Grammar schools and the 11-plus

First: which of the two appeals is yours?

Paragraph 3.11 of the Appeals Code sets out why this matters. Designated grammar schools are permitted to select on the basis of academic ability, and there are two models: some admission authorities offer places to those who score highest, others set a pass mark and then apply oversubscription criteria to those applicants that reach the required standard.

At a highest-score school there is no oversubscription appeal to have. The score is the ranking, and refusal always means your child was not high enough on it. At a pass-mark school the two are separable, and a child who reached the standard but was refused on distance or on a sibling criterion is in an ordinary appeal that has nothing to do with the test.

Your refusal letter should tell you which. Paragraph 2.5 of the Appeals Code requires it to include the reason why admission was refused. If it does not make the basis clear, ask the admission authority to confirm in writing which of the two your appeal is being heard on — the answer decides what your entire case should be about.

Where to find the model in writing: paragraph 1.17 of the Admissions Code requires the admission authorities for all selective schools to publish the entry requirements for a selective place and the process for such selection in their admission arrangements. That document is the starting point for every argument below.

The selection appeal: what the panel must be satisfied of

Paragraph 3.13 of the Appeals Code is written for exactly the case where "the appellant believes that the child did not perform at their best on the day of the entrance test". It splits on one question: has your admission authority already run a local review?

Where there was no local review — paragraph 3.13(a)

The panel must only uphold the appeal if it is satisfied of both of these:

1. That there is evidence to demonstrate that the child is of the required academic standards — and the Code gives its own examples: school reports giving Year 5 or Year 6 SAT results, or a letter of support from the child's current or previous school clearly indicating why the child is considered to be of grammar school ability.
2. Where applicable, that your arguments outweigh the admission authority's case that admission of additional children would cause prejudice. So a school that is genuinely full can still defeat an appeal in which the academic evidence was accepted.

Read the Code's own examples again, because they tell you who has to write your case. Both are documents produced by a school. Not by you, not by a private tutor, and not by a psychologist you commissioned — those are not excluded, but they are not what the Code points the panel at.

A practical note on the first example. The Key Stage 2 national curriculum tests are sat in May of Year 6, after National Offer Day and often after the appeal has been heard, so for a Year 7 appeal what a primary school can actually supply in the spring is its own assessment and teacher assessment data rather than national test results. Ask for what the school has, in writing, with the comparison to national expectations spelled out — that is the substance the Code's example is reaching for.

Where a local review was run — paragraph 3.13(b)

This is the sentence that changes what your appeal should say, and most parents in review areas have never seen it. Paragraph 3.12 describes the process: some admission authorities for grammar schools operate a local review to determine whether children who have, for example, failed the entrance test ought to be deemed of grammar school standard. It is completed before places are allocated, so those children can be considered alongside everyone else — and paragraph 3.12 is explicit that it does not replace a parent's right of appeal.

But it changes the appeal completely. Where a local review process has been followed, paragraph 3.13(b) says the panel must only consider whether each child's review was carried out in a fair, consistent and objective way. If there is no evidence that it has been, the panel must then follow the process at 3.13(a) instead.

What you can require them to give you before the hearing, and why asking late is the commonest self-inflicted wound: Getting the information you need

Test administration: the genuinely winnable first-stage route

Everything above asks a panel to form a view. This section asks it to check a document against what happened, which is a much better position to be in, and it is where the winnable grammar appeals mostly are. The Admissions Code puts real requirements on how a selection test is designed, run and reported.

