Help with primary in-year admission school appeal
Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2013 4:14 pm
Hi, I'm wondering if any of you can offer any input on in-year primary school appeals please?
We are returning to Gloucestershire after a few years away, DS1 has a secondary place and we are therefore moving our Reception DS2 to a new school. Our nearest school is .2 of a mile from our house i.e. ideal! It currently has a set number of 27 students per class, so is not over infant class size numbers but is restricted on that basis. They have other year groups with 29 and 30 in a class but the school have said that the local authority reassessed and changed their pupil numbers last year - the implication from the school is that they would be happy to accept our son, but it has to go through appeal and the school don't have a choice to be able to accept at this point - it's the LA and appeal panel. At the moment I have written our appeal on a variety of reasons which seem to me wholly reasonable from a family point of view, but might be minor and irritating to an appeal panel. Do any of you have experience of this? There are no special needs issues etc, so I'm merely talking about distance (no other schools within less than two miles walking distance with places available...though it seems the LA admissions team draw a straight line which is less than helpful and would leave us with 2 schools that I'd prefer DS2 not to go to!), settling in the community and having local friends, DS3 will go to his catchment school once he reaches 5 so we would continue to wait for a place for DS2 who would then have attended 3 primary schools - not ideal. The class size limitation seems odd to me since there is lots of space compared to our current primary school which takes numbers above 27.
I'd really appreciate any help anyone might have.
We are returning to Gloucestershire after a few years away, DS1 has a secondary place and we are therefore moving our Reception DS2 to a new school. Our nearest school is .2 of a mile from our house i.e. ideal! It currently has a set number of 27 students per class, so is not over infant class size numbers but is restricted on that basis. They have other year groups with 29 and 30 in a class but the school have said that the local authority reassessed and changed their pupil numbers last year - the implication from the school is that they would be happy to accept our son, but it has to go through appeal and the school don't have a choice to be able to accept at this point - it's the LA and appeal panel. At the moment I have written our appeal on a variety of reasons which seem to me wholly reasonable from a family point of view, but might be minor and irritating to an appeal panel. Do any of you have experience of this? There are no special needs issues etc, so I'm merely talking about distance (no other schools within less than two miles walking distance with places available...though it seems the LA admissions team draw a straight line which is less than helpful and would leave us with 2 schools that I'd prefer DS2 not to go to!), settling in the community and having local friends, DS3 will go to his catchment school once he reaches 5 so we would continue to wait for a place for DS2 who would then have attended 3 primary schools - not ideal. The class size limitation seems odd to me since there is lots of space compared to our current primary school which takes numbers above 27.
I'd really appreciate any help anyone might have.