school appeals advice

[maviscruet74]

Hi there, has anyone been through an appeal for secondary school who could give me some advice
we have been told that our child does not qualify for a place at the school under the terms of the addmission criterea. I am confussed at this because on the schools addmisions criterea they have two zones areas A and B. 'zone A' taking 80 % of the children from the 4 mile area around the school and then zone b of children outside of that. we live 1 1/2 miles from the school falling into zone A.How can my child not be qualifyed within this addmission criterea to be considered for a place? Does it make any difference that they are an independant Accadamy (goverment funded not private)? Appeal coming up got any helpful advice

You can get the exact reason why your son was turned down. Check this gov link

www.direct.gov.uk/en/Parents/Schoolslearninganddevelopment/ChoosingASchool/DG_4016309

and read this book

How to Win Your School Appeal: Getting Your Child into the School of Your Choice (Paperback)
by Ben Rooney

Good luck

If the school have an intake of, for example, 200 then presumably there was more than 160 applicants from zone A. It seems tough seeing as you live so near. Hope the appeal is successful.

hi thanks, what is gov link,did not get it?

hi new to this got link (blush)thanks for advice

tbh in hindsight I wouldn't do it all over again. It was utterly soul destroying, o pour out all of the details of your lives to people who frankly didn't give a shit, and had already made heir minds up anyway..... sorry

Not sure if you saw the links as I seemed to leave a massive space - here they are again

www.direct.gov.uk/en/Parents/Schoolslearninganddevelopment/ChoosingASchool/DG_401630 9

and read this book

How to Win Your School Appeal: Getting Your Child into the School of Your Choice (Paperback)
by Ben Rooney

We did appeal and were successful, but the circumstances were rather different: our wheelchair bound child had been allocated a school with three stories and no lifts!

We were told there were two ways of being successful:

either to prove that the LEA had made a mistake in applying their own criteria

(for you that would be if you could prove that 80% of their admissions were not zone A children; nothing in the regulations that says that your dc had to be one of the 80%)

or

if our child had such particular needs that they had to be considered anyway
(that's how we got in)

we were told that it was useless to question the criteria themselves- that should have been done at the time of application, but only how they were applied

in our case the catchment area was really odd: people living across the road from the school were still out of catchment; their appeals failed though

thanks thats good advice.Anyone know if its a good idea to bring child along to appeal and maybe get them to say something also??? just an idea

Had our appeal today. I would not take a child to it as it's long (1 1/2 hours) and you need to be concentrating on what is going on not worrying about looking after your child.

At the moment children are not encouraged to be at hearing but I believe it is changing for next year. I think it is a bad idea myself - distracting.

The Eleven Plus website (sorry don't know how to do links, but google it) has absolutely masses of information about appeals, a whole section devoted to it. The people on there have encyclopaedic knowledge of the dos and don'ts of appealing.

I would not under any circumstances have taken dd as I had to concentrate very strongly on putting her case across, including a worst case scenario if our appeal was turned down. The last thing in the world I would have wanted her to hear if our appeal had been turned down.

Also many parents do cry at appeals - its very emotional - and I don't think its really fair for children to be subjected to that.