We have today received our appeal date. The GS we are appealing for has 7 spare places to meet it's role number and usually takes 2 above this.However 2 days before our appeal we are to meet at the venue with the other parents, the panel and reps from the school who will put the case that the school cannot accept any more pupils. We are to wait for the panels answer before we leave. I enquired as to whether our date for our appeal was merely academic ie. if the panel came out on the side of the school and was told not to worry as the school was not full! Can anyone shed any light and am I being a complete cynic by thinking that the panel may come back and say that although the school does not have to take enough students to fill the empty places it is obliged to take, say 3 or 4. Hence the school will not be forced to take any Tom,Dick or Harriet(it's a girls school!) just to fill places.

I think what you have is a "grouped multiple appeal". See para 3.11 and 3.12 of the Appeals Code:

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/sacode/downloads ... 060309.pdf

Mike

Your appeal will certainly go ahead, unless the panel decides at stage 1 that the school has failed to make its case, and that all appellants can be offered a place!

See also:
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/11plus ... ers.php#c1[quote]More often than not, the admission authority is able to satisfy the panel that it has a case, and the appeal moves on to “Stage 2â€

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Etienne

Dear Tillytonk,
As the school has not filled 7 of its places the appeals must all be non-qualification appeals. There are then two possibilities - either there are fewer appellants than there are places available, so that any one getting through the non-qualification hurdle will automatically get a place, or there are more appellants than there are places available, in which case if more were to be successful in their appeal against non-qualification than there are places available, then the panel would have to consider whether the school would be prejudiced by taking any further (qualified) pupil(s).

The points put forward in the LA/School's case for prejudice should make it clear to you what the position is - you will receive the documents containing this a week or more before the hearing. However, you could ring the legal team beforehand and ask whether you will be appealing only against non-qualification or against possible oversubscription as well.
It sounds likely from the response to your previous call that they may not be expecting the school to be oversubscribed even if all the appellants were to be successful.

The school will inevitably be found to be "prejudiced" at the group hearing, simply because all the appellants are not qualified. Then each case will be decided on its own merits (the panel will not have a "quota" of 3 or 4 that it will let through - it could be everybody or nobody; it depends entirely on the strength of each individual case).

Were there to be more than 7 people successful in their appeal against non-qualification AND the panel had decided at stage 1 in the group appeal that the school would be prejudiced by taking any more qualified pupils, then the panel would also have to consider for each appellant whether their need for the school and the harm or "prejudice" to the child of not getting a place would outweigh the prejudice to the school in taking extra pupil(s) and they would have to rank them in order of which cases they found most compelling - the top 7 would then automatically get a place and those ranked lower might or might not depending on the balancing of the prejudice to them and to the school.

I hope this clarifies things rather than confusing you!

Alex is right to point out that, with unfilled places, non-qualification must be a issue.

I suspect that oversubscription is also a possibility, otherwise it's unlikely they would have a group hearing. (For non-qualification only it's hardly worth having a group hearing just to state "The qualifying score was not achieved.")

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Etienne

Yes thank you all for your replies. I have spoken to the legal team this am and they have confirmed that yes the panel will probably find in favour of the school, in as much that if they took all 17 appealants they would then be over full. However we will then go on to individual appeals and see how we go from there. It is also not in the school interest financially to have fewer pupils than places.So the results will probably be that between 7 and 9 applicants will be succesful. We will keep our fingers tightly crossed. Thank you again.

That shoud of coure read appellants!! Stress??

deffo - but the rehab forum is very good for stress....

Sorry to bang on but am I now correct in thinking that as well as presenting a case regarding non-qualification I should also be sddressing over subscription as well? There are 7 places free at the GS but 17 appeals are being heard. If so will it run along the lines of why it would be a greater prejudice against my daughter to deny her a place than it would be against the school and other pupils to admit 1 more??

reading back over all the advise that is exactly what it says!! Now I feel that I must construct a whole other case as well as the one I have worked on for the past 7 months!! Has anyone any idea what I can put against over subscription.I will of course point out that at present the school is not full.