Does being a young carer help in a Year 7 school appeal?

[busySunflower]

Does being a young carer adds any advantage in secondry school appeal process ? for year 7 entry ?

If this is alone is good enough we must definitely win this appeal, may be I am overthing about it.

So, what data did you present to them and how was it obtained?

It's impossible to say at this stage. For example, if a school could squeeze one pupil in and there is a pupil with safeguarding issues that make this school essential, a young carer isn't going to win. If a school could squeeze one pupil in and there is a young carer who needs the special programme run by a school, then a pupil who would benefit from the drama club is probably going to be disappointed.

All you can do is trust that the panel has the best interests of all appellants and all pupils already at the school in mind as they deliberate, and they come to the best decision they can with the information given. They don't take these decisions lightly and when they turn appeals down, they don't take delight in it.

Thank you so much that kind of answers my questions

Hi @PanelChair We did persue the route of emotional, soical medical route but that panel rejected the request saying it is assumed that young carer support is available in every school, which is not true
will the panel go through the same assumption once again even though we have provided written evidence saying allocated school doesnt provide the same support as appeal is the only way for us.

we did add the emotional, soical medical rejection notes as an evidence in our pack

Where I live if you don’t live in catchment young carers will definitely not get the place as it would put even more pressure on them.

If the school is in catchment and your closest school you should try and get legal advice & appeal again.

The appeal panel’s role is not the same as that of the medical-social need panel. The appeal panel will be considering the prejudice (detriment) to the child if not given a place and the prejudice to the school and the pupils already there if an additional child is admitted and weighing up which of these is greater. The appeal panel will therefore be considering (amongst other things) whether the preferred school offers things which the child needs (such as support for young carers which isn’t available at other schools) and whether there is detriment to the child if they don’t have those things. They should be looking at all the evidence submitted by both sides.

"The appeal panel will therefore be considering (amongst other things) whether the preferred school offers things which the child needs (such as support for young carers which isn’t available at other schools) and whether there is detriment to the child if they don’t have those things."

I'm just emphasising these points made in @PanelChair 's post because it's really easy to skim over them and think 'well of course!'.

@PanelChair @Lougle
We recieved the decission letter just now, 2 of the appeal panel said :
I am not convinced that XXXX School is the only school which can cater for his educational and social needs

Ideally this is supposed the medical and soical crteria where they already rejected saying the same

Would you agree that I should complain and what should I mention

Is that second sentence in bold a quote from the decision letter?

I think this is a difficult situation because without knowing the details of your child's caring role, and therefore the impact on them (which you rightly won't want to be specific about here), it will be hard for any of us to know how strong your case for admission is.

For example, both DD2 and DD3 meet the 'young carer' criteria. However, their own SEN trumps any young carer needs they may have, and it would be stretching limits to try and argue that they needed a school specifically to meet their young carer needs. Similarly, a child doesn't have the right to the best school, only one which meets their needs. So a school can have fantastic facilities for <insert need highlighted> but if another school has 'good enough' facilities (and 'good enough' will depend entirely on the circumstances of the child in question), then an appeal shouldn't succeed unless the school has failed to demonstrate a prejudice would be created by taking another child.

I'm not sure that the panel is saying that they have relied on the medical/social criteria being rejected. It seems like they are just saying that ideally, if it was considered that this school is the only school that could meet those needs, it would have been recognised by that panel, and that they appeared to agree with the conclusion of this panel.

If you wanted to outline the difference in provision, or give vague reference to how the support might benefit, it might be helpful to give more advice. On the face of it, I don't think it's unreasonable for the panel to say that they are unconvinced that your child needs this school. It might have been helpful if they had stated why they thought that, though.

Yes thats correct ofcourse they added the words for young carer and understood the entire situation but they wrote that:

IAP 2: but I am not convinced that XXX is the only school that can meet his educational and social needs. I believe the prejudice to the school outweighs the prejudice to YYY and unfortunately, I cannot support this appeal.

IAP 3: the school presented a strong case for prejudice and I am not convinced that XXX is the only school which can cater for his educational and social needs

As Lougle says, nobody here can give an opinion on the appeal panel's decision, because we haven't seen the evidence from you or the school and we haven't seen the precise wording of the decision letter.

However, on the basis of the snippets you have posted here, I think there are some points you could raise in your complaint, as what you have posted suggests that the panel might (I emphasise might) have taken the wrong approach and might have misdirected itself.

Firstly, on the finding that "I am not convinced that XXX is the only school that can meet his educational and social needs": This (in my view) is going too far. The panel should be considering whether the preferred school can meet the child's needs better than the allocated school and can offer something which the allocated school cannot.

Para 3.8 of the appeals code 2025 says:

"3.8 The panel must balance the prejudice to the school against the appellant’s case for the child to be admitted to the school. It must take into account the appellant’s reasons for expressing a preference for the school, including what that school can offer the child that the allocated or other schools cannot. If the panel considers that the appellant’s case outweighs the prejudice to the school, it must uphold the appeal."

