Stage 2 appeal today for Y7 place for September

[OutofIdeas86]

We had our Stage 2 appeal today, it was 'ok' - i felt the panel we nice, they asked a lot of questions but I didn't feel grilled by them.

There are a lot of other families appealing (over 50) so I know there will be a lot of competition as such.

Our points landed well, as I was pleasantly surprise that the school representative did effectively 'back-up' our main point, in saying 'mum is right'.

I don't have any expectations, but am keeping my fingers crossed.

My questions was - the clerk has said parents won't find out the outcome until 1st June when he will send a letter to everyone.

Between now and then - we have 2 more appeals! The clerk is the same person for these 2 other appeals (so he is clerk for all 3!)

Do you think it is likely that - or does it ever happen - where you would be told before this date?

I've seen a few posts where the clerk has called the family?

Given there are so many appeals, it's very important that all the appellants hear (win or lose) at the same time (no decisions will be made until all appeals have been heard), so i wouldn't expect a call - I would assume you won't, I'm afraid.

Some LAs don't call at all - mine have a policy of not doing so for any appeals.

@OutofIdeas86 fingers crossed for you, what were your main points of appeal? What kind of questions did they ask? Trying to be as prepared as possible. Our appeals are not until June 🫣

Hi, we've had 2 x appeal hearings now (for our 2nd choice, and 3rd choice schools)
We had one this morning, which I was very confident about but not so sure how it went! Not that confident now.

Sort of questions;
-Siblings, ages, routines
-Choice of schools, why didn't we put certain schools, why did we select that order
-What will you do if you're not successful at appeal
-Are you doing other appeals
-What was your child's reaction on national offer day

@OutofIdeas86 thank you for answering, we’ve still not had the official appeal pack yet so still waiting expecting it this week for June dates. I’ve typed up our routines etc and what we do if we aren’t successful. How did you answer about other appeals? We have appealed two on very similar grounds

@OutofIdeas86 fingers crossed for you

Hi @OutofIdeas86 how are you getting on with your appeals? Have you had any more. Any success? Hopefully they've got easier🤞

We've had 2 now - 3rd appeal (for School #1) is next week.

Found out today we were unsuccessful for School #2 (2nd Choice). They heard 67 appeals and only upheld 2!

We find out the outcome for School #3 appeal on Monday.

Feeling a bit hopeless today!

Hi @OutofIdeas86 , it’s such a stressful process, try not to be disheartened.
Similar boat here - DC didn’t get any of our chosen schools on NOD and given one that I rather let him home school than go there.

I appealed the first choice and was unsuccessful. I felt the panel had made up its mind before I even began speaking.

I put DC on every waiting list within reason. Got offered a school, from the new kid of schools I hadn’t out down first time around, that I felt was ok and that he could do well at.

It’s been so heartbreaking to know that all DC’s friends were moving onto yr7 together and they were the only one going to a school by themselves.

But I made peace with the decision, accepted the offer and moved on and prepared for the next steps.

And then you’ll never guess what happened next. This week a place came up on the waiting list for our first choice school!! I cried, I read the email a million times to make sure I was reading it correctly. Then followed the link to accept or decline the offer and was terrified I was going to accidentally decline.

I say all that to say, keep the faith. You’ve done all you can do. There is only so much you can do. Try and make peace with the school you have or ensure you’re on all of the waiting lists because places do come up and miracles do happen.
I’d also say don’t be afraid to call the schools you really want, check if waiting places have moved, let them know you’re keen and bug up your DC. It all helps.

Good luck and fingers crossed for next week.

New *list of schools not kid!

@OutofIdeas86 how did you get on? Did you find out the second one? Our first appeal starts tomorrow 🫣

What was the outcome of the appeal?

We have been unsuccessful in both! We have 1 left.

To be fair this last appeal is our strongest, but I'm not confident...

Based on outcome letters so far, so much weight is given to the schools case/ mainly capacity based issues.

