School appeals

[handyman77]

Has anyone appealed the a schools decision to not admit there child to there desired school.
Our 4 year old son was refused his three options, we know we fit most of the criteria for the schools except for a sibling going to the same school and wasnt at the nursery. But proximity is really close! There is a severe shortage of spaces for our borough, so the council has said that they cant offer him a school place at this time!
WTF is going on in this country when a child born and bread cant get a place in a school. Surely priority should go to children that hold a british passport.
One of the schools we applied for ofsted report said it contains 1/3 white british kids. Not sure how many other brits there!
We have looked into appealing, theres companies out there that will do the whole process for you at £2400. There success rate is 30-40%. As opposed to 2% if you do it yourself. Does anyone have any recommendations for what to do, books, websites on appeals?
Thanks in advance!

 

[hereisthetruth]

I made a successful school appeal to get my son into his junior school.

We were told there were no places but we had been put top of the waiting list.

We then found out two months later that another two boys arriving in the country had been given places even though we were told the class was full and our son was top of the waiting list.

So we appealed.

Now here it gets interesting.
When we received the letter telling us that our son had not been taken on it says see page two for the appeals process.
Page 2 was missing so I asked the school to send me a copy of the 2nd page with the appeals process on it - They actually sent a copy of page 1 again.
I didn't chase this a second time and just started the appeals process anyway.

They then told me it was too late as you only have three weeks to appeal a decision.

I said where does it say that - they said on the letter we sent...doh!

er but you didn't send it!!

Anyway the upshot is the local authority accepted our request for an appeal and when we went to the appeal we won unanimously and our son had to be admitted to the school.

I think these companies are pulling your leg about the statistics just to get you to use them.
The appeals process is easy you just fill in a request (within three weeks!) and you get given a hearing date.
There are no costs involved.

As for playing the race card?
Dangerous you might find your decision panel is multi racial.
You will have three persons from the local education authority usually as the bench and two representatives from the school also accross a table in our case from yourselves.
You then get to state your cases.
I would not worry too much about not getting points for a sibbling as what is being said there is illogical. If your child is the eldest so therefore no previous siblings could have gone there why can you be penalised for that? Not every child has younger brothers or sisters anyway so they have to by any logical thinking allow first borns into the school. I would claim discrimination on that point.

If you are in the catchment area your argument has to be the difficulty of getting to the other schools you have been offered. ie having to use transport when he could have walked instead, having to take time off work to get him/her to the more distant school etc etc.
Are there any religious grounds? are any of the schools religious?
Is your son an athiest or agnostic? (accpeted legal position these days) and would prevent him from being sent to a religious school if neccessary.

Or vica versa is your local school the same religion as your child and the others not?

 

[Space cat]

Surely priority should go to children that hold a british passport.

Neither of our kids had passports when they started school.

 

[handyman77]

Are there any religious grounds? are any of the schools religious?
Is your son an athiest or agnostic? (accpeted legal position these days) and would prevent him from being sent to a religious school if neccessary.

Or vica versa is your local school the same religion as your child and the others not?[/quote]

Our first choice is a C of E school. We attended church to get the vicar to sign the forms so that we got an extra couple of points on the schools criteria!
For all the good that did!

 

[handyman77]

Surely priority should go to children that hold a british passport.

Neither of our kids had passports when they started school.

I presume they had british birth certs!
Or did you find them under a bush?

 

[Space cat]

I presume they had british birth certs!

Yes they do.

I don't know what, if anything, has changed in the last twenty years but it was touch and go getting our first one into the only local school. (There was a brand new one within sight of our house but some idiot decided not to provide any access from our side. )

Demand for spaces was so high that the school actually measured the distances to the more remote houses. The major problem wasn't immigrants; it was cheats! It wasn't unknown for people to rent a flat in the catchment area - or even borrow one from a friend - just long enough to get their first-born into the school.

Subsequent sprogs got in automatically, which sounds reasonable, but that opened another avenue for the cheats. One blatant case involved somebody whose first child got a place in a private school starting in Year three. But the private school term began a couple of weeks later than the state schools so this poor kid was sent back to begin Year three in his original (state) school - just long enough to guarantee a place for his sister!

 

[joinerjohn]

About 16 yrs ago, me and the missus (at the time) moved to a town in Derbyshire. The local secondary school was heavily oversubscribed, but we applied anyway as it was less than half a mile from our house. The places were refused and so they had to attend a school miles away. The local education authorities pointed out that this school was just within 3 miles walking distance. Yep 2.98 miles along an extremely busy dual carriageway with a pavement 3ft wide for most of the way. To actually drive there meant a detour through another town and made the journey about 5 miles (no turning off the dual carriageway near the school) The kids had to catch the bus to school, but were not entitled to free travel as it was just within the 3 mile limit (pity the bus didn't go via the dual carriageway though) The local school half a mile away was oversubscribed, but about a third of the kids there lived more than 3 miles from the school and got free bus travel to and from school (even though there was another school nearer for those kids) Education authorities (or the people working for them) just don't seem to be able to make sensible decisions, regarding, the education and placement of our children within the system.

 

[Space cat]

A lot of years ago but, fortunately, after our two started school, some crackpot politician thought it would be a really good idea to mix kids from different areas. To make this work, catchment areas would encompass many schools and kids would be distributed among them at random. There were many reasons given:

"An intake of brighter kids will improve the poorer schools." Really? I'll believe that when I see it.

"It'll promote the integration of (ethnic) minorities." Or not!

"It'll give the poorer kids a chance of a place in a better school." OK, I'll have to accept that one.

I never knew whether it actually happened but joinerjohn's experience suggests that it did, with the result that kids were sent off to schools miles away while others arrived to fill places at the one round the corner. How crazy was that?

The three mile business is a different matter and it must have been a political hot potato during the sixties because it was in the news a lot. I kept hearing about this "statutory walking distance for school children" and wondered just how many politicians would be happy to walk three miles to work and back five days a week.

 

[AronSearle]

I voted no.

Stop mass immigration, don't fight the symptoms.

If they are in the country legally, they should obey the laws, but those laws should equally apply to them. If you treat them differently you can't then complain if they act differently.[/u]

 

[handyman77]

But they do act differently, regardless
So you think its ok for any one to just roll up from mongolia and get there child enrolled in school at the expense of the home grown! *******s!

 

[conny]

How come my post advocating to play the 'race card' gets pulled but other posts talking about race are allowed to remain?
Not asking for a re-instatement but an explanation would be nice.

 

[joe-90]

No-one wants white trash in the schools.

 

[handyman77]

No-one wants white trash in the schools.

But yet they gave you a place!

 

[handyman77]

How come my post advocating to play the 'race card' gets pulled but other posts talking about race are allowed to remain?
Not asking for a re-instatement but an explanation would be nice.

This thread isnt about race, its about the lack of school places! A sideshoot of that is the amount of people of ethnic minority background that have the majority in a lot of schools, leaving no room for homegrown kids (of all races)
For instance a lady of turkish origin at a beauty parlour mywife goes to, was telling her how wondrfully they are treated in turkish hospitals when there pregnant, so my wife says are you going home to have your baby then, no she replies i want it to have a british passport! You couldnt make it up?

 

[joe-90]

You couldnt make it up?

You did.