Anyone ever appealed against an appeal ?

[sheenite]

Just lost my appeal for my sons Secondary school. Is it worth appealing against the appeal.

Unfortunately the only grounds I had for appeal was the distance to the school and the fact that my elder son currently attends the school but leaves this year !

We've now had to accept a place at a school miles away from where we live whilst all my sons friends will be going to our choice of school as they've all suddengly found god over the last year and got a guaranteed foundation place.

Any advise would be greatly appreciated.

No, as far as my knowledge goes, you can only appeal for a school once in an academic year, and this decision is final. If you think the appeal was not conducted correctly, you can take it to the Ombudsman, but unfortunately it doesn't seem like your case is something the Ombudsman would deal with.

Is there any chance of you getting your chosen school from the waiting list? I'm sorry I cant be of any further help.

As BottleOfRum says, you can only appeal once for any given school in an academic year. That apart, you have two options:

• Refer the case to the Local Government Ombudsman. However, the LGO will only step in if the appeal wasn't handled correctly or there was maladministration in the admissions process which the appeal panel failed to pick up. The LGO doesn't act as a further appeal.

• Go for a judicial review. Unlike the LGO, this costs money. It is likely to be slower.

Looking at what you say about your case, the fact that your older son attends the school doesn't give you any priority because he won't be there when your younger son starts. The Admissions Code specifically stops schools giving your younger son priority in those circumstances. That leaves distance as your only grounds. If your argument was about the distance you have to travel to the allocated school, that was always unlikely to succeed.

On the basis of what you have written here, I doubt you will get anywhere with the LGO and a judicial review would be a waste of money.

PixieOnaLeaf - I'm intrigued by your comments about parents re-appealing up to four times. Do you mean four times in one year? That is against the rules unless appeal panels are regularly fouling up resulting in a lot of referrals to the LGO. Are you sure about this?

Ah, well then I would assume in PixieOnaLeaf's case, yes, additional appeals would be allowed, due to the fact the circumstances of the school have changed (e.g. Admission numbers) since their first appeal. Your Education Authority WILL allow additional appeals in the same academic year IF there has been significant changes to your personal circumstances, or the schools circumstances, since your previous appeal. So OP, once your son starts his new school, if he is experiencing real emotional problems with this school and it is causing him trauma etc, you COULD possibly claim this is a change to your circumstances and request a second appeal. Thats the only time when I have known a second appeal to be allowed by an Education Authority.

If the facilities at the school had changed then this would be an appropriate reason to have a second appeal, but not 4!