The latest chapter in the saga that sees an 11-year boy, alone out of 290 in catchment applicants being excluded from their new school.  Sent not to the next nearest school but to a school on the far side of the city.  Just him in a taxi, at huge expense to both the education budget (around £8,500 per year) not to mention the environment.

On 09.09.21 we wrote to the Local Education Authority asking for Alfie’s appeal to be run again because, as we have been saying for months, there were pretty clearly things wrong with the original appeal that may have led to the majority decision being made differently.  It was only recently that the LA accepted that they were able to order a fresh appeal having previously said they couldn’t. 

We had hoped therefore that they would order a fresh appeal to save time going through the ombudsman system.  Just to remind you, even if the ombudsman recommends a fresh appeal, it’s still up to the Local Education Authority whether to grant one, so we had hoped to cut to the chase.  The less time that Alfie is excluded, the better, or so you would think.

We finally had a response from the Local Education Authority on 23.09.21.  According to them, there is absolutely nothing remotely amiss with anything and they won’t grant a fresh appeal or accept a fresh application.  We disagree, that’s clearly nonsense.

So, we now must go through the ombudsman system and even then, it’s still up to the LEA to choose whether they wish to accept the ombudsman’s recommendation.

Talk about being treated with contempt!

In future updates, we’ll look in detail at the LA’s letter and see if we can spot any untruths, half-truths, evasive answers, or nonsense!  I think it will be more interesting than it sounds.

My favourite part of the LA’s response is that they disclose the notes of the chairman of the appeal panel (who voted in Alfie’s favour) and the other two members who didn’t.  One of the other members disclosed no notes, the other disclosed her notes entirely redacted save for three words.  It doesn’t look as though her notes amount to more than a couple of dozen words in all.  Of the three visible words, one of those is our name, one is completely illegible and the other appears to say “TURP.”

You couldn’t make this up!  I might even share the note in future update in case you don't believe me!

There is clearly no data protection issue and so the panel member just doesn’t want us to see what they have written.  I wonder why that could be? 

The longer this goes on, the more damaging it is for Alfie, the LA genuinely couldn’t care less.  Their letter frankly stretches the truth to an unacceptable degree.

We have some updates coming that I think will be interesting.

Thank you for your support, it’s a huge help to Alfie especially. 

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