11 plus appeal

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Guest

Post by Guest »

Hello Kate,

The process of allocating places goes as follows:

The council admissions team will pass to the school the list of all the children who have applied to that particular school. The list also has on it information relevant to that particular school's admission policy eg whether the child has a sibling at the school, whether they live in the designated area etc. The school then rank the applications in order according to their own admissions policy. The council then send out the offers on 1st March, offering the school which is highest on the parent's preference list which is able to give a place to the child.

Therefore, King's, Grantham, for example would have a ranked list which would have ranked highest (after any Statemented children or looked after children who have an overall priority) all the "in defined area" children in their score order, followed by all the "out of defined area but within 25 miles" children in score order. The PAN number is the "cut off" point on this list which determines who gets offered a place. There may be big variations from year to year in the point at which the cut off number is reached, so in some past years "in defined area" children who had reached the qualifying level of 220 did not get a place because the cut off point came at, for example, 224 for "in defined area" children. In those years "out of defined area" children would not get a look in. This year it is clear that the places will not be filled by "in defined area" children, so the remaining places up to PAN will be offered to "out of defined area" children in score order.

The school, however, when they rank their applicants, will not know what other schools their applicants have applied to and in what order. Therefore, to use my own case as an example, as an out of area child who passed let's say as an example my son is ranked 130th out of 140 (please note I have absolutely no idea what his real ranking would be) - had we placed King's as first choice, he would be offered a place - however we have actually placed it as 3rd choice so unless our first two choices are unable to offer him a place we would not actually be allocated that place by the council who will allocate us our highest ranked school which can offer a place. Therefore, the REAL cut off point is not number 140 on the school's ranked list but somewhere much lower than that.

The school must offer and the council must allocate places to all qualified applicants for whom it is the first choice or highest available choice up to PAN, so yes, out of area qualified applicants will have been given their places before the appeals children even get to make their appeal.

However, it is not true to say that if the PAN has already been filled before appeals that any appeal is doomed to failure. Schools can and do exceed their PAN. If the PAN has not actually been reached if and when you make an appeal, then your appeal will be "one stage" ie. you will only be appealing against the failure to reach the qualifying standard. If however the PAN has already been allocated (or would be if all the appellants were successful) the appeal will be 2 stage, first against the failure to reach the qualifying standard and then, if successful in the first stage, a "balancing" of the prejudice to the school in admitting over its PAN against the prejudice to your child in not actually having a place. Generally schools (foundation ones who handle their own appeals) will try to hear all appeals en bloc so that they can make their decisions on the "prejudice" bit without disadvantaging any appellant by having already allocated a place to another appellant whose hearing preceded theirs.

This seems terribly long-winded!! Hope it covers what you need to know. If you do decide to appeal get all the advice you can on both aspects of a two-stage appeal.

Sara
kate1

Post by kate1 »

Thanks again Sara for such a detailed response, you've been really helpful. Someone told me that this Year Group generally in Lincs is lower than useful, do you have any evidence of this?
Guest

Post by Guest »

Don't have any reliable info on whether the overall standard of this year's cohort is low. Anecdotally have heard bits and pieces which might suggest that boys have done worse than expected but girls much as usual - just hearsay for some areas though!

Sara
SJ
Posts: 171
Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2006 11:14 am
Location: Lincolnshire

Post by SJ »

Anonymous wrote:Don't have any reliable info on whether the overall standard of this year's cohort is low. Anecdotally have heard bits and pieces which might suggest that boys have done worse than expected but girls much as usual - just hearsay for some areas though!

Sara
It would be really interesting to know the general standard of the cohort this year. I have heard various things. For example of the 5 boys and 1 girl in my sons former school that took the 11+ this year, all passed, which is a first for the school. However I hasten to add that these 6 have always been in the top group, always worked well and to some degree were "expected" to pass.(To be honest I hated that expectation and felt it was really unfair on the children) In another local school that I know of, they generally do well and have had a good success rate in the 11+ for quite a few years, but this year failed dismally.
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