Distance and catchment

What to check, in order

1. Which method were they supposed to use?

The determined admission arrangements have to state it. The common ones are not interchangeable and routinely give different answers:

• Straight line ("as the crow flies") — a direct measurement between two points, ignoring roads entirely.
• Shortest walking route — along paths and roads, which depends heavily on which paths the authority's software counts as walkable.
• Shortest available route — a variant that may include or exclude footpaths, alleyways and crossings.

Get the arrangements for your admission year and check which is specified. Then check that is the one they actually used.

2. Which two points did they measure between?

This is where errors cluster, because "your home" and "the school" are less obvious than they sound. Arrangements typically specify a precise point at each end — the address point of the property from the national address database, or a seed point, or the main pedestrian gate, or the centre of the site. A measurement taken to the wrong gate of a split-site school can move a family several places in the ranking.

Worth establishing:

• which point at your home, and whether it matches your property record
• which point at the school, particularly where there is more than one entrance or more than one site
• whether flats in one building are treated as sharing a point, and how they are then tie-broken

3. Was the same method used for everyone?

The Appeals Code requires arrangements to have been applied "correctly and impartially" (paragraph 3.2). If your distance was measured one way and other applicants' another — a manual override, a different software run, a different school access point — that is the point to make, regardless of whether the method itself was reasonable.

4. Was your address right on the day?

Distance is calculated from the address held at the time places were ranked. Families who moved between applying and offer day, or who have a genuinely disputed address, should check which one was used and against what evidence. Where a school suspects a fraudulent or intentionally misleading address it may withdraw an offer, but the application must then be considered afresh with a fresh right of appeal.

Catchment areas

A catchment is a defined area, not a promise. Two things follow, and both surprise people:

• Living in catchment does not guarantee a place. Where more in-catchment children apply than there are places, the criteria below catchment — usually siblings, then distance — decide who gets in. Being refused despite living in catchment is normal and is not itself a ground.
• A panel cannot redraw a boundary. If you think the boundary is irrational or the arrangements breach the Code, the panel must refer that to the local authority and the admission authority (Appeals Code 3.4), and objections to admission arrangements go to the Schools Adjudicator — but neither route gets your child a place this year.

What is arguable: that your address was placed in the wrong catchment, or that the boundary was applied to you differently from how it is published. That is the same first-stage point as a mis-measurement.

If the measurement was right

Then this ground is closed, and the honest thing is to say so. Your appeal does not end there — it moves to the second stage, where the panel weighs the harm to the school of admitting another child against your case for this school specifically. That is a different argument and it is made differently: medical and social need sets out what actually carries weight there.

One thing that does not help at either stage: how long the journey to the allocated school is, unless you can tie it to something concrete about your child rather than about the distance itself.

What the published data can and cannot tell you

This site publishes how many families named each school as their first choice and how many were offered places, 2026/27 and the 11 years before it. That tells you how contested a school is, which is useful context for how tight the cut-off is likely to have been.

It does not include last year's cut-off distance. Nobody publishes those centrally — they appear, when they appear at all, in each council's composite prospectus and each school's own determined arrangements. Ask the admission authority directly for the last distance offered in your year; they must comply with reasonable requests for information you need to prepare (Appeals Code 2.8).

Find how contested a school has been →

The other grounds

• Infant class size Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 are capped at 30 pupils per teacher by law. A panel can only overturn a refusal on three narrow grounds, and how much your child needs the place is not one of them.
• A mistake in how the decision was made The strongest ground there is, and the most underused. If the admission arrangements were unlawful or were applied wrongly — and you would have got a place otherwise — the panel must uphold the appeal.
• Siblings Whether a brother or sister counts is decided by the school's own definition, not by common sense. Half-siblings, step-siblings, fostered children and a sibling in the sixth form are treated differently by different schools.
• Faith and religious criteria Faith schools rank applicants on evidence of practice — attendance records, a form signed by a minister, baptism dates. Most faith appeals turn on whether that evidence was gathered and scored the way the published arrangements say.
• Medical and social need The ground most parents lead with, and it is a second-stage argument almost every time. It works when it shows what this school can do for your child that the allocated school cannot — not how much you want it.
• Special educational needs without an EHC plan A child on SEN support has no automatic route to a named school, and it is an admission panel that hears the case — not the SEND Tribunal. It works as a second-stage argument about provision this school has and the allocated one does not.
• A late application Two first-stage questions a panel can act on: whether it was right to treat your application as late at all, and whether your reason for being late is one the published arrangements say must be accepted anyway.
• In-year admissions Applying outside the normal round — a house move, or a school that is not working out. The ordinary two-stage test applies on a much shorter timetable, and the year group will usually already be full.
• Grammar schools and the 11-plus A selection appeal and an oversubscription appeal are different things judged on different tests. If your child missed the qualifying score, the panel is asking whether they are of the required academic standard — not whether the school has room.
• Sixth form places Post-16 admission runs on published entry requirements as well as oversubscription criteria, and the student gains a right of appeal of their own alongside their parents'. Where the refusal was about grades, the panel may not form its own view of the student's ability.
• Twins and multiple births Where one twin is offered a place and the other refused, the excepted-pupil rule can admit the second over the infant class size limit rather than separate them. Above the infant years the limit falls away and it becomes an ordinary sibling or second-stage argument.