• The test itself. Paragraph 1.31 of the Admissions Code requires tests for all forms of selection to be clear, objective, and give an accurate reflection of the child's ability or aptitude, irrespective of sex, race, or disability, and requires the test to be a true test of aptitude or ability.
• Accessibility and reasonable adjustments. Paragraph 1.32(b) requires admission authorities to ensure tests are accessible to children with special educational needs and disabilities, having regard to the reasonable adjustments for disabled pupils required under equalities legislation. If you asked for an adjustment and did not get it, or got a different one from the one agreed, that is a documented failure rather than an impression.
• Aptitude tests must test aptitude only. Paragraph 1.32(a) requires tests for aptitude in a particular subject to be designed to test only for aptitude in that subject, and not for ability.
• Results before the closing date. Paragraph 1.32(c) requires admission authorities to take all reasonable steps to inform parents of the outcome of selection tests before the 31 October closing date for secondary applications, so parents can make an informed choice — while making clear that this is not a guarantee of a selective place.
• Scores must not be adjusted. Paragraph 1.33 says admission authorities must not adjust the score achieved by any child in a test to take account of oversubscription criteria, such as having a sibling at the school.
• Siblings at a highest-score school. Paragraph 1.9(j) says that in designated grammar schools that rank all children according to a pre-determined pass mark and then allocate places to those who score highest, arrangements must not give priority to siblings of current or former pupils.
• Looked after and previously looked after children. Paragraph 1.20 of the Admissions Code requires that where arrangements are not based solely on highest scores, the admission authority must give priority in its oversubscription criteria to all looked after and previously looked after children who meet the pre-set standards of the ability test. Paragraph 1.19 disapplies that priority where the arrangements admit only the highest scorers.

What makes these worth pursuing is that they are first-stage arguments under paragraph 3.2 of the Appeals Code — whether the arrangements complied with the Admissions Code, and whether they were correctly and impartially applied to your child. Under paragraph 3.5(a) the panel must uphold an appeal where they were not and your child would have been offered a place if they had been. No balancing and no discretion.

That second limb still applies, and here it is unusually concrete: you have to be able to say that with the problem corrected, your child would have been inside the number. Ask what the qualifying score was, how many children reached it, how many places there were, and where your child sat.

The wider version of this argument, and the second limb of 3.5(a) where most first-stage points die: A mistake in how the decision was made

If the adjustment your child needed is connected to special educational needs: Special educational needs without an EHC plan

The oversubscription appeal, if that is the one you are in

If your child reached the qualifying standard and was refused because there were more qualifying children than places, the test is the ordinary one. Paragraph 3.1 of the Appeals Code requires panels to follow the two-stage process for all appeals except infant class size, and a grammar school oversubscription appeal is not an exception to it.

• First stage — paragraphs 3.2 and 3.5. Whether the arrangements complied with the Admissions Code and Part 3 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, and whether they were correctly and impartially applied to your child. At a selective school the arrangements include the published entry requirements and selection process required by paragraph 1.17 of the Admissions Code.
• Prejudice — paragraphs 3.3 and 3.10. Whether admitting additional children would prejudice efficient education or the efficient use of resources, with the admission authority required to demonstrate prejudice over and above the fact that the published admission number has been reached.
• Second stage — paragraph 3.8. The panel balances the prejudice against your case, taking into account your reasons for preferring the school including what it can offer your child that the allocated or other schools cannot.

In other words: everything on the rest of this site is yours, and the selection material above is not. The one thing to hold on to is that your child having qualified is a fact in the papers rather than an argument — every other appellant in the room qualified too.

If the intake ran out on distance, how it was measured is checkable: Distance and catchment

How a second-stage case is built so it is an argument rather than a description: Medical and social need

Partially selective and banded schools

Two neighbouring cases, because people arrive here with them and they are not grammar school appeals.

Partially selective schools select a proportion of their intake by ability. Paragraph 1.21 of the Admissions Code requires them to publish the entry requirements for a selective place and the process for such selection, and to offer places to other children if there are insufficient applicants who have satisfied the published entry requirements. Paragraph 1.22 says they must not exceed the lowest proportion of selection used since the 1997/98 school year. Paragraph 1.24 caps selection by aptitude at 10% of the total intake and lists the only specialist subjects it may be used for.

Banded schools are not selecting the ablest — paragraph 1.25 describes banding as a way of producing an intake with a proportionate spread of abilities. Paragraph 1.26 requires entry requirements for banding to be fair, clear and objective; 1.27 requires the admission requirements, the process and details of any tests to be published; and 1.28 is the one to check, because where the school is oversubscribed priority must not be given within bands according to the applicant's performance in the test, and looked after and previously looked after children must be given top priority in each band. A banded school that ranked within a band by score has breached 1.28, and that is a first-stage point.

