School appeals - help offered

Spendless

silvercar said:

Is there any guidance on challenging the catchment are itself being incorrect? we know for example 2 new estates have been built in the school catchment in the past 5 years, 1 finished recently which is causing the intake to be oversubscribed for children in catchment

You will struggle with this, the catchment has been set to include these new houses. If a school has a policy where catchment children are above non catchment siblings, then that is a deliberate policy to rapidly move the school to serve the catchment area.

Intersting because my large town (17 secondary schools for context) has always had catchment above siblings. This was in place when I first started applying for school places back in 2002 and AFAIK was the policy even before that.
The only exception is faith schools who have their own criteria, which sometmes put siblings after local worship but higher than local children. 

Dani_1979

Good morning, I’m looking for some advice regarding an appeal for my daughter( Year 9) 

She previously attended (Year 7 to November of Year 8) the school we are appealing to get her back into. She was happy and settled at the school however we moved out of the area ( we were renting and landlord wanted to sell).

We believed( rather foolishly it now seems) tat a move to a local school would be beneficial in terms of her making friends in the new area.

My daughter has experienced various incidents at this new school, which in fairness to them they have tried to resolve however these have had a significant impact on her mental health. She is awaiting a full eating disorder assessment from our local CAMHS service. The issues with eating have arisen from bullying incidents in the new school. 

Her anxiety levels are heightened constantly when in school and she is unable to engage in learning as a consequence of this. She can not settle into the new environment and ( as a consequence of the bullying) has been excluded socially by peers at the school.

She has maintained contact with some of her friends at her previous school who are supporting her with her current issues and she is absolutely desperate to return to her previous school. 

Nothing we can do is helping her anxiety levels and currently school don’t seem
interested in supporting this. 

I’m going to appeal based on medical grounds and get GP to back me up re the anxiety coming about as a consequence of the new school and the adverse events that have occurred and the likelihood of her eating disorder not getting better if she is left in the current environment. 

She had school refused on a number of occasions as the anxiety levels ( as a consequence of being in the new school environment) are too much for her.

We have also mentioned that the school we are appealing to us the only comprehensive  in the local area that offers dance as a GCSE ( my daughter is a very talented national level dancer) and the opportunity to take this lesson would potentially help to rebuild her self esteem. She’s not particularly academic.

I guess what I’m asking is would these grounds be enough to appeal on. Thank you in anticipation  

Spendless

Dani - what about applying for an EHCP (education health care plan) naming the school you want, since she has some issues that means she needs to be seen by CAMHS. I can't help with the process by which you apply, but you could contact Sendiass for help. 

Claretownend

I would be so grateful if anyone could give me some advice or to speak to someone who has won a Mid Term School Appeal? I will try to keep it as short as possible. We moved to a completely different area 3 hours away from family and we are appealing for a place for our 14 year old son to attend the local secondary school which is 2 miles away. The school have said they cannot offer a place because even though they are under pan, they have building works going on and to take in more students would not be a good idea. We have also asked to go on their waiting list but they are saying they do not have one. Some people are saying that schools only have to have waiting lists for year 7 so as Morgan would be requesting a place in year 10 they are within their rights to not have a waiting list. We have our appeal this week so I just wondered if there was any advice or anything we have not thought of so we can give Morgan the best chance. Morgan does not have any friends in the area and because of the pandemic he has not been able to make any friends outside of school. We feel he should go to a local school but the council have offered him a place at a school 14 miles away. Not only does he not know the area he would then make friends at the new school but would not see them outside school hours and again be isolated at home. Just really after some advice please?? Thank you!

pinkshoes

Claretownend said:

I would be so grateful if anyone could give me some advice or to speak to someone who has won a Mid Term School Appeal? I will try to keep it as short as possible. We moved to a completely different area 3 hours away from family and we are appealing for a place for our 14 year old son to attend the local secondary school which is 2 miles away. The school have said they cannot offer a place because even though they are under pan, they have building works going on and to take in more students would not be a good idea. We have also asked to go on their waiting list but they are saying they do not have one. Some people are saying that schools only have to have waiting lists for year 7 so as Morgan would be requesting a place in year 10 they are within their rights to not have a waiting list. We have our appeal this week so I just wondered if there was any advice or anything we have not thought of so we can give Morgan the best chance. Morgan does not have any friends in the area and because of the pandemic he has not been able to make any friends outside of school. We feel he should go to a local school but the council have offered him a place at a school 14 miles away. Not only does he not know the area he would then make friends at the new school but would not see them outside school hours and again be isolated at home. Just really after some advice please?? Thank you!

I assume the council will be paying for transport to this new school. You could point out the transport costs?

