In-year admissions

First: is this actually an in-year application?

"In-year" is a defined term, not a description, and which of three boxes you are in decides your entire timetable. The definitions below are the Appeals Code's own footnotes rather than a paraphrase.

The phrase doing the work is relevant age group — the age group at which pupils are normally admitted to that school, so Reception at a primary and Year 7 at most secondaries. An application for any other year group is an in-year application whenever you make it, including in the summer before term starts.

Two consequences worth having straight away, because they are the practical difference between this and every other page on the site.

• Lodging early actually brings your hearing forward. In the normal round paragraph 2.3(a) runs 40 school days from a lodging deadline everybody shares, so lodging on the first day and the last day lands you in the same window. In-year, paragraph 2.3(d) runs 30 school days from your appeal being lodged. Sitting on it for a fortnight moves your hearing a fortnight later.
• You still get the full time to lodge. Nothing in the Code shortens that end. Paragraph 2.1(a) requires the timetable to allow at least 20 school days from the date on your refusal letter, in-year as much as in the round. So the two deadlines pull against each other, and the honest answer is to lodge promptly and keep sending evidence — paragraph 2.7 requires the hearing notification to include a deadline for further evidence, and paragraph 2.10 lets the panel decide whether to consider material submitted after it.

One boundary that catches people. An application for Reception or Year 7 made in, say, the June before that September is late rather than in-year, and it sits on the middle row above with its own timescale (within 40 school days of the deadline for lodging appeals where possible, or within 30 school days of the appeal being lodged). The word "late" in the Code is about the round you missed, not about lateness in general.

If you are on that middle row instead, the questions are different: A late application

How school days are actually counted, which parents routinely get wrong over a holiday: Appeal deadlines and the timetable

Who you apply to, and what they owe you

This section is the one part of an in-year case where the Admissions Code is unusually generous to parents, and a surprising number of in-year refusals never become appeals because the family was quietly steered out of the process before a decision was ever made.

That is the first sentence of the in-year section and it is unqualified. There is no closing date, no limit on how many schools, and no requirement to live in the area yet. What varies is who handles it. Local authorities are not required to co-ordinate in-year applications for schools they are not the admission authority for, though they may do so with those schools' agreement — so an academy may be running its own in-year admissions or may have opted into the council's scheme, and you cannot tell from outside which.

The Code makes both of them tell you. Paragraph 2.23 of the Admissions Code requires each local authority to publish on its website, by 31 August at the latest each year, how in-year applications can be made and how they will be dealt with from 1 September onwards — including which schools it co-ordinates for, which schools manage their own in-year admissions, and contact details for the ones that do. Paragraph 2.26 of the same Code requires own admission authorities to set out the same thing on the school's website by the same date: how to apply, a suitable application form, when parents will be notified of the outcome, and details about the right to appeal. Paragraph 2.25 of that Code requires a local authority that receives an application for a school managing its own admissions to forward it promptly rather than returning it to you.

Find both documents before you do anything else. They are the in-year equivalent of the admission arrangements everyone else reads, and they are the thing a first-stage argument gets measured against.

The two things they are not allowed to do

Both are common, and both end with a family that has no right of appeal because nobody ever refused them anything.

A name on a list produces no decision, and no decision means nothing to appeal against. An application produces a decision, and paragraph 2.30 of the Admissions Code goes on to require the admission authority — or the local authority where it co-ordinates that school's in-year admissions — to aim to notify you in writing within 10 school days and to notify you in writing within 15. Where it is refused, the same paragraph requires the reason for refusal and information about the right to appeal, in accordance with paragraph 2.32.

Paragraph 2.32 of the Admissions Code sets out what that refusal must contain: the reason admission was refused, information about the right to appeal, the deadline for lodging one and the contact details for making it. It also says admission authorities must not limit the grounds on which appeals can be made — as does paragraph 2.5 of the Appeals Code, from the other side. If you have been told a particular argument is not allowed in an in-year appeal, that is wrong.

The full version of the 2.30 problem, including what to write back the same day: Waiting lists, and when they beat an appeal

A school with room usually has to take you

The second duty is the one families in this position most often do not know exists, and it is worth reading twice.

Paragraph 2.28 of the Admissions Code requires that, with the exception of designated grammar schools, all maintained schools and academies — including those designated with a religious character — that have places available must offer a place to every child who has applied for one, without condition or the use of any oversubscription criteria, unless admitting the child would prejudice the efficient provision of education or use of resources. The same paragraph says admission authorities must not refuse to admit a child solely because they applied later than other applicants, because they are not of the faith of a school designated with a religious character, because they followed a different curriculum at their previous school, or because information has not been received from their previous school.

