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Do you have spare time on your hands?
Do you have good listening and questioning skills?
Are you independently minded and able to make decisions?
Would you like to do a worthwhile job for parents, children and schools?
Volunteers are needed to sit on the appeal panels for children who have been unsuccessful in the entrance examination for a place at Heckmondwike Grammar School.
The Department for Children Schools and Families requires schools to advertise every three years for panel members. Panels comprise Lay members (without any experience of education management) and Education members who are independent of the school.
To be eligible as a lay member you must not have been involved in managing or providing education in any school, except in a voluntary capacity or as a school governor, nor be a parent of a child registered at a school. Education members are made up of people not excluded from being a lay member.
The independent appeal panel meets to hear appeals generally in the summer terms and hears and questions the school’s case as to why they have refused a place and the effect on the school of admitting one more child.
They will then hear the parents’ reasons why they want their child to go to the school. The panel’s decision to uphold or dismiss the appeal is binding in law.
Appeals are usually heard in term time during the day but are sometimes held in the evenings during busy periods. Training will be provided. Travel expenses and out-of-pocket expenses are paid, including compensation for time off work.
One appeals panel member said:
“I answered a newspaper advertisement inviting people to sit on the schools admission appeal panels and I have now been a member for approximately three years. During that time I have gained much satisfaction from both the hearing of, and the decision making on the varied number of cases that are brought to appeal."
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