It does mention "other schools" but it doesn't say that the panel has to be satisfied that the preferred school is the only one capable of meeting the child's needs.

Our authority takes the view that appeal panels should not stray into arguments about whether a third/fourth/fifth school could also meet the child's needs, because the appeal is not for any of those schools and taking those schools into consideration and expecting the parent to prove that only the appeal school is suitable would be raising the bar too high. That seems right to me.

Secondly, on the finding that "Ideally this is supposed the medical and social criteria where they already rejected saying the same": This seems to imply that the appeal panel took the view that, because the medical-social need panel did not give admission priority to the child, the appeal panel has to reject the appeal. As I said earlier, the two panels have different purposes and make their decisions against different criteria. The appeal panel is looking at the bigger picture of the prejudice (detriment) to the child if not given a place, and the prejudice to the school in having to accept an additional pupil, so is free to reach a different decision where the evidence supports it.

So, if you are taking this further, you might want to highlight these two points and any others.

@PanelChair This is for Grammar school in Bucks, where should I complaint? do I need to ask the clerk to share the notes ? Does complain requires additional costs etc ? Is there deadline for me to proceed with the complain ?

We couldnt move any closer because of a permanant dissability and we have the written evidence by a doctor that we should not move and we were not offered because of distance and we requested the panel to weigh this in our appeal, we also clearly articulated what support is available in the school that we are appealing for what support is not available in the allocated school, it might be a case indirect discrimantation due to disabability

The decision letter should have included this information.

Surely the fact that you are appealing for two school proves their point - each one is not the ONLY school that would meet his needs?

The fact that the allocated school doesn't isn't what they are arguing - what they are arguing is the other school would so why MUST it be them

the other school also are not reachable

But that's not the threshold for winning an appeal. The equivalent would be 'beyond reasonable doubt' i used in criminal cases, being applied to a civil case where the threshold is 'on the balance of probabilities'.

In an appeals case, 51% in favour of the appellant is the minimum threshold.

I think asking for the notes, or at least a fuller explanation, might help here because it's hard to tell whether the panel was saying 'this is our decision and we note that the admissions panel for social/medical needs agreed' or 'I'm not sure about this, I don't think it meets the threshold and in our support the panel said that too.' which is subtly but significantly different.

I don't think that you can use the fact that you couldn't be closer as an argument for admission because so many people will have reasons why they can't live closer to a preferred school. But, neither should that be a factor in appeal. The whole point of (prejudice) appeals is to give people who feel they have compelling reasons for admission, despite not otherwise meeting the admissions criteria, the opportunity to advocate for admission on the grounds that they will suffer detriment if they are not awarded a place.

There’s a lot of information on the Buckinghamshire website.

This is (unless I’ve overlooked something) the first time you’ve mentioned that this was an appeal for a grammar school. I’m assuming that your child was qualified for a place but missed out because of the distance from school. If not, there will have been another element to the appeal in deciding whether your child was of grammar school standard (I dislike this terminology, but it’s what is commonly used).

@Lougle Could you please hlep me what should i write to clerk now ?sorry brain is not braining anymore already heart broken and also worried that the other appeal which has even strong reasons and evidence of wanting the place could be denied saying there are many other school in England where there is a support available

Offcourse the child is not only qualified he exceeded and on the top percentile the only barier was the distance and its a common barier for Young carers

Again, I don't think that argument is valid. Distance from school is an acceptable tie breaker for admissions criteria under the code. There will be many children who miss out because of the inability to be located close to desirable schools, either through the location of family, jobs, lack of funds, etc.

Without knowing the specific school allocated and the specific school preferred, I would give this general advice:

• Look at whether it is clear that your child has specific needs arising from their carer status, and that it isn't just an incidental fact. In other words, have you been clear why it matters that they are a young carer?
• Buckinghamshire has a whole school strategy for young carers. Were you specific about what was different in your preferred school?
• Carers Bucks offers young carer support. Why do you feel that there needs to be a particularly strong support system within the school?

On the face of it, if all the published information I've found about young carer support in Buckinghamshire is true, I can see why the panel felt that it was a weak reason to need a place at a presumably highly desirable grammar school. However, I don't know your child's circumstances or the foundations of your case, so I can't comment on that.

Presumably distance is the tiebreaker and there will be other dc living closer on the same score who also missed out on a place. Was this your highest preference on CAF and have you appealed others? Is the allocated school also selective?

It was our highest prefence on CAF and we have appealed for it and it got dismissed(panel didnt probe at all), we are waiting for outcome on 2nd one where they probe but held us captive for having sentive information on the number of Young Carer in a school which is public.
DC got allocated to a comprehensive school outside bucks that doesnt have YC as we live in border to Bucks and LA is different so we dont have access to carerbucks (they are brilliant) but provides the support outside of the school only, where the school that we are appealing provides in school support which is not common in every school

It's not public information if the numbers are low enough in a specific school that the individual children could potentially be identified. You didn't submit an FOI about the school (or you would have said so) to the local authority or the school themselves and the Panel wouldn't have questioned it.

So how did you obtain the numbers of young carers in the school/schools concerned?