Ombudsman & child's need for a place

[Etienne]

If you had been at the appeal and heard the evidence, from both sides, and had to make a call based on the points of both sides, your money would definitely been on me.

I do sympathise, penelope. If the school case was as you describe, and if I had been there, I think I might well have sided with you. Unfortunately, as I've explained, you will not get anywhere by challenging the panel's judgement.

I'm really concerned about a situation where very few appeals seem to be allowed, even though the school case seems unexceptional, which is why I wish you well. Unfortunately the ombudsman, to the best of my knowledge, will only consider a complaint about an individual appeal.

if they were unsure of how to treat evidence of this type, they should have asked for further information or carried out their own investigations into conditions such as this.

I'm afraid an appeal panel cannot do this. They can only consider the evidence and information presented to them. They do not have an investigative role.

I do not believe that the panel did not properly consider all the arguments which I believe therefore caused an injustice. I do not think they gave the correct amount of weight to the overwhelming medical recommendation

This line of attack would seem to be your best hope, but is there any hard evidence? This is where the clerk's notes might help.

any help or advice would be appreciated (do you think if I am to go down this route and ask the ombudsman to investigate because I dont feel they considered the evidence that was presented to them on the day that I should involve a solicitor?)

You do not need a solicitor. I've already explained the legal situation to you. The ombudsman has the powers of a high court judge, and if he were to accept your complaint, an investigator would be appointed to carry out all necessary enquiries.

Provided you're not querying the panel's judgement, but focus on the process, I think there's a possibility the ombudsman might agree to look into your case. I would be more confident if there were some hard evidence to support your doubts.

[penelope.p]

we only have one private school, and that is not very good.

we have several state school. which are nothing more than adequate.

my daughter gained enough marks from her 11+ to be offered a grammar school place. however our local grammar school, 10 mins away where my other daughter attends, take the very top scorers, and because my daughter didnt gain enough marks (due to the medical condition that we could not have anticipated) she has been offered the 2nd choice school whch is 60 mins away.

she qualified for a grammar school place and is totally deserved of this opportunity. the option of choosing a local comp is not an option she wants to explore. we therefore have to accept this place, but I fear that her health will suffer and she wll be on an unlevel playing field with her peers

[T12ACY]

Am sure this is a non starter but do the school you want have a waiting list that you can put DD on? Unfortunately I understand what capers in particular said. As hard as it sounds the health reasons given were more on why the allocated school was unsuitable than why this one would be the only school suitable.

Whatever the outcome for you I would like to wish you the very best of luck and say that I hope DD gets on ok. Not a very easy situation but on the plus side she has been allocated a GS which many of us have not been able to get

[capers123]

"..in my professional judgment I think her skin problems would be exacerbated by the additional stress of travelling such a long journey twice every day.....suffers motion sickness and I think the anticipation of this would be a major contributory factor with her skin condition. In order to treat her skin condition long term, it is important...to exclude stress and anxiety from her lifestyle if at all possible. In my professional opinion I think...health and welfare would be best served from attending her local Grammar School, Chelmsford County High School for Girls". I presented this letter into evidence on the day of the appeal, after respectfully asking the permission of the panel.

If I'd been on your panel, I would certainly take notice of this statement. However, I would be struggling to know how a medical professional could decide that the local Grammar would be the best for your daughters health and welfare. I would wonder if the consultant had made an examination of all the local schools. I'd also wonder if he'd made a study of comparing the abilities of the children who did gain a place against the ability of your daughter and if she might struggle (and therefore have her medical problems actually get worse).

and a letter from her GP to confirm that it would be entirely probable for a child to have a skin flare up due to the anticipation of the exam, the effects of which could have caused serious distraction to her.

The two phrases 'would be entirely probable for a child' and 'could have caused serious distraction' leapt out at me. Neither state that your child actually had a flare up or was caused serious distraction.

