Help please! Admissions/appeals question

[BarqsHasBite]

Asking for a friend.

Friend’s DD wasn’t offered her first choice secondary in March as she was just outside the “catchment” (furthest distance offered).

Second round of continuing interest has just happened, first choice “catchment” has expanded by almost 300m meaning friend’s DD is now well inside it, but she’s not received an offer. Instead she got an offer from her second choice school.

Assuming friend correctly listed the order of preference, is there any legitimate explanation for this? Or is the only conclusion that the council has failed to apply the admissions criteria properly and DD should immediately be offered a place at her first choice (and/or has a slam dunk appeal)?

The only explanation I can think of is the council have published an incorrect catchment distance in their latest stats, and it’s actually much smaller. Not sure if my friend could appeal if that’s the case.

To clarify, the relevant admissions criteria is distance only - siblings/EHCPs/looked after children etc are all offered under other, higher up criteria. So it’s not the case that, eg, a further away child has been offered a place because they are/were looked after.

thank you!

Was she on the waiting list?

Yes, she was on the waiting list for her first choice and they knew her ranking on it. It was in the single digits but not right at the very top.

I’m taking it this isn’t something you have been through yourself? I don’t mean that in a weird way.

There is no such thing as “catchment” in most local authorities. Instead, they will offer on distance but also other factors. It’s really usual to have something like:

1. children named in an EHCP
2. Looked after children
3. Siblings of existing students
4. distance

In practical terms what this means is as people accept or reject offers, if you are just outside the area of accepted children, you will watch the zone moving closer and closer to you. How far away is it now? What number is she on the list? She can usually see online.

Bear in mind though that you can be 1 on the list but if a family move in opposite the school tomorrow, you’ll move down to 2. Time served is nothing to do with it…

It is certainly worth checking with the admissions authority.

It might be (although perhaps not very likely) that the child whose admission increased the admissions distance by 300 metres was admitted under another category - a late application from a sibling, say.

Hello, I think you’ve misunderstood my post entirely but yes I’ve been through all this myself more than once, and know all the rules well. Hence my use of “catchment” in inverted commas and clarifying that it’s furthest distance offered because there is no such thing as “catchment” where we live at least. I have also informally advised a number of people on secondary appeals (I’m a lawyer but this a side interest not what I do for my day job).

As per MH OP, my friend’s DD is now well inside the furthest distance offered - by 300m odd. So, eg, the furthest distance offered is now 1500m and she lives (according to the official council measurement) 1200m away. Before this latest round of CI she was outside the furthest distance offered and her parents could see her place on the WL. The portal is apparently down today so they don’t know her latest ranking for her first choice school.

I fully understand the other admissions criteria which you refer to and how they interact with the distance criteria and I cannot see how they are in any way relevant here.

Could others have applied since offer day and gone ahead in the wl or successfully appealed?

It could be that someone from a higher admission category was offered a place in round 2, so the distance is now misleading, but if not I would say it’s worth investigating.

I wondered this but siblings are listed under their own entirely separate criteria.

In theory it’s possible that the distance is for the furthest child admitted under any criteria. However, I know for a fact this is not the case for another school in our area - it had a tiny catchment area a couple of years ago but admitted at least a dozen EHCPs who could not conceivably have lived within that radius. The whole point of punishing the distance is to give parents an idea of how the distance criteria applies in practice. Otherwise it might be 10km if a wheelchair user with an EHCP got a place.

Certainly there could have been new applicants, but I still don’t understand how they could lead to children further away than my friend’s DD getting a place on distance. If they lived nearer the school they would bump down FDD on the waiting list, but if they live further away then FDD should have been offered a place before then. The fact is that FDD is now well inside the new furthest distance.

Appeals haven’t yet been heard.

As above this is a possible explanation but it would be mad and completely meaningless to factor in eg EHCP kids when citing a furthest distance. I don’t think this can be how it’s intended to work.

However, it does seem plausible that someone has made a mistake with the furthest distance stat and perhaps included the furthest distance of any admitted child, even though that’s not what it’s meant to reflect (I don’t think!).

Could this be for a banded school, ie each child had to sit a banding test & the distance offered she is seeing is for children admitted within a different band to her child?

You'd be surprised how non-logical some of these things can be ;-) Different admissions authorities do publish these things differently - in Appeals, I've definitely come across measurements done where the last distance is the furthest is in any category which as you say is terribly misleading.
However on the face of it, it is an anomaly so it is definitely worth her asking to check - Firstly they have her distance correctly measured, and at the last round of admissions did correctly include her.

Thanks for the suggestion but there is no banding at all and no banding testing in the schools here.

It does sound like an error, either in reporting the furthest distance or in not offering her a place. Can she query it in the first instance? If it's an error on the website, whilst they won't get her a place, at least she will know. Going out by 300m sounds like quite a lot, as mathematically at a further radius it covers a bigger area (not sure I've explained that well) so it might well be an error on distance listed.

Thank you, your input is always very valuable!

I am certain our LA generally cites the furthest distance of a child admitted under the distance criteria, as I’ve (tragically!) been studying the stats for many years. However. I know the schools can track the furthest distance of any child admitted under any criteria as I’ve seen that quoted elsewhere so I do wonder is there has been a mixup here.

Another possibility is that your friend and the school are using different measurements. For example, your friend is measuring distance as the crow flies and the school are using shortest reasonable route. Or the school is measuring distance to the clocktower, and your friend is measuring distance to the front gate. This can be a particular problem with split-site schools - one primary we applied to measured closest distance to either the infant or junior site, whichever was closest and they were quite a distance away!

I fear you’re right and I understand your radius/area point.

Looking at the other stats (furthest distance on offer day and after CI1, plus the number of additional children now offered places on distance criteria), 300m doesn’t look likely to be correct…

Thanks - our LA website has a tool to measure your official distance to schools; my friend has used this and hopefully the school/LA has done too!

As I said, it’s worth interrogating because (depending on how the admissions authority presents its data) the farthest child admitted might be in a higher category than distance - it’s not unknown for there to be late applications from (say) siblings. If you’re sure that the farthest child admitted was admitted under the distance category then that does suggest an error.

Update: looks like my typo theory was correct. 😕
The furthest distance offered has now been amended in the official LA stats, and is 300m less than it was yesterday.

300m might or might not be a lot. It could be an entire housing estate in each direction. However in a rural area, it might be that most of that 300m-wide ring is between villages, and so it's just a few houses (most of them not containing 11 year olds) in a couple of villages.