One general limit worth knowing in all three cases. Paragraph 1.9(d) of the Admissions Code says admission arrangements must not introduce any new selection by ability. Selection is permitted only for designated grammar schools, schools with partially selective arrangements already in place in 1997/98, and school sixth forms.

Sixth form entry requirements are a different thing again, with their own paragraph and their own right of appeal: Sixth form places

Being realistic, and what to do instead

Across England 20.1% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 17,813 of 88,831 appeals heard in 2024–2026. That is a national figure covering every secondary appeal heard in England. The Department for Education publishes appeal outcomes by council and by phase — primary, secondary and infant class size — and by nothing else, so there is no published success rate for grammar school appeals or for selection appeals at any level, none for any individual school, and nothing here is a forecast about your case.

If your child did not reach the standard, no local review found otherwise, no school will write that they are of grammar school ability, and nothing went wrong with how the test was run — then the honest answer is that this appeal is very unlikely to succeed, and the next few weeks are better spent elsewhere:

• Appeal for the non-selective schools you were refused. You have a right of appeal for every school you applied to and were refused, and those appeals are heard on the ordinary two-stage test where your child's circumstances actually count.
• Stay on the waiting lists. Paragraph 2.15 of the Admissions Code requires a list to run until at least 31 December of the school year, re-ranked on the published oversubscription criteria every time a child is added, and never ordered by when you applied.
• Ask about later entry. Some selective schools admit into other year groups and test separately for them. Paragraph 3.15 of the Appeals Code covers the in-year applicant where no assessment has taken place, so a route exists — and paragraph 5.3 lets you apply for a place at the same school for a later academic year with a fresh right of appeal if that application fails.
• Check the test administration list once more. It is the only part of this page where a panel has no discretion, and it is checkable against documents you are entitled to ask for.

Why the list is often the better of the two routes, and the two rules councils get wrong: Waiting lists, and when they beat an appeal

Appealing for the grammar school and the others at the same time, and the trade-off in doing so: Appealing for more than one school

Deadlines

Set by the admission authority, which must publish its appeals timetable by 28 February each year under paragraph 2.2 of the Appeals Code. Within that, the Code requires:

• at least 20 school days from the date on your refusal letter to lodge your appeal, in writing — paragraph 2.1(a)
• at least 10 school days' notice of the hearing — paragraph 2.1(b)
• appeals from the normal admissions round heard within 40 school days of the deadline for lodging appeals — paragraph 2.3(a)
• in-year appeals heard within 30 school days of the appeal being lodged — paragraph 2.3(d)
• the decision letter within 5 school days of the hearing, wherever possible — paragraph 2.1(d)

The deadline that actually binds you here is the evidence one, because a letter from a school takes longer than parents expect and the school year is ending while you are asking for it. Paragraph 2.7 requires the hearing notification to include a deadline for submitting further evidence not sent with the initial appeal, and paragraph 2.10 leaves it to the panel to decide whether to consider material that arrives after it. Ask the school on the day you decide to appeal, tell them precisely what the letter needs to address, and send it the moment it arrives.

How school days are counted, and what happens if you miss one: Appeal deadlines and the timetable

How to structure the statement so a panel can find the thing it has to decide: Writing your appeal statement

Paragraph numbers on this page are from the School Admission Appeals Code 2022 unless the page says "Admissions Code", in which case they are from the School Admissions Code 2021. Appeals for grammar schools are at paragraphs 3.11 to 3.15 of the Appeals Code; selection, banding and the publication of entry requirements at paragraphs 1.17 to 1.33 of the Admissions Code. The statement that a Key Stage 2 national curriculum test is sat in May of Year 6 is a description of the school calendar rather than a requirement of either Code, and is included because the Code's own example of useful evidence names those results. Appeal statistics are Department for Education figures used under the Open Government Licence, published by council and phase with no selective or grammar breakdown — how we source and calculate them.

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.
• 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.
• 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.