Two things follow. The first is that a school with space cannot simply prefer not to take you. The second is structural, and it shapes the rest of this page: because 2.28 exists, an in-year refusal is nearly always an assertion that there is no space — which is exactly the assertion paragraph 3.10 of the Appeals Code makes it easy to support mid-year. The exceptions, where a refusal happens despite places being available, are narrow and are the subject of the Fair Access Protocol section below.

And there is a way to find out where the space is. Paragraph 2.27 of the Admissions Code requires local authorities to provide information to prospective parents, on request, about the places still available in all schools within their area, and requires every admission authority in the area to supply the council with those figures whenever asked — no later than two school days after the council's request. That is a single email, it is a duty rather than a favour, and for a family with a child out of school it is usually worth more than an appeal.

The two-stage test applies unchanged

This ground is listed under both stages on the grounds hub, and that is not a hedge. Paragraph 3.1 of the Appeals Code requires panels to follow the two-stage process for all appeals except infant class size appeals. An in-year appeal is not an exception to it, is not a separate species of appeal, and gets no special test of its own. What is different is the timetable, the paperwork it is measured against, and how much weight the school's side of the balance carries — not the questions.

So the panel works through the same sequence as anybody else:

• First stage, paragraph 3.2. Whether the admission arrangements complied with the mandatory requirements of the Admissions Code and Part 3 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, and whether they were correctly and impartially applied in your case. In-year that means the arrangements and the in-year documents published under paragraphs 2.23 and 2.26 of the Admissions Code above. Paragraph 2.29 of that Code adds a specific requirement: where an admission authority is dealing with several in-year applications and has too few places, it must allocate them on the basis of the oversubscription criteria in its determined arrangements only. If you were ranked on anything else — date of application, an informal list, a conversation — that is a 3.2(b) point.
• Paragraph 3.3. Whether the admission of additional children would prejudice the provision of efficient education or the efficient use of resources.
• Paragraph 3.5. The panel must uphold the appeal at the first stage where the arrangements did not comply or were not correctly and impartially applied and the child would have been offered a place otherwise — or where admitting additional children would not prejudice anything at all.
• Paragraph 3.7, then 3.8. Otherwise the panel goes to the second stage and balances the prejudice to the school against your case, taking into account your reasons for preferring the school including what that school can offer the child that the allocated or other schools cannot. If your case outweighs the prejudice, it must uphold the appeal.

What a first-stage point looks like, and the second limb of 3.5(a) where most of them die: A mistake in how the decision was made

The three grounds and the excepted-pupil list in full: Infant class size

How a selection appeal differs from an oversubscription one: Grammar schools and the 11-plus

Why the second stage is harder in-year, and where it is not

Paragraph 3.10 of the Appeals Code is the whole of this, and it is worth quoting the part that matters rather than summarising it, because both halves of the page's argument are in one paragraph.

Read the list of factors as a mid-year school would. Every one of them is easier to evidence in November than in March. The year group has a real register, the classes have real sizes, the staffing is fixed for the year, and the Fair Access Protocol has probably already placed children there. A school appealing against nothing has to project prejudice; a school in January can describe it.

That is the honest position and there is no way around it. If your case is that this school is better than the one your child is at, an in-year panel is weighing that against a specific, present, evidenced account of what a thirty-third child does to a class of thirty-two. Preference does not survive that contact. An in-year appeal is not the easier version.

Now the sentence that cuts the other way, and it is the first one in the paragraph. Prejudice has to be shown over and above the fact that the published admission number has been reached. "The year group is full" and "we are at PAN" are, on their own, precisely the thing 3.10 says is not enough. The admission authority has to say what admitting one more child would actually do, and paragraph 2.9 of the Appeals Code requires it to give the clerk an explanation of how admission of an additional child would cause prejudice before the hearing — so you should have that explanation in the papers and you can read it against this paragraph.

Where a school is above its published admission number already, or has taken children through the Fair Access Protocol into the same year group, or has changed its accommodation since the number was set, those are all 3.10 factors and they do not all point one way. What the panel must not do is reassess the school's capacity — that is not an argument available to you either.

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

The Fair Access Protocol

Every local authority has one and almost no parent has heard of it. It is the mechanism for placing children who cannot get a place through the ordinary in-year route, and it matters here for two opposite reasons: it is sometimes the thing that gets a child into a school, and it is sometimes the reason a school with empty desks is allowed to refuse you.

Paragraph 3.14 of the Admissions Code requires each local authority to have a Protocol to ensure that unplaced and vulnerable children, and those who are having difficulty in securing a school place in-year, are allocated a school place as quickly as possible. Paragraph 3.15 of that Code requires all admission authorities to participate once the majority of schools in the area have agreed it — including admitting pupils when asked to do so in accordance with the Protocol, even when the school is full. Paragraph 3.21 of that Code requires a place to be allocated within 20 school days once it has been agreed that a child will be considered under it.

