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My daughter failed to get into our first choice of school, which also happened to be the catchment school and feeds from her current junior school. To make maters worse she didn't get into our second choice of school either, also a school that took feeds from her current junior school. We have now been allocated a place in a school miles away and one that we hadn't even considered let alone visited. As you can imagine this is very stressful for us and my daughter who will be seperated from all her friends...

We've requested an appeal and have now been sent the admision appeal form to complete. According to the letter we have 14 days from the date of the letter to respond. This is not easy given the fact the letter took 4 days to arrive with us from it's written date now leaving us with 10 days to form a case and get the letter back to them. This doesn't give us a great deal of time to investigate and put an appeal together that has a chance of succeeding, especially given both of us work full time and we spend our evenings doing masses of SAT's homework with our daughter!

Apologies for the long waffle but now for my question - how much of the appeal do you need to get onto the initial appeal sheet? Can we put the main points on it and expand on these later once I've had more time to investigate further? Or is it a case that whatever we put down forms our appeal and that's it?

Also is there a way of getting in writing why we were refused entry into the catchment school? We've only received a letter stating we we not sucessful, it doesn't explain why. Subsequent phone calls have confirmed it was due to over subscription and distance however we have had nothing in writting.

Any help or advice gratefully received as this is not the most straightforward thing to understand.

Regards,
Graham

Hi Graham, from our experience last year, the main part of the appeal proccess is the actual day you go in front of the appeal panel, to be honest I am not even sure they looked at our appeal letter before we went in there as they did not seem aware of our situation at all. Plus after you send in the appeal letter you can add other evidence etc as and when, you just send it in and ask it to be added to your file.
I dont think they are allowed to give out more info than that it is oversubscribed, perhaps ask around and see if anyone who lives further away than you got in!
Have you checked the waiting lists, they do move an awful lot in the first month and many people find they get in before the appeal date anyway.
I really hope all goes well for you, sounds like you have a good case, good luck and fingers crossed for you!!