School Admissions to Secondary Schools
This article explains the law and procedure for appealing if your child has been refused a place at the secondary school of your choice.
Q. I have been unable to get my 11 year old into the secondary school of my choice, how do I know that I have been treated fairly?
Parents are entitled to express a preference for a particular school, but this does not guarantee their child a place at the preferred school. There are four circumstances when parents will not be offered a place at the school of their choice:
- When the school is already full
- The school selects children on ability, e.g. a grammar school, and the child fails the aptitude test
- The child has already been permanently excluded from two schools within the last two years
- Where there are co-ordinated admission arrangements in place within the county
Q. What happens if the school is full?
This is the most common reason why parents are refused a place. When it occurs, the relevant ‘Admission Authority’ (which is usually the LEA or the governors if it a foundation or voluntary aided school), should apply the school’s published admissions criteria.
Parents should read through the criteria and check that the criteria have been correctly applied. In most cases the Admission Authorities get it right but I can recall some cases where mistakes are made inadvertently. This provides good grounds for parents to appeal to the Admissions Appeal Panel.
Some Admissions Authorities have waiting lists. The priority for ranking in the list depends on the admission criteria. This means that if another child meets more of the criteria than your own, they will be placed higher up the waiting list, even if they applied to the school after you.
Q. How do I appeal to the Admissions Appeal Panel?
When you receive the decision letter advising you have not got a school place, you should write to the ‘Admissions Authority’. The decision letter should inform you of the last date for sending off your notice of appeal. The hearing will take place in a neutral location. The Appeal Panel consists of three members. You are allowed to present your appeal any way you want. I would strongly recommend that you turn up in person to speak at the appeal. Parents are allowed
to be represented by a lawyer, or to be accompanied by a friend.
In your appeal you need to show that the admission criteria were wrongly applied and, had they been correctly applied, your child would have been offered a place. For example, the distance from home-to-school could have been miscalculated, or the fact there is a sibling in the school overlooked.
It is not enough for the school to say that it is full. It will have to show that admitting your child would cause prejudice to other pupils. You should look at class sizes in the previous years to compare the numbers. If there have been higher numbers of pupils in previous years this is a good indication that the school could cope with an additional pupil in the next academic year.
Q. The local education authority has offered my child at another school with a poor reputation, do I have to accept their offer?
You are not obliged to send your child to the school but you must take care that you are not left without a place at all. Parents are also allowed to select a school place in another local education authority’s area. Before doing this you should check the admissions criteria for the schools and find out whether a school is over-scribed. If you are offered a place at a school in another county you will probably be responsible for meeting the cost of transport. If the child has a Statement
of Special Educational Needs and an out-of county school is named in Part 4 of the Statement, the LEA will usually be responsible for meeting the transport costs, subject to any agreement made with the parent to the contrary.
Q. My child had special educational needs, will this affect his ability to get into the school of my choice?
Children with special educational needs but without statements must be treated the same as everyone else. Their applications cannot be refused just because the Admission Authority considers that the school cannot cater for their special educational needs.
When a statemented child transfers from primary school to secondary school, the LEA should normally have identified a suitable secondary school by the February of the same year the child is due to start the new school. Sometimes if parents and the LEA cannot agree on a suitable school, it is not possible to comply with the time limit. Once a school has been named in a Statement, the school cannot refuse to admit the pupil.
Q. What will happen if my child hasn’t got a school place in September?
Thankfully this situation is very rare in Suffolk, although it can present a problem in some of the highly populated London Boroughs. Parents should contact the local education authority for assistance with finding alternative school places. Parents must remember that it is their responsibility to ensure their child receives full-time education and should take responsibility for applying to other schools.
The situation is different for children with statements of special educational needs. The law makes the local education authority responsible for providing the education provision that is outlined in Part 3 of the child’s Statement. The local education authority must provide the specified provision, even if the child is not in school.