A warning about numbering before the rest of this section, because it is a genuine trap here and nowhere else on the site. Both Codes have a 3.10, a 3.15 and a 3.21, and none of the three pairs means the same thing. In the Admissions Code they are refusal on behavioural grounds, participation in the Protocol, and the Protocol's 20 school day clock. In the Appeals Code they are the prejudice factors, in-year applicants to grammar schools, and waiting lists. Every paragraph number in this section therefore names its Code, even where the sentence around it makes that obvious.

Who the Protocol can be used for

Paragraph 3.17 of the Admissions Code is a closed list — the Protocol may only be used to place these groups, and only where they are having difficulty securing a place in-year and it can be demonstrated that reasonable measures have been taken through the usual in-year procedures first:

• children either subject to a Child in Need Plan or a Child Protection Plan or having had a Child in Need Plan or a Child Protection Plan within 12 months at the point of being referred to the Protocol
• children living in a refuge or in other Relevant Accommodation at the point of being referred to the Protocol
• children from the criminal justice system
• children in alternative provision who need to be reintegrated into mainstream education or who have been permanently excluded but are deemed suitable for mainstream education
• children with special educational needs (but without an Education, Health and Care plan), disabilities or medical conditions
• children who are carers
• children who are homeless
• children in formal kinship care arrangements
• children of, or who are, Gypsies, Roma, Travellers, refugees, and asylum seekers
• children who have been refused a school place on the grounds of their challenging behaviour and referred to the Protocol in accordance with paragraph 3.10 of this Code
• children for whom a place has not been sought due to exceptional circumstances
• children who have been out of education for four or more weeks where it can be demonstrated that there are no places available at any school within a reasonable distance of their home — this does not include circumstances where a suitable place has been offered to a child and this has not been accepted
• previously looked after children for whom the local authority has been unable to promptly secure a school place

Category (l) is the one most families in this position qualify under without realising: a child out of education for four or more weeks where it can be demonstrated there are no places at any school within a reasonable distance. Note its exclusion, which is strict — it does not cover a family who was offered a suitable place and did not accept it. Declining the school you were allocated in order to strengthen an in-year case takes you out of the one route that has a 20 school day clock on it.

One asymmetry to be aware of if you are appealing for a school that has taken Protocol placements. Under paragraph 3.10(c) of the Appeals Code the impact of the locally agreed Protocol is a factor the panel may weigh in deciding whether prejudice would arise — so a school that has absorbed several placements into your child's year group has a stronger prejudice case, not a weaker one, even though those children arrived the same way you are trying to. Paragraph 4.3 of the Appeals Code applies its waiting list and Fair Access Protocol paragraphs to infant class size appeals as well. (Read 4.3's own cross-reference with care: it cites waiting lists as "3.22" and Fair Access Protocols as "3.23 – 3.24", but in the Appeals Code waiting lists are at 3.21 and Fair Access Protocols at 3.22 and 3.23, and there is no 3.24. It is a numbering slip in the published Code.)

Refusal on behavioural grounds

One in-year refusal reason has no equivalent in the normal round, and a family whose child is moving because a placement broke down should know it exists. Paragraph 3.10 of the Admissions Code — not the prejudice paragraph of the same number quoted earlier on this page — says that where an admission authority receives an in-year application for a year group that is not the normal point of entry, and does not wish to admit the child because it has good reason to believe the child may display challenging behaviour, it may refuse admission and refer the child to the Fair Access Protocol.

It is fenced in on three sides, all in the Admissions Code. Paragraph 3.11 says an admission authority should only rely on it where it has a particularly high proportion of children with challenging behaviour or previously permanently excluded pupils compared with other local schools, and considers that admitting another would prejudice efficient education or use of resources. Paragraph 3.12 says it cannot be used at all for looked after children, previously looked after children, or children with an Education, Health and Care plan naming the school. Paragraph 3.13 says admission authorities must not refuse to admit a child thought to be potentially disruptive or likely to exhibit challenging behaviour on the grounds that the child is first to be assessed for special educational needs.

Separately, paragraph 3.8 of the Admissions Code removes the need to comply with parental preference for two years where a child has been permanently excluded from two or more schools, subject to the four exceptions listed in that paragraph.

The practical point is about how you write. If the reason for the move is that your child is unhappy, describe the effect on your child rather than recasting it as a behaviour history — a statement written in behavioural terms hands the receiving school the beginning of a 3.10 argument it did not otherwise have. That is not a suggestion to conceal anything. It is a suggestion to describe accurately what is actually happening.

