Can I appeal if I didn’t get a place through admissions?

Every year since opening, we have been oversubscribed. We understand there are many parents who passionately want their child to have a place at XP. However, as a school with a deliberate size of 50 students per year, we cannot allocate places for all children that apply.

Our oversubscription method for allocating places is a random selection. We can think of no fairer way of doing this. Our whole admissions process is carried out independently by the Local Authority.

If you have not been allocated a place through the admissions process, your child will be placed on our waiting list. If a place becomes available, then the Local Authority will apply our admissions policy and if oversubscribed, will allocate this place randomly from the waiting list.

This ensures every child has just as much chance as every other child, which is the fundamental basis of our policy.

Every parent has a right to appeal an admissions decision, and you will be notified by the Local Authority how to do this.

Unfortunately, as we are a deliberately small school, we have a specific amount of 50 places each year, and no more. Everything about our school is designed around this number; our school building, our classrooms, our curriculum and countless logistical systems.

We believe our admissions policy, being based on a random process carried out independently of the school by the Local Authority is the fairest way possible we can allocate these places.

As such, we do not know of any reason a parent could give to prove that what we do is not fair and carried out correctly.

Above this, we see any parent trying to use the appeals process to bias this fair and correct process as being totally unfair to the school, to the students that have been allocated a place, and to the parents who respect our admissions policy by accepting the admissions process and stay on our waiting list without appealing.

Our school would be severely hampered by an appeal allowing more than our Pupil Admission Number. Therefore we will protect our school and admissions policy as rigorously as possible and as a Trust, and we are willing to use all legal avenues possible to do this, including the High Court.

While we understand the disappointment parents feel if they are not allocated a place, we ask all parents to respect our admissions policy and accept the admission decision.