And such a low percentage!
Appeal 1 - there were 67 appeals heard, 2 were upheld

Appeal 2 - there were 20 appeals heard, 3 were upheld

The outcome letters were very detailed and I hope help form a tighter argument for appeal number 3 (on thursday!)

@OutofIdeas86 sorry to hear, I know chances of winning aren’t great but there’s still some hope. We have two appeals but our stronger one has more people appealing so I’m really not sure. Stage one tomorrow will be interesting to see how many people turn up although I know that doesn’t mean anything in itself. Very nervous but also very prepared. Good luck for the third

Based on outcome letters so far, so much weight is given to the schools case/ mainly capacity based issues.
And such a low percentage!
Appeal 1 - there were 67 appeals heard, 2 were upheld
Appeal 2 - there were 20 appeals heard, 3 were upheld

But the low percentage follows from the school case around capacity issues.

My understanding is that stage 1 will determine how many pupils the school could squeeze in without too much detriment and stage 2 is finding the 2-3 “best cases” to fit those spaces.

There’s no circumstance where the panel can say “10 of the 20 cases were excellent so the school must take 10 even though stage 1 determined that they could take only 3 without detriment to other children”

Yes totally this, for Appeal 1 the school had already increased its PAN by 15 at the request of the LA, so it could forward that they were absolutely at their maximum capacity.

Appeal 3 (that we have this thursday) is a 'new' school, currently only year 7, 8 and 9 - so i'm hoping this in someways undermines their capacity argument. I know of course they still have a strict PAN, but they have less of a case to say playground/ corridors/ dinner hall is full.

I’m not one of the admissions experts, but I would assume the panel for a new school appeal must look ahead to when the school has all years operating and at PAN, which will be the case before the Sep 2026 intake leaves the school.

Do you know yet where you are on waiting lists for your three preferences?

I'm really surprised at those questions! I was talking to someone I know who is considering appealing, and telling her what I thought made a good case from things I'd read on here, and what sort of things they wouldn't be interested in. I assumed that what other schools you put or are appealing for, what order, why, what other options you have etc were all irrelevant to the appeal - in fact, I thought the panel weren't supposed to know/consider those things, and similarly with things like how your child reacted.

Our LA give the panel a copy of our admissions letter which shows all the choices and what order so I’m expecting those type of questions to come up. But like you say they shouldn’t be focusing too much on the other schools or appeals

My appeal didn't mention other schools or even the allocated schools, but I think the panel do want context of what your thought process was, and what you will do next.

So your appeal should definetly NOT focus on those things - but we prepared that when concluding, they might ask questions like that. My stage 2 was me reading a 10 minute script, and then 10 or 15 mins of questions and discussions.

Just to close off on this one, we won our appeal for our 1st preference school! Can't believe it!

Congratulations! You must be so relieved. It's such a stressful time for all.
We lost our appeals so far because LA has asked schools to increase the places already over PAN. It seems like the panels have made up their minds already by the time for stage 2 because of this.
We have two more appeals left. Do you have any advice? Especially when situations where the school has already taken more. What made your successful appeal strong? Thanks in advance ☺️

Regarding questions about other potential schools.

I am a panellist and may ask this to test how real the parent’s arguments are. For example - if the parent is saying it’s all about geology GCSE and their child’s passion for geology, I will ask if there are other local schools that offer geology GCSE. If they don’t know (ie haven’t found out) or if they haven’t applied/appealed for the other schools that do offer it, that tends to reveal that geology is not actually that important to them.

We had exactly this situation with our first appeal, which was our 2nd preference school. They had already agreed 20 over PAN, at request of LA, and it definitely felt like this made every appeal 1000 times more challenging.

I think you need to really make your childs circumstances appear exceptional, in our case we could show that our DS's allocated school was not somewhere he could attend long term - so it would be instability, further moving and change, which the panel accepted would ultimately be detrimental.

Thank you so much for replying. We only have one last chance as all other appeals have been unsuccessful due to the LA requested over PAN situation. I will try to emphasise on detriment to my child in the longer-term. Fingers crossed 🤞