The three reasons people apply in-year, and what each one needs

Almost every in-year application is one of these, and they need completely different evidence. The first is largely a first-stage argument, the second is almost entirely a second-stage one, and the third is mostly a matter of stopping the wrong thing from being held against you.

You have moved, or are about to

The strongest of the three, because it is documentary rather than evaluative. Most oversubscription criteria are about where you live, so a move changes which criterion you fall in — and the question of whether it was applied correctly is a paragraph 3.2(b) point that can be checked against paperwork.

• Evidence of the move itself, dated. A completion statement or a signed tenancy agreement, the date you took occupation, council tax in your name at the new address. Paragraph 2.5 of the Admissions Code allows an admission authority to ask for proof of address where it is unclear whether a child meets the published criteria, so expect to be asked and have it ready.
• The arrangements' own rule about which address counts. Neither Code sets one. Some admission authorities use the address at the date of application, some require you to be resident, some accept an exchange of contracts. It is in that school's published arrangements and nowhere else, and applying before you have whatever it requires is the commonest way this case is lost on the facts rather than on the merits.
• The distance, measured their way. Where distance is a criterion, the method and the two points measured between are in the arrangements. Getting a different answer from a mapping site is not an argument; getting a different answer using their stated method is.
• If you are a service family, say so at the front. Paragraph 2.21 of the Admissions Code requires admission authorities to allocate a place in advance of the family arriving in the area for service personnel with a confirmed posting and crown servants returning from overseas — as long as one is available and the application is accompanied by an official letter declaring a relocation date — and to use the address at which the child will live, or a Unit or quartering address where the parent asks. They must not refuse to process the application, and must not refuse a place solely because you do not yet have an intended address or do not yet live in the area.

How distance is measured, and what makes a measurement dispute checkable: Distance and catchment

The current placement is breaking down

The commonest reason and the hardest to argue, because it is a second-stage case and the panel is required to weigh it against the concrete prejudice described above. Paragraph 3.8 asks what the school you want can offer the child that the allocated or other schools cannot — and that is a comparison between two named schools, not a description of how bad things are at the current one.

What moves a panel is material written by somebody other than you.

• A letter from the current school's head of year, pastoral lead or SENCO setting out what has been tried, over what period, and with what result. This is the single most valuable document and it takes weeks to get, so ask on the day you decide to appeal.
• Clinical correspondence where there is any — a GP, CAMHS, a paediatrician, a counselling service. A letter that names the school you are appealing for and says why it can meet a need the current school cannot is worth more than one that describes the child's difficulties alone.
• Attendance data, incident logs, and any written record of what the current school has done. A pattern the school itself recorded is evidence; a pattern you describe is an account.
• Something specific about the preferred school. A named provision, a unit, a programme, a sibling already there, a journey your child can actually make. "It is a better school" is the weakest form of a 3.8 case and it is the one most in-year statements are built on.

Be honest about what will not carry it. That your child is unhappy is real and it is not, by itself, a comparison between two schools. Neither is a dispute with the current school, however justified — a panel has no jurisdiction over the school you are leaving, and it cannot fix it.

What a supporting letter has to say to be worth having, and what carries no weight at all: What actually counts as evidence

Where a medical or social need becomes an argument rather than a description: Medical and social need

If your child has special educational needs but no EHC plan: Special educational needs without an EHC plan

You have returned from abroad

Start with the thing that is not true. There is no general rule in either Code for children arriving from another country. Paragraph 2.21 of the Admissions Code covers service personnel with a confirmed posting and crown servants returning from overseas, and it covers nobody else. If you are neither, your application is an ordinary in-year application handled under 2.23 to 2.31 like anyone else's, and it is worth knowing that before you build a case on a provision that does not reach you.

What does help is paragraph 2.28 of the Admissions Code, and specifically its last two limbs. An admission authority must not refuse to admit a child solely because they have followed a different curriculum at their previous school, or because information has not been received from their previous school. Those two are written for exactly this situation, and they are the sentences to quote where a school is stalling on records that a school in another country has no obligation to send.

• Evidence of the return and the date of it, and of your address here — the same documents as a house move, for the same reason.
• Whatever school records you do have, translated if necessary, sent with the application rather than promised. Their absence is not a lawful reason to refuse, but their presence removes the argument.
• Where the child is out of school while this runs, say so in writing and early, to the local authority as well as the school. Category (l) of the Fair Access Protocol list above turns on four weeks out of education, and paragraph 2.27 of the Admissions Code requires the council to tell you on request which schools have places.

One caution that applies to all three. If your child has an Education, Health and Care plan, an admission appeal is the wrong forum