North Yorkshire Appeals AAAHhhhhh

[Gogi]

Hello all,

Ive been an avid reader for a long while and am taking the plunge after what i can only describe as the most traumatic year ever! 2 appeals and now onto the 3rd stage im looking for anyone out there who was or has been to a selection review and had their childs appeal upheld just so that i can put my case into context.

From sleepless nights to paranoia...i need some closure but still have so much fight left!

Q x

[hermanmunster]

Hello all,

Ive been an avid reader for a long while and am taking the plunge after what i can only describe as the most traumatic year ever! 2 appeals and now onto the 3rd stage im looking for anyone out there who was or has been to a selection review and had their childs appeal upheld just so that i can put my case into context.

From sleepless nights to paranoia...i need some closure but still have so much fight left!

Q x

Hi Gogi and welcome to the forum,

Which school are you appealing for? I have known several children get through selection appeals for Ermysted's and SGHS - some then had to appeal against oversubscription. Usually this is much earlier in the year... your experience sounds very protracted.

[Gogi]

Hello H, feels like im talking to forum celebrity!!!
Thanks for your welcome...

No all the appeals went as planned, date wise...its drawn out because i suppose i cant accept the outcome...

I went to the selection review and then the Statutory review and now at Local ombudsman.

I did everything according to the guidelines and dotted my i and crossed my T's but fell at the first hurdle really by not convincing the panel that the mitigating circumstances were significant enough to out weigh any apparent lack of ability. 13 childrens appeals were upheld that day and thats hard to accept when as a logical parent i belive that our reasons were genuine.

Now the LO may agree to look at that but i needed to have an insight into what reasons are given at appeal...so that i can compare or even accept that our reasons were irrelavent.

Ive heard about stories about bullying and members of family suffering from incurable diseases...word on the grape vine certainly when i looked around the school was that if you had a good enough reason and school supported your claims you should be ok...how wrong was i ...

Appologies if i sound cagy with any of the detail...but im sure you can appreciate that its because of the stage i am with the LO.

Q
x

[hermanmunster]

Gogi, it is difficult at this stage.

I suppose that most of the selection appeals are won and lost on how close to the passmark the score is... most of the ones I know of were at absolute max 2-3 marks, some had variable types of mitigating circumstances: recent illness etc, I really don't know of any specifically - just general things.
Far more often they were very close to the mark and it simply was an "out of the blue" score, and the evidence was backed up by school reports, previous exams scores etc etc.

I haven't come across anyone being involved in North Yorks with the ombudsman but I know there have been cases elsewhere and am sure others will pop in soon with info about these and the process. It must seem endless and more difficult as getting so close to the beginning of term. When are you expecting to hear anything from LO?

H

[Gogi]

Yes agree H ,

LO like to deal with School appeals as priority so not sure when.

Q
x

[mitasol]

Hi Gogi.

Good luck with the ombudsman.

In case you've not seen it already there is some information on the ombudsman here http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/appeals/ombudsman" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Etienne]

LO like to deal with School appeals as priority so not sure when

The LGO does view school admission appeals as a priority, but, as the Q&As referenced by Mitasol make clear, a decision could still take months.

i needed to have an insight into what reasons are given at appeal...so that i can compare or even accept that our reasons were irrelavent.

Generally speaking, I think the issue is not so much to do with 'reasons', as with evidence of what impact they actually had on the child's progress. For example, if there were ongoing extenuating circumstances of any significance, one might reasonably expect to see hard evidence of a marked decline in the quality of school work.

The quality of academic evidence (leaving aside any period where there were extenuating circumstances) needs to be really good. Most appellants are going to turn up to appeal with level 5 predictions and sound support from their primary school, so the more wide-ranging the evidence, the better:
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/appeal ... cation#b11" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

13 childrens appeals were upheld that day and thats hard to accept

Difficult to make judgements about other people's appeals without being present to hear all the facts and view all the evidence. If by chance they were only a mark or so away from qualifying, then, as Herman has indicated, they might have had much less to prove.

[Gogi]

Thanks Mitasol

Yes seen the link, and it was very useful. Infact the LO are very thorough and ensure you understand what they can and cant do.

I found this website as a whole extreamly useful.

Fab bunch of experts.

Q
x

[Gogi]

Hi Etienne,

LGO investigator was very sympathetic to timings of school complaints but yes agree although she was treating it as a priority, no firm time line is given.

The head provided evidence that the mitigating circumstances had affected performance and school work during the weeks of the exams and also provided evidence of academic ability as well as level 5 predictions etc etc…may be she could have done more? Hindsight is a wonderful thing.


Insight into what reasons are given at appeal was for my curiosity and an understanding of what was deemed serious enough, appreciate that the mark would have an impact on the outcome but I do remember the appeals clerk advising me that the mark, whether it be 20 or 2 off the pass mark was irrelevant as long as the reasons were compelling enough?

Onwards and upwards…


Q
x

[Etienne]

Hi Gogi

LGO investigator was very sympathetic to timings of school complaints but yes agree although she was treating it as a priority, no firm time line is given.

As you rightly said earlier on, the LGO is quite thorough, which in itself implies that it will take time (if a job is worth doing ..... ).

I think one of the difficulties is that the LGO rarely knows how easy the investigation into a particular case is going to be.

Factors, such as the speed with which the admission authority responds to requests for information, whether or not the summer holidays interrupt the investigation, etc., can cause delays.

Insight into what reasons are given at appeal was for my curiosity and an understanding of what was deemed serious enough,

I would accept that there's a clear difference between, for example, "father taken into hospital with a heart attack a week or two before the 11+" and "grandparent died a year ago" (the latter being surprisingly common at appeals!), but children react in different ways, and some seem remarkably resilient no matter how serious the circumstances. This is why I think the issue should have more to do with evidence of any impact on the child.

appreciate that the mark would have an impact on the outcome but I do remember the appeals clerk advising me that the mark, whether it be 20 or 2 off the pass mark was irrelevant as long as the reasons were compelling enough?

I've no knowledge of your particular panel, but, generally speaking, I would have thought this advice is wrong. Bucks is a useful example because it's the largest totally selective authority in the country. If you go to
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/appeal ... aneous#e29" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
and scroll down to the table in (f), you can see that - apart from the occasional blip - there is a correlation between the score achieved and the likelihood of a successful appeal. (Bucks provides a good 'sample', because there are over 800 11+ appeals annually. And the same sort of correlation can be seen consistently, year after year.)

In other authorities, all the anecdotal evidence (see Herman's comments further above) seems to be that - as a rule of thumb - the further away from the score required, the harder it becomes to win an appeal.

Onwards and upwards…

Good luck! - hope it works out for you.