Bedfordshire school admission appeals 2005

The admission appeals for all Community or Voluntary Controlled Schools are administered within the Committee Services Group at Bedfordshire County Council. Foundation and Voluntary Aided Schools are responsible for admission to their school and for arranging their own appeals; many of the Foundation and Voluntary Aided Schools in Bedfordshire have chosen not to receive funding for appeals and have asked Committee Services to arrange and clerk appeals for their school.

Lower, middle and upper schools

In 2005 five hundred and forty seven (547) appeals were lodged with the Independent Appeal Panel in relation to lower, middle and upper schools; 410 of these were heard by the Independent Appeal Panel, the remaining 137 appeals were either settled (where a place becomes available for the child at the school) or withdrawn by the parent (where the parent decides they no longer wish to appeal). The table below shows how many appeals were lodged for each type of school and the results.

(Please note that these statistics run from 1st January 2005 to 31 December 2005).

Year	Total received	Upheld	Dismissed	Settled	Withdrawn
2005	547	188	222	106	31
2004	488	173	228	59	28
2003	454	144	219	51	40
2002	367	86	171	79	31

Infant class size appeals

In relation to infant classes, legislation states that no infant class (where children turn 5, 6 or 7 years old) can have more than 30 children in it. If a school exceeds this number they will have to take qualifying measures (employ another teacher and set up a new class to keep class sizes under 30). These appeals are always for a Lower School as Bedfordshire operates a three tier system and children attend a Lower School until the start of Year 5. Other year groups (from year 3 onwards) are not affected by this legislation.

Thirty three Infant Class Size appeals were lodged with the Panel in 2005 of which twenty nine were dismissed, one was upheld and three were settled.

When the appeal panel considers an Infant Class Size appeal (where if they uphold the appeal the school will have to take qualifying measures) they can only uphold the appeal in the following circumstances:

1. If the admission arrangements had been correctly applied the child would have been admitted (i.e. the admission arrangements weren't properly applied and this is the reason the child wasn't admitted to the school).
2. If no reasonable admission authority could have made the decision not to admit the child (i.e. the decision is so perverse that no reasonable authority would have made it).

In all other cases the appeals must be dismissed.

The chart below shows the results of Infant Class Size appeals in 2005.

Previous years

The table below shows the appeal statistics for the last four years (including Infant Class Size appeals).

	Total received	Upheld	Dismissed	Settled	Withdrawn
2005	547	188	222	106	31
2004	488	173	228	59	28
2003	454	144	219	51	40
2002	367	86	171	79	31

For more information please contact the Clerks to the Appeal Panel on 01234 228905 or by email SchoolAppeals@bedscc.gov.uk |