Spoke to both Slough and Surrey ...
Slough seemed to change tune today and initially told me I should speak to Surrey as am not from Slough but then gave me a bit more time but essentially they still don't know what happened and are still looking into it.
Surrey on the other hand were much clearer today and the person I spoke to read me some email that their superior had sent and basically saying they did send all data in November and Slough picked it up 10 days later but then no one knows what happened. So Surrey are now waiting to hear from Slough about further actions. However, she did mention that as long as the child would have been offered a place if the application had been processed correctly, then either Slough will fix it and get the place sorted or if not then at appeals we can use "maladministration" and the appeal should be upheld. She said the hope is Slough sorts this out now so that we don't have to go through appeals but they will let us know as soon as there is more news. May be tomorrow they will send some communication. They also apologised for all the distress caused and will endeavour to keep us informed.
I’ve had a bit of a discussion with Etienne (our appeals expert) about the appeals process the group of you affected might face, as I expected this to come up, and this was her response.
Parents should certainly keep their options open by going to appeal, but could wait a a week or two to see whether there are any developments. Their appeal deadline is likely to be somewhere around 28th March, but they need to check.
They don't have to write much for an appeal at this stage. If they wish, they can simply put “Full details of case to follow”.
Most appeals are not going to be heard before the end of April or beginning of May at the earliest.
There is nothing to stop parents cancelling an appeal at the last minute if it is no longer needed.
The difficulty they might face at an appeal is the number of children involved.
An appeal panel should have no problem admitting one or two if they would definitely have got a place but for the maladministration.
However, if the number is so large that to admit them all would cause serious prejudice to the school, then, in accordance with the Appeals Code, I'm afraid the panel will be obliged to choose and to admit only the strongest cases. This would inevitably mean taking other factors into account in order to determine which cases are the strongest:
http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/appeal ... -school#c2
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