If I had a letter before me stating thatyour child presented to the doctor with an acute flare up the day after the exam (or as soon as an appointment could be made) and that it was very likely that the flare-up had started before the exam, then I would put a lot of weight on that - it's something that would stand up in a court as evidence. A letter saying that it's possible that the child could have had a flare up three or four months earlier is not the same thing - there's nothing there to say that the child did have a flare up.

Quite often letters from doctors & specialists will include something like 'Child x attended my surgery/clinic on 1st November' or have a brief history of appointments.

Of course, I might be barking up the wrong tree and what you've written here isn't quite what the doctor & specialist wrote.

In my area, more children attain the pass mark for each school than there are places. Getting a qualifying score for one school does not mean they've qualified for all the schools, as although the test is the same over the whole county, each school standardises the tests according to its own cohort, and a child may fail for one school yet pass for another.

As for "we have several state school. which are nothing more than adequate." - have you looked round these schools? It may be that they only have an OFSTED report of adequate, but do really well with brighter pupils. It may be that you have to weigh up your daughters medical needs against travelling for one hour.

Our local comp, 5 mins walk further than the grammar, is good for brighter children, has an excellent music department, and is also very good for maths & english. There are children there who play truant, have special needs and are disruptive in class, but these tend not to be in the brighter stream - and for that matter, the grammars also have similar children.

[capers123]

Am sure this is a non starter but do the school you want have a waiting list that you can put DD on?

It may not be such a non-starter as with other schools...

As no appeals were allowed (I assume that no-one else won either), the school will be at PAN, rather than over PAN. If a child leaves then there will be no need to wait until the cohort drops back to pan before admitting from the waiting list (unlike schools where 8 appeals have been allowed, where they have to wait until 8 have left before admitting another).

You may need to ask to be on the waiting list, as it's not connected to appeals at all. The list will no doubt be in the same order as the admissions list, so they will take the child with the next highest qualifying score who has asked to be on the waiting list (assuming that that is the way they allocate places as written in the prospectus, etc).

Good luck.

[hermanmunster]

Capers123 - I agree with your comments about the doctor's letter. Of course the doctor hasn't been round all the schools and assessed the suitability, they may know the school in question - possibly they have a child there. But will not know enough about any school to be able to assess the suitability for the child.

All they can say is in generalities eg travelling distance (hence need to look at other local schools), accessibilty of the site (actually after DDA all schools should be accessible), small class size (maybe for an anxious child) etc etc, but really there are very few medical conditions that would meant that a child would have to go to one school rather than another. The days of "open-air schools" for those with weak chests have long gone.

In this case if distance is the overwhelming issue then it is difficult for someone to say that the school must be local and it must be this particular one when there are other local schools.

[penelope.p]

Thank you for your replies.

The main issue was that my daughter did qualify for a grammar school place and we were appealing for her to get a place at her local grammar school as opposed to the one that was a dsitance away.

The other issue was that her sister currently attends the local grammar school so would be available to assist if she were ill on the way to school.

Of course the reason for not getting 1st school was unusually low scores. My daughter was assessed as level 6 and was achieving "exam condition" scores in verbal reasoning of 96% (although these scores had not been standardised).

On entering the exam we had no reason to think she was "ill" however when she came out she was upset because her skin had been so itchy. I didnt even consider that she would have been so affected that it could have had an impact on her scores. And because we had medication already at home, we used that on her skin and didnt rush to the doctors. However i did visit the doctors and was then referred to the specialist.

Although she has the ability, which we did submit the academic evidence for, the scores, as I said, were way under what she should have achieved which means her place on the waiting list is not near the top.

I thought that a panel had to weigh up the prejudice of both sides, and if the parents could prove that the prejudice to the child would outweigh the prejudice to the school then they would have to find in favour of the parents. I thought that they had to make that decision based on the evidence put before them on the day. Well on the day, the school admitted that they already had provision in place to cope with an extra pupil and that if instructed to take my daighter they could guarantee that no child would suffer as a result. On the other hand, the specialist explained that if she had to make the journey her condition would be exacerbated, she would be seriously disadvantaged and her treatment hindered.

