How to Win School Appeals – Part 2

So, let’s suppose that having applied to your local schools back in January, now it’s April and you’ve just opened the fatal letter saying that you didn’t qualify for the ones you wanted and instead your child has been given a place at Shithole Primary, Murder Street, Craphill.

What do you do from here?

Before I go any further, I should give a few disclaimers:

1. I am only talking about reception class size admissions appeals here – these are probably the hardest to win and the ones that you are most likely to have to fight.
2. We live in Bradford and my entire experience is based on that city’s schools and education department. Every education authority will have slightly different procedures, so not everything I say will be universally applicable.
3. When we did win our appeal, we were not actually given the reasons why in detail. I went to two appeals, and I lost one and I won one. So am I going to throw everything I learned or was told or suspect at you. Some of it may be completely irrelevant – but some of it must be true.
4. I can see that this is going to take more than two parts to finish – so more wisdom will follow in later posts.

So where do you go from here?

Armalite and ballot box strategy

Well, there is nothing to be gained from refusing to accept the place at Shithole Primary. If you don’t accept it and then you don’t get a place anywhere preferable, your child ends up without a school place at all – and the last thing you want by now is then kicking around the house for another year or getting allocated a last minute place somewhere even worse.

Plus, if you take the place, you look like a good meek little subject who is playing the game by the rules. I was asked whether we had taken up the place and/or otherwise been to and engaged with the unwanted school in both the appeals I went to, so this must be important.

Secondly, put your child’s name down on the waiting lists for all the schools you would prefer. Some people mistakenly think that going on the waiting list and appealing in some way cancel each other out – they don’t.

Chances are, a few kids will drop out or otherwise not take up places they have been offered before the appeals come around – and you might get one of these. They are awarded on the same terms as the original admissions decisions are made, so if you only just missed out on a place on distance there’s a good chance you will get one down this route.

Plus, going on the waiting list puts your case back into the admissions authority’s hands, giving them more time to make a mistake which you can exploit later.

I can’t stress the importance of going on the waiting list enough. It gives you a reason to be on the phone to them all the time collecting information.

Open up as many fronts as you can. Remember, you care a lot and the council doesn’t have to care that much. You only have to get lucky once – they have to get lucky every time.

What you are dealing with

99% of the time, the reason you will have been rejected is down to our friend the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. That is, because there were 30 kids (or a multiple thereof) who met the admissions criteria “more than” you.

This law on class sizes is a trump card in the admissions authority’s hands – however, it is not the Ace of trumps. If it was, the only hope you’d have would be to take a challenge to the European Court of Human Rights and even if you won, your kids would be 18+ by the time you got the primary school place.

No, the class size law is round about a seven of trumps. It woops most other arguments – even ones that seem world-beating from an ordinary human point of view - but it can be defeated.

What you have to prove is that:

1. The admissions authority (usually the council, but if you’re dealing with a church school for example, it could be the governors) made mistakes in applying the admissions policy.
2. If they hadn’t made those mistakes, then on correct application of the policy, your child would have got a place.

Sadly, it’s not enough to show that the council cocked up – which is usually simple enough. Just deal with them for long enough and they’ll do something wrong: hence I recommend that you contact them regularly, ask lots of questions and sooner or later you’ll get some work experience kid who has no idea what they’re talking about misinforming you about something or other. That’s why going on the waiting list actually helps with your appeal.

For that reason, you should note down every communication you have with the local authority for time and date and try to get the name of the person you are talking to. As far as I can remember, they never volunteered this information, which seems significant.

And don’t expect them to call you back when they say they will. Be prepared to chase everything yourself.

Stay tuned for the next instalment – in which I will talk about the power of paperwork and of gossip