporty. I’ll admit, perhaps naively, that I hoped he might secure an academic and/or sports scholarship to help with fees, which is why I considered that route. If I’m honest, I did assume we’d be offered one of the schools I’d put down as a preference.

Moving forward, I’ve made sure we’re on all the waiting lists and I’m also looking at schools I hadn’t previously considered.

Thanks again for all the advice, it really has helped.

"What’s confusing is that someone who put one of the schools as their fourth choice was offered a place, so I honestly don’t understand how the allocation works."

They were offered a place because they were higher priority in the criteria than you. The fact that they put it fourth is irrelevant - it just means they didn't get a place at their top 3.

Your local authority's secondary admissions brochure will explain how the allocation process works. Did you read it?

What’s confusing is that someone who put one of the schools as their fourth choice was offered a place, so I honestly don’t understand how the allocation works.

They'll be further up the list for meeting admission criteria, that's how the system works. Did you not research at all?

You can't turn back time to write in a dead cert but you can get on wait lists.

Yes as others say, it is more than possible to be offered your fourth (or sixth) preference above someone who put it first – if you didn't qualify for a place at any of your higher prefs and you are higher up the oversubscription criteria (whatever they are; often distance) than the person who listed it first.

I have seen other posts this week where people say they put down the same schools as their child's peers – but that's not a criterion (unless it’s a feeder school obvs). The other DC may live closer (or tick the faith box better, if applicable) or have other factors such as EHCP or LAC.

"What’s confusing is that someone who put one of the schools as their fourth choice was offered a place, so I honestly don’t understand how the allocation works."

People often get confused about this because they are asked to fill in a form with their school preferences but they think they are making choices.

The best way to think of it, IMO, is this:

• The form is asking 'if you had your way, which schools would your child go to'
• the LA website will warn parents (and the phrasing may differ slightly between them) 'make sure you choose wisely'.
• The order you place your preferences in only matters if you can be offered more than one school.
• None of the schools know where you placed them on your form.
• When the application deadline is up, the admitting authority (most likely the LA, but sometimes a school) has a list of all the children who applied for a place.

It's all done by computer, but if it was a paper exercise, it might go like this:

• Each school has those children ranked in order of priority for the place. Imagine a PAN of 60. A red line is drawn under the 60th place. The list gets sent back.

-the LA looks at the lists and then picks a child's name. Albert Atkins. School A, D, and E have all said they can take him. He's a lucky chap. His Mum placed School D as his first preference.

• Schools A & E have his name taken off their lists, and everyone else below the 60th line moves up a spot.

-This process continues until everyone who is above the line for each school has a place. If Sally Smith could only be taken by school B, she gets the spot. If Derek Dean could be taken by A & C, he gets whichever one of them he preferred, and then the other takes him off the list to free up a space. -Everyone gets the school that is highest on their list, that can take them.

All good.

But, not everyone will get above the red line in any of their 3 choices (or 4, 5, 6, depending on area). What to do with them? Well, if a school is full, it's full. So then, the LA has to rank all the children against the criteria for the schools that do have places, and see who gets above the line. Each child will be placed in the nearest school that has places. However by this point, schools which a child may have qualified for if they had been on their list may be full with children who did ask to go there. So you get situations where someone quite close to a school doesn't get a place there because they didn't list it in their preferences.

Similarly, if someone is 0.3 miles away from a school but only placed them 6th preference, they will still be given the place over someone who put them first but lives 0.6 miles away, if they are both in the same category and the person who put them 6th didn't get a place at schools 1-5.