I understand all the points that have been made, but faced with that evidence and testimony, on that day, how could they decide the school would be more prejudiced than my daughter?

[Morning Glory]

I do sympathise with you but I tend to agree that although you feel your evidence was strong it was not quite strong enough.

We had a very complex appeal earlier in the year for non-qualification. We were aware that our chances of winning the appeal were extremely low. We did win and I believe it was due to some very strong evidence. DS has Asperger and he is an extremely anxious child, this however was not something we were using as part of our case. It does states in most of his medical reports about his anxieties so the panel would have been aware but we did not mention this as being a reason for him under performing. However, in the appeal documents an invigilators report had been filed by the school outlining an incident that happened in the exam room (he was tested seperately with one other child) and how out of character he had been on the day of the exam. We had no idea about this report but I believe it carried a lot of weight as it was filed independently by the school, as it left the panel in no doubt how anxious and stressed my son had been on the day (in fact I found the report extremely hard to read). We also had evidence that when the school had adjusted the way he answered his CATS paper his percentile score went from 50th percentile to 95th percentile. In addition the higher percentile score were consistent in both Year 5 & Year 6 and also consistent with his Education Psychology assessment scores - so no doubt again that his ability was on the 95th percentile range.

Getting this kind of evidence is not always easy or possible but with so many people appealing, I suppose they have to look at cases where the evidence leaves no room for doubt.

Hope you find a solution.

MG

[cairo]

My son also suffers from eczema and travel sickness (although these were not points I mentioned in his recent appeal) so I do sympathise with you and know how distressing they both can be.

I don't know if you have tried the "motion sickness bands" that you can buy from the chemist's to help with your DD's travel sickness? I have found they are the only thing that help with my DS1. You have to be very particular about putting them on correctly (they work by pressing down on a pressure point between the veins in the forearm) but then do the trick. Even better they are drug-free too!

As for the eczema, if you're like us, you'll probably find that one course of drugs/steroid creams seem to work for a bit, then they don't and you need to adjust to something different. It's a constant battle.

Does your DD also suffer from food allergies, asthma and/or hay fever? Often these conditions are related and if so, you might benefit from a consultation with an Allergy Specialist, who can perhaps suggest a more holistic form of treatment?

I do hope that now that you have had a few days to digest what must have been bad news for you, you can now take a deep breath and be positive about your second choice school. I strongly recommend the motion sickness bands, so do give them a go, if you haven't already.

[Rob Clark]

Penelope, I do sympathise with you as we had an appeal turned down last year which was based on medical evidence as an extenuating circumstance. Like you we felt that not only did the panel not really understand our case, but they spent virtually no time at all on examining the supporting medical evidence we had provided and their questions about our DD’s condition and its likely impact on academic performance seemed to indicate a worryingly poor grasp of the salient points. I’m still pretty mad about it 1 year on.

All that said, however, our experience over the last year completely backs up what Capers says:

It may be that they only have an OFSTED report of adequate, but do really well with brighter pupils. It may be that you have to weigh up your daughters medical needs against travelling for one hour.

DD is at the local secondary modern, to which she can walk, and they are keen to push the brighter pupils on and the top sets are doing work which is at least on a par with what DS’s highly academic boys’ GS did in Y7. The top sets also take triple science, which DD was particularly keen to do. It is true to say that DD has to do extension work at home as the classwork doesn’t always stretch her sufficiently, but if your DD is the type who will happily (or at least relatively happily ) do this, the school are very supportive and always willing to suggest ways to extend or expand her learning.

We have been so happy with the local school that we (as a family) decided not to put DD through the 12+ and risk exacerbating her medical condition, and we haven’t had any cause to regret that decision. Hope things work out for your DD too.