School appeals - help offered

Spendless

I'm struggling to believe that every single Secondary school in Leeds is full. I live in Yorkshire in a town and we have around 17 Secondary schools and I know full well some will have spaces. Get a list together of all the schools in the city, and contact each one.

I don't know your circs for moving at this stage but I do know from experience how difficult it can be to move a child of your older one's age. I regret that I didn't make decisions at an earlier stage because a lot of places very much take the attitude a child starts at the beginning of yr10 and stays there till the end of GCSEs, which is why I'd want it sorting now regardless of what the council say. 

pinkshoes

Tina098 said:

I and my two boys (5 and 14)  are relocating to a different city. I have applied for the Y1 and Y10 school places in year transfer. Managed to get the space to the local primary school for the younger boy, but no space for Y10. I have had 3 high schools on the list and neither has accepted it. now the Leeds city council are extremely unsupportive and have not offered a place at ANY schools for Y10. 

There's a great school within 2 min walk from our new home - literally around 300 hundred yards. The school application came back saying there's no space and placed us on a waiting list. I am wanting to appeal the decision purely because the school is right next to the house, as well as it is one of the best ones in the area. 

I am seeking some help and guidance with the appeal process. 

The key point is that we currently do not have ANY school for him in the new city and the council suggesting to just wait until September, but this option to me sounds absolutely crazy! 

Please help. 

If the school is full in Y10 then the school is full.

You will need to contact ALL schools within a sensible distance and find out which ones have spaces. The council should be able to assist you with this.

I teach at a school and in September, we have a provisional list of kids who are leaving, but we CANNOT legally take them off the register until another school confirms they have accepted them. So basically, on INSET day, once these confirmations come through then we can accept any other kids on the waiting list. This is why the council are saying wait until September. Make sure you keep the name on the waiting list and find out what position you are in and they might even tell you how many children are potentially leaving.

If no place becomes available then you might need a plan B. A place might become available later in Y10 but moving kids in the middle of GCSEs is not always the best move.

Tina098

Spendless said:

I'm struggling to believe that every single Secondary school in Leeds is full. I live in Yorkshire in a town and we have around 17 Secondary schools and I know full well some will have spaces. Get a list together of all the schools in the city, and contact each one.

I don't know your circs for moving at this stage but I do know from experience how difficult it can be to move a child of your older one's age. I regret that I didn't make decisions at an earlier stage because a lot of places very much take the attitude a child starts at the beginning of yr10 and stays there till the end of GCSEs, which is why I'd want it sorting now regardless of what the council say. 

Thanks so much for your comment. There are schools that have places, not a huge number, but there is, it's just that the schools that have any spaces are 5 or more miles away. I have contacted them and currently awaiting a response. 

Completely agree, I do not want to disrupt the prep for GSCE's hence why I was hoping to appeal to the school that is literally next door to us before the school year starts. 

Tina098

pinkshoes said:

Tina098 said:

I and my two boys (5 and 14)  are relocating to a different city. I have applied for the Y1 and Y10 school places in year transfer. Managed to get the space to the local primary school for the younger boy, but no space for Y10. I have had 3 high schools on the list and neither has accepted it. now the Leeds city council are extremely unsupportive and have not offered a place at ANY schools for Y10. 

There's a great school within 2 min walk from our new home - literally around 300 hundred yards. The school application came back saying there's no space and placed us on a waiting list. I am wanting to appeal the decision purely because the school is right next to the house, as well as it is one of the best ones in the area. 

I am seeking some help and guidance with the appeal process. 

The key point is that we currently do not have ANY school for him in the new city and the council suggesting to just wait until September, but this option to me sounds absolutely crazy! 

Please help. 

If the school is full in Y10 then the school is full.

You will need to contact ALL schools within a sensible distance and find out which ones have spaces. The council should be able to assist you with this.

