Make your school appeal a class act

Make your school appeal a class act

Tens of thousands of anxious families are this month considering appeals against local authority decisions not to give their child a place at the school of their choice. According to the Department for Education and Skills, 85 per cent of children were given a place at their first-choice school. This means 90,000 families were not, and they now face months of uncertainty.

Parents who decide to fight face an uphill struggle: less than one appeal in three is successful. 'It can be traumatic for parents,' says Penny Bysshe, who runs education consultancy School Guidance. 'They don't know what to expect and it can be horrendous.'

Last month, Brighton and Hove Council became the first local authority to introduce admissions by 'lottery' for its oversubscribed schools after it was revealed that the 'golden halo' around one school - the sought-after Dorothy Stringer, at which pupils gain a place on the basis of distance - had shrunk to one kilometre. Brighton isn't expecting 'random allocation', as the policy which a number of councils are considering is known, to kill off appeals. 'It's a statutory right, and I don't think the position is going to change,' a spokesman said.

So who should consider an appeal, and what do they need to know? Julia Thomas of charity the Children's Legal Centre and former chair of the admissions committee at her local secondary school, says any parent who doesn't get a place should at least think about a challenge: 'What.....continued below

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parents don't understand is what the relevant issues are. They often talk about how suitable their child is to attend a certain school and how good they are. All parents feel that their child is different. That's understandable but, sadly, these aren't relevant factors.'

First consideration should be whether the reason for refusal is oversubscription. 'It isn't as simple as the school saying that they have hit the maximum number in that year,' says Thomas. 'It may be that because of the building and staffing requirements they're able to meet a larger number. Parents tend to miss that point, believing that they are stuck with the school's own case.'

John Chard has sat on hundreds of appeals over nine years as clerk to Brighton and Hove's appeal panel. 'Often parents assume that whatever a school says must be correct, and rely on their personal issues. They miss out on a very important part of the process,' he says.

Chard, who runs an online advice service, School Appeals, advises parents to argue their own case by giving 'essentially the reasons why they picked that school in the first place to form the basis of their appeal'. They should include letters from professionals if there are medical or psychological reasons for a choice. But there are no guarantees: if, for example, a parent asserts that their child has asthma, eczema and nose bleeds, and needs to be close to home or a GP, it won't necessarily be persuasive. 'Normally an authority wouldn't accept this as a legitimate reason to go to one school as opposed to another because they'd assume that any school would be able to cater for it,' says Chard explains. 'Appeals are completely independent and not bound by precedent. Each appeal is considered on its own merits.'