school appeals panel on thursday need experiences

schooling123

hi we recently posted about our daughter not getting into the school of her choice. see post 793 on School appeals - help offered thread (cant post links sorry)

Since then we have managed to get some professional advice and we are
appealing against our daughter not securing a place into the school of her 1st choice. We are using a multiangled approach in terms of our appeal. Our approach is as follows:

A Specialism - we are using the schools specialism of MUSIC as the main argument.
This is because our daughter (11) has not only played piano for 6 years and passed grades 1 and 2 and is currently studying for grade 3, but is also a performing arts student in two other areas acting (acting singing and dance) and circus skills at two prominent performing arts schools. Not intending to blow our own trumpets just trying to present a full picture to the forum.

B EXTRA TUITION and academic help; our daughter has needed help with math’s (and being distracted) for the last two years and we have employed a tutor to help this. Although it has worked and she is blossoming there is work yet to be done. The tutor will have to stop teaching our daughter at the end of year 6 as she is only qualified to teach math’s (and help with other subjects) up to a primary perspective. It has also been a major financial strain and we are not hopeful that we will have the finds to continue paying for a private tutor. The school we wish our daughter to attend offers excellent facilities’ for extra tuition in fact any child not performing HAS to attend extra help outside normal school hours. The school has a zero tolerance towards bad behavior and offers a strict nurturing environment for children that have difficulty in academic work.

C Our daughter is an only child and has a strong network of friends (from primary school) that are actually going to the school she has been refused. So we are using this angle also.

D the allocated school is girls only school and our daughter is adamant that she wishes to go to a mixed school only. we also think that it is important for her to be with males and females.

To give our daughter the best chance to win the appeal we are also using a third party professional at the appeal, who has written books on the subject of school appeals and helped us formulate the best approach. He has helped us with drafting the personal statement. He is going to concentrate on the technical administrative areas and loopholes such as class size, reasons for admission refusal, prejudice (formal term not race issues) and other less well known technical approaches etc.
I would like to state that we are poor not well off, my ex partner has had to do out of hours manual laboring just to pay for the representative who is not cheap, though extremely knowledge.
Everything possible, we have managed (barely) to do. The appeal is in a few days so we are pleading for any and all parents (successful or not) to post on this thread offering us (two ex partners who have come together for their daughter) to post their experiences good and bad which will give us a better insight about the appeals procedure. We are specifically interested in knowing anything we should or shouldn’t do on the day that will impact the panel’s decision for the better. For example, dress, attitude, being formal or over emotional, pushy etc.
Thank you we await your valued replies.

Spendless

On what grounds were you not allocated a place?

Some years ago when I was applying for a place in Reception for my eldest (he's now 13) several people didn't get their 1st choice school (a faith one) they took the decision to appeal and won because the school admitted that they had not stuck to their own published admission criteria and if they had have done the children without places would have been granted one.

Other than that I happened to look up the grounds for appeal for my area recently (noseyness on my behalf, it's not relevant to myself) and discovered that not only was their grounds for appeal if the school hadn't followed their own criteria (as in the case above) but also if it was thought that it was not a decision that was reasonable to make. I'll dig out the correct wording if I can. No idea if this applies to other areas too.

OK- So the wording I saw was 'if the decision made was not one that a reasonable Admission authority would have reached' However, it turns out I must have been looking at Primary admissions. I have no idea if the same ruling would apply to Secondary school places.

OK and the wording I have found for Secondary school is 'In order for the Panel to reach their decision they must balance whether the degree of prejudice to the provision of efficient education or use of the resources at the school, outweighs the parental preference, together with the information provided by parents ie. the parent's case'

securityguy

Unfortunately, unless the school you're appealing for is selective, none of the grounds you are advancing are admission criteria that will have been involved in the decision. So it's all very interesting, but which of the school's published admission criteria do you think they've breached? If the admission is children looked after, then siblings, then distance (which is, with minor variations, the admission criteria for most schools), where do you think they went wrong in not offering your daughter a place? So winning the oversubscription part of the appeal will be tricky.

If you can't show that your daughter was wrongly denied a place, then even if you can show that the school can accommodate additional pupils without prejudice to effective education, which is the other part of the appeal, then why wouldn't that place go to the first child on the waiting list, and not your daughter?

It is possible to win appeals where the admission process has worked correctly but you want a different outcome, but it's very, very difficult.

Savvy_Sue

schooling123 wrote: »

We are specifically interested in knowing anything we should or shouldn’t do on the day that will impact the panel’s decision for the better. For example, dress, attitude, being formal or over emotional, pushy etc.
Thank you we await your valued replies.

I'd take the advice of your specialist here, but I'd say that technically, how you dress and behave at the appeal ought not to make any difference to the outcome. However, I'd suggest that dressing smartly (doesn't have to be formal, but not casual) and being polite and formal rather than emotional and pushy would be a good strategy. If your DD gets in, you don't want to be remembered for any of the wrong reasons.

Madmel

schooling123 wrote: »

hi we recently posted about our daughter not getting into the school of her choice. see post 793 on School appeals - help offered thread (cant post links sorry)

Since then we have managed to get some professional advice and we are
appealing against our daughter not securing a place into the school of her 1st choice. We are using a multiangled approach in terms of our appeal. Our approach is as follows:

A Specialism - we are using the schools specialism of MUSIC as the main argument.
This is because our daughter (11) has not only played piano for 6 years and passed grades 1 and 2 and is currently studying for grade 3, but is also a performing arts student in two other areas acting (acting singing and dance) and circus skills at two prominent performing arts schools. Not intending to blow our own trumpets just trying to present a full picture to the forum.