I teach at a school and in September, we have a provisional list of kids who are leaving, but we CANNOT legally take them off the register until another school confirms they have accepted them. So basically, on INSET day, once these confirmations come through then we can accept any other kids on the waiting list. This is why the council are saying wait until September. Make sure you keep the name on the waiting list and find out what position you are in and they might even tell you how many children are potentially leaving.

If no place becomes available then you might need a plan B. A place might become available later in Y10 but moving kids in the middle of GCSEs is not always the best move.

Thanks for your comment pinkshoes (loving the name!). I do not want to move him during the school year unless the council comes back with genuinely unreasonable suggestions in terms of a school place. 

I have already contacted ALL high schools that are reasonably close to us and all came back with "sorry we cannot help". At the moment I am looking at all of the schools within Leeds, and although there are schools with some potential spaces they are way out of our area and above 5 miles away from home. 

silvercar

The council should be helping with a list of schools with places. They have an obligation to provide an education,it really isn’t acceptable to tell you to ring around. This may be a good time to remind them that they will be responsible for paying transport to school costs if the nearest suitable school is over 3 miles away.

Savvy_Sue

Tina098 said:

Thanks for your comment pinkshoes (loving the name!). I do not want to move him during the school year unless the council comes back with genuinely unreasonable suggestions in terms of a school place. 

I have already contacted ALL high schools that are reasonably close to us and all came back with "sorry we cannot help". At the moment I am looking at all of the schools within Leeds, and although there are schools with some potential spaces they are way out of our area and above 5 miles away from home. 

It may be worth looking at schools which are easy to get to, not quite regardless of distance but almost. I say this because you may find that some schools have a huge catchment area, perhaps that's particularly true of faith schools but not necessarily. In Bristol, five miles is a really easy journey in some directions, and nigh-on impossible by public transport in others. My lads were at a school which had children coming from all over the place, simply because it was an easy walk from one of the main rail stations and served by numerous buses. My experience with moving DS1 in Year 8 was that where people lived made no difference to his friendships - he either made friends with people or he didn't, and 'local' didn't come into it. Same was true of the older two: not many people moved from their primary to this school, and their friends came from all over the place. 

Yes, I had to do some ferrying around, but local friendships could come from Scouts and similar organisations. 

Spendless

I was going to post similar to Savvy Sue. Have a look at schools that are easily commutable rather than distance. Here we can have villages that are next to each other and no bus route or needs two buses and areas the opposite ends of town which are just one bus ride. Certainly I now wish I'd looked into other options for my daughter, including considering schools close to where I worked rather than lived (accepting she'd have to make her own way home) and schools in neighbouring towns that I discovered too late there was transport to as well as any that were a train ride away. I also agree with finding friendships that are not school related, and come from hobbies and interests instead. 

BobsBurgerss

Hi

Hope this is ok to post here. 

I’m after some advise on the below situation:

My sister contacted the council to advise them of the change of address a while ago now and they told her that they would transfer the application and that will be ok however today she received a letter at the old address (grandparent address) to say my niece has been accepted at a school in the old area. Now she no longer lives there and she was told her application would be transferred to the new area so we’re looking to appeal. I’m just wondering what chance we have as the addresses are 30min drive apart and they wouldn’t be able to do the commute. 

Thank you

Spendless

@BobsBurgerss

How did your sister contact the council via email or anything that can be evidenced? 
I would get back in touch with them. Get together any correspondence etc your sister has about it. I suspect if it can be proved that the council has not done what it should and if it had, the child would have been given a place, then it would be good grounds to appeal. 

BobsBurgerss

Spendless said:

@BobsBurgerss

How did your sister contact the council via email or anything that can be evidenced? 
I would get back in touch with them. Get together any correspondence etc your sister has about it. I suspect if it can be proved that the council has not done what it should and if it had, the child would have been given a place, then it would be good grounds to appeal. 

Thank you for the reassurance! It was via phone so I’ve told her to put in a sar asap just in case they’ve made a note somewhere of the conversation and contact them again. I’m sure if they needed evidence of the new address they would have explained on that call but it was “don’t worry we’ll just transfer the application” so she didn’t follow up. 

Thanks again