Faith and religious criteria

How faith criteria usually work

A school designated with a religious character may give priority on faith grounds, and must set out in its determined arrangements exactly how. In practice that nearly always means measurable proxies rather than judgements about belief:

• Attendance at worship over a defined period — a frequency and a window, both specified
• A supplementary information form signed by a minister, priest or other religious authority, returned by a stated deadline
• Baptism, dedication or equivalent, sometimes with a date requirement
• Ranked faith tiers — for example a first category for one denomination, a second for other Christian denominations, a third for other faiths, then places for children of no faith

Because each of those is a rule with a threshold, each is checkable — and that is where the appeal lives.

What to check

Was your form received, and scored under the right category?

The commonest failure by some distance. Supplementary forms travel separately from the main council application, often to the school rather than the local authority, and they go astray. Establish whether yours arrived, when, and which faith category you were ranked in as a result.

Was the attendance period the published one?

If the arrangements say "at least monthly for the two years before application" then that is the test, and neither a stricter nor a looser one may be substituted. Check the window they actually assessed. Where worship moved online or was suspended, check whether the arrangements say anything about it — many were amended and some were not.

Was the same standard applied to everyone?

Paragraph 3.2 of the Appeals Code requires arrangements to be applied "correctly and impartially". Where one family's evidence was accepted in a form another's was refused in, that is the argument — and it does not require you to show the criterion itself was wrong.

Were you refused solely for not being of the faith?

Paragraph 2.9(b) of the School Admissions Code says an admission authority must not refuse to admit a child solely because they are not of the school's faith. A faith school may rank faith applicants above others where it is oversubscribed — that is lawful and is not the same thing. But if your refusal letter gives "not of the faith" as the reason in itself, that is a direct first-stage point.

One thing worth knowing about faith schools and demand

Faith schools often show fewer first preferences than they have places while still refusing most families who put them first. Families who may not meet the religious criteria rank the school below a safer choice, so the first-preference count understates how contested it is.

This matters for expectations. A faith school can look undersubscribed on the headline figure and still be very hard to get into if you are outside the faith categories. The school pages on this site count both — how many families named the school first, and how many first-choice families it actually turned away.

See how contested a school has been →

What to ask for

• the determined arrangements for your admission year, with the faith criteria in full
• confirmation your supplementary form was received, and when
• which faith category you were ranked in, and why
• how many places were filled under each category, and where the intake ran out — which tells you whether a corrected ranking could actually have secured a place

Restrictions on refusing admission are at paragraph 2.9 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Consultation with the relevant religious body is required at 1.47(f), and determined arrangements must be sent to it under 1.50.

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.
• Distance and catchment How the distance was measured, from where to where, and whether the same method was used for everyone. Measurement disputes are first-stage arguments, and they are checkable in a way most grounds are not.
• 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.
• 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.