B EXTRA TUITION and academic help; our daughter has needed help with math’s (and being distracted) for the last two years and we have employed a tutor to help this. Although it has worked and she is blossoming there is work yet to be done. The tutor will have to stop teaching our daughter at the end of year 6 as she is only qualified to teach math’s (and help with other subjects) up to a primary perspective. It has also been a major financial strain and we are not hopeful that we will have the finds to continue paying for a private tutor. The school we wish our daughter to attend offers excellent facilities’ for extra tuition in fact any child not performing HAS to attend extra help outside normal school hours. The school has a zero tolerance towards bad behavior and offers a strict nurturing environment for children that have difficulty in academic work.

C Our daughter is an only child and has a strong network of friends (from primary school) that are actually going to the school she has been refused. So we are using this angle also.

I have shortened your quote to the parts on which I feel I can comment.

Point C - I have known of two different families who have used this argument at appeal and both failed. Your DD will be encouraged to make new friends at secondary school anyway.

Point A - I do not wish to come across as heartless, but given your DD has been learning the piano for 6 years, approaching grade 3 is approximately half the progress I would expect an able musician to make. My own DDs started learning instruments at the age of 4. DD1 was grade 5 with distinction plus grade 5 Theory at the age of 10, and DD2 grade 4. I would class them as able but not necessarily gifted, although DD2 is actually the better musician. These were on stringed instruments, which many schools value more than pianists because they can play in orchestras and bands which showcase the school.

Point B - tutors can either teach a subject or they can't. If the tutor can only teach maths to primary level, I would be concerned. You only have to read the thread on here about SATs to understand why. Most schools claim to have "a zero tolerance towards bad behaviour and have a nurturing environment yadda yadda" so that dispels that point.

Why don't you go to look at the allocated school with an open mind? Instead of focussing on what might not be possible [and indeed, from where I am sitting, extremely unlikely], look forward to the new challenges that a change of school and new subjects bring.

Sorry, this is probably not what you want to read, but given that this is a Money Saving site, save yourself a few quid on the piano lessons and advocate and get on with preparing your child for the next phase of her education.

busiscoming2

I had to go to appeal for my DS2, five years ago.
I read the books and various forums to prepare myself.

The panel didn't ask any of the questions I had been led to believe they would.
The one question that completely threw me was asking if my sons friends were going there. Something I was led to believe was irrelevant. I didn't really know how many so bluffed it!
It was within walking distance so that helped as the other choice was 2 bus rides away. The school had Science status so I used that stance.

He did get in and is now about to sit his GCSE's.

Good luck OP and don't be too worried.

FBaby

I personally can't see how any of your arguments justify this school. The first two points, it could be argued that she could get the required tuition outside of school. One of my friend used the arguement that the school of choice offered Chinese language which her son had been studying for 4 years, however, it was through private tutoring and their response was she had not made a case why this couldn't continue as such.

As for the two last ones, they are the most common reasons given for appeals and therefore are not considered strong arguments.

Good luck though, depending on how many people are appealing/on the waiting list, they might be more lenient than other appeal panels.

TeamLowe

what has your professional said about the school's case? your comment that he's going to concentrate on 'other less well known technical areas' concerns me that he's not giving you good advice, particularly in that you've made no mention of looking at the school's case and finding arguments for why it isn't full in your daughter's year.

If the admission arrangements were legal and your daughters application process correctly, then there are two grounds on which you can win your appeal:
1) The school does not prove that to admit another pupil or pupils would cause prejudice to the provision of education and the efficient use of resources.
if the school case is proven/accepted by the panel, then they move on to the second stage:
2) That, on balance, the strength of your case outweighs the prejudice that would be caused by your child being admitted.

Please note that in the case of the school not proving that prejudice would be caused, the panel have to decide at what level it would be caused- ie how many more children can they fit in? if that number is less than the total number of appeals then the 'strongest' cases are the ones that get a place. ie if the panel say there's room for 5 more pupils, and there are 10 appeals, the panel have to choose the strongest five cases to give a place to.

LannieDuck

There's a very long thread about appeals on here somewhere. Maybe someone else has the link. It was very interesting and gives a good indication of which approaches are most successful. It seemed to be that challenging the number of places available at a (secondary) school was reasonably successful.

susancs

OP, I wish you good luck with your appeal this week. Please update us on the outcome.

megan01

Hey, I know this is of probably no relevance to you and was a long time ago but in 2002 I was denied to my local high school which all my friends were going to from our primary school. The reason being that I didn't put my closest school down first which a. my parents didn't want me to go to, and b. in terms of walking distance from my front door to the entrance, was further away than the same for the school I wanted to go. But they measure it from your front door as the crow flies to the centre of the school grounds, well they did back then I don't know how they do it now. So we thought the school I wanted to go to, was the closest school to me too.

Long story short, because I didn't have an older brother or sister at the school, because I didn't have a disability that the school could specially cater for, and because it wasn't my nearest school, and because the next nearest school was full too I ended up being given the worst of the absolute worst school, which wasn't even a third full. I didn't go to that school, my mum had to do her research and find me the next best school that actually had a place, because I was on waiting lists for other schools and they weren't getting any smaller, and I ended up going to a school by myself, an hour bus journey there, hour back, from west yorkshire to north yorkshire. It was hell, and I didn't like it, I felt completely left out from my group of friends , and didn't make many friends at the school, because I couldn't develop them, I couldnt just go back to theirs after school and pop home, stuff like that.

So I really do advise you to not pull on the emotional stuff , find cold hard facts that they can't argue with, and aside from that, really try and find a good back up school and suss out what you think your child could cope with. The best advice I can give!