I've never heard of a school turn down a child if they have space. Schools have waiting lists for all year groups. The school I teach at has to offer a place to any child within catchment if there is space. Including those permanently excluded from other schools! 

As it is Y10 then obviously you want to minimise GCSE disruption. Which GSCE exam boards are each school using? Does the nearer school offer the same as his previous school? This might help the transition as he will have hopefully covered the same material.

Savvy_Sue

Claretownend said:

We feel he should go to a local school but the council have offered him a place at a school 14 miles away. Not only does he not know the area he would then make friends at the new school but would not see them outside school hours and again be isolated at home. 

Just this bit: I do have some sympathy with you, but you may find that children attend that school from a very wide catchment area, and there may be some local to where you're living. Yes, it does make his social life more complicated, but it's not necessarily insurmountable. In this area children often go out of area for secondary school, and I've known other areas where 14 miles is 'normal' for 6th form. 

Also, are there any secondary schools nearer than 14 miles? It is worth contacting any of them to see what the situation is. 

so what I'm suggesting is that you follow the advice from pinkshoes, but then try not to make a big deal if it if the appeal doesn't succeed. 

And I would look at social activities outside school. Seeing what the options are for activities he used to enjoy would be worthwhile. Scouts may well be meeting online during lockdown, and there isn't always a waiting list for them as there is for Cubs etc. Music lessons can happen remotely. Sports clubs are offering online activities. And so on. 

Spendless

Some schools won't offer places once yr10 has started. I discovered this when my daughter had serious issues at her school at the end of yr 10/beginning of yr11. I'd talk to whoever is responsible in your area for school admissions about if the 14 mile away school is the only one with places available.  

V8MSE

Hi All,

I'm looking for any views on whether we have a reasonable case for appeal for a reception place at a school that has an Infant Class Size (ICS) restriction.

At the time of reception class application, we were living at a certain address, but we were planning to move house in a few months time (about 5 miles away). We had to put down the address where we were living at the time of application on the application for the Jan 15th deadline, as we had not agreed anything or moved house at that time. In early Feb, we had our tenancy agreement for our new house signed. We wrote to the admissions team and also notified the schools that had supplementary forms directly on that day to advise of this new address. We moved house in Mid March and again notified the admissions authority of this.

It appears that the allocation has been based on our old address (school is nearest our old house), rather than the school nearest our new address (which was a higher ranked school in our list on the basis that it would be more convenient for where we are now living). 

Do you think we have grounds for appeal on the basis that an error may have been made by the admissions authority in using our old address? Whilst we understand that it is based on the information available at the time of application, it seems unlikely that an allocation will have been made before we notified the relevant authorities of our change of address (early Feb), so we feel it would have been reasonable for this to have been taken in to account when making the decision.

Any views and suggestions would be most welcome. Thank you!

Mrsn

Have you actually lodged an appeal at this point? If you are planning to do so then I would recommend that ASAP.

Based on the information given I don’t see that an error has been made in the allocation of your school place. The information that was supplied to the local authority at the time of the application deadline is key here... they could only reasonably allocate the place on the address that was valid at the time of the deadline. I appreciate this will seem rather unfair given that you have clearly kept the LA updated with changes of circumstances however the deadline has to be set for many reasons and this is one of them.

Rather unfairly it works the other way too, those that live in catchment at the time but who have moved after the January deadline are offered a place based on that address. It is of course the applicants duty to inform the LA that they have moved out of the catchment area so that the space can be offered to those waiting on the “over subscribed” list. This as you can imagine might not always happen especially if they already have a sibling at that particular school they have applied for. 

Spaces do get taken away if the LA find that there has been a change of circumstances that they have not been made aware of that would mean the child were no longer eligible for the space originally offered. This can only happen though if the child has not already started with the school.

I actually sit on the LA school appeals panel and the bar for “unreasonable” is very high... not many circumstances fit within that criteria I’m afraid. Find out where about a you are on the waiting list and try not to be too discouraged, things change all the times. My daughter was offered a space at the same school as her brother 10 days before the start of term... she was second on the waiting list. There will be parents that move out of the area, children with needs that might have applied for the school hoping for a space at another etc.

Spendless

What does the small print say about addresses on the application form? Where I live it says it is the address that the child lives in on the deadline date of the application going in. I know of someone who moved with only 10 days to go and another who missed out due to the same sort of circs  you describe. I doubt in that case you can make an appeal based on they used the wrong criteria. I would ask however how high you are on the waiting list, though be aware the lists are 'fluid'  rather than set in stone and someone 'higher ranking' could come along and be placed higher than yourself.