unsuccessful Bucks review: Equality Act

[Etienne]

Dear Rho

The notes are certainly much more detailed than any we have seen so far - but these are not the clerk's contemporaneous notes. What you have is the pro-forma (or spreadsheet) that has been typed up later.

You are best placed to comment on the medical inaccuracies, so I'll focus on the academic evidence.

The review panel say there's no evidence from the head that he was expected to pass - but the head clearly rated him as a '2' ("highly recommended for grammar school").

If their own words are to be believed, the panel were looking for ' high flyers' - whereas I would have thought they should have been looking for pupils of 'grammar school standard'. It's obviously a matter of definition, but 'high flyer' to me suggests something more. Were all the review panels using this newly formulated criterion? If not, where was the consistency?

In addition to the headteacher's support, you now have the summary in the report you commissioned: "X could reasonably have been expected to qualify for grammar school". I would quite simply emphasise this comment - and also point out that you are now aware of strategies that can be employed in future that will help him (regular use of a laptop, etc.).

How he is going to cope should not be a matter for the appeal panel, but there are certainly children at grammar school who receive extra support for their particular needs, and who achieve well.

If your appeal were to succeed, I suggest you go and talk to the SENCO at one or two of the grammar schools you're interested in to discuss any concerns you have. I think you could find such a meeting reassuring.

[Rho40]

Well, we had our appeal hearing on Tuesday and received the letter today to say that the appeal had been successful.

I wanted to say a big thank you to Etienne and others for help in preparing our case.

I don't know if there are still people awaiting for their appeals, but if so, we found
- most of the time was spent on the issue of whether the selection review was fair or not, they wanted lots of detail.
- they seemed to accept our argument that 2 weeks was not enough time to gather additional academic evidence
- we found in the pact of paperwork sent to us in advance of the appeal that the selection review panel had documents which we did not know existed. We claimed that we would have prepared our selection review case differently if we had seen them.
- the admissions authority representative asked us to reflect on whether a child with a disability would be able to cope in a challenging grammar school environment. I swallowed my anger at this, and used it as a prompt to talk about how he rises to the challenge.

So, now we appear to be on the waiting list for a grammar school that he would have been allocated a place at if the selection review panel had come to a fair decision, so I need to find the thread here to help with that one ....

Rho

[Rho40]

DS has a twin who did pass his 11+ and was allocated a place at our chosen GS on 1 March. I really would prefer not to have to go through that again. My hands shook throughout the whole thing!

[Alex]

Great news Rho

[Mostlymum]

That's brilliant Rho! Congratulations

I am however speechless at the comment by the AA rep, how you managed to keep your temper I'm amazed, what appalling ignorance and prejudice.

[Rho40]

It appears that we weren't added to a waiting list as I first thought......

We have received a letter inviting us to an over subscription appeal hearing on 10 July. This despite the IAP overturning the selection review panel decision.

Given that our chosen grammar is already full (allocated no places in this weeks allocation round), and our appeal hearing is after the final allocation round, having won the appeal process seems rather academic now.

Is there anything we can do to get added to the waiting list and avoid the over subscription appeal?

[Marylou]

The waiting list and oversubscription appeal are separate processes, so it's a good idea to go for both. As I see it, since you can argue that the child you are applying for will have a sibling at the school (the twin) then this should prioritize your case ahead of non-catchment applicants without sibling.* Bearing in mind that most applicants on the waiting list are probably OOC and non-siblings, asking to be added to the list would be a smart move. The only applicants with higher priority are likely to be in-catchment late applicants or qualification appeal successes like yourself, or possibly OOC siblings living closer to the school.

Your place on the waiting list does not affect the outcome of any appeal. I strongly suspect that an appeal panel would be very sympathetic anyway, so it's certainly worth going down that route as well. Best to keep all the options open.

*This is always assuming that sibling priority will be granted if the other sibling is not at the school at the time of application. Does anyone know?

[Rho40]

Thanks Marylou
We phoned Admissions on Friday to be added to the waiting list which isn't a problem.
Later in the day we received confirmation by email that the sibling rule can't apply (because the twin hasn't started) and the multiple birth policy cannot be applied retrospectively.
Having gone through all the preparation and stress of the qualification appeal, it all seems like a waste of time now. We are very disappointed.
Rho

[Guest55]

the multiple birth policy cannot be applied retrospectively

.

I think the fact that your child should have got through the review and have been treated as 'qualified' in the first round of allocations and would have been given a place at the school is a powerful argument.

[Marylou]

So sorry to hear they can't apply either the sibling or the twins rules. It's probably not much comfort, but this might mean that sibling priority presumably would apply once the other twin starts at the school, and the waiting list should remain open after term has started.

Having said that,

the multiple birth policy cannot be applied retrospectively

.

I think the fact that your child should have got through the review and have been treated as 'qualified' in the first round of allocations and would have been given a place at the school is a powerful argument.

We were in a similar situation with a "non-qualifying" sibling according to the rules at the time, and found the appeal panel to be extremely sympathetic. I suspect your case is even stronger than ours was, because of the point G55 makes - your review was not fair/consistent/objective, and your son lost out on a place as a result. Also the fact that he is a twin - the panel might ask how your other son feels about the fact that his brother was not given a place. Our transfer appeal report is in the "Feedback" section (2009! )

It's hard to be faced with yet another hurdle when you've been through so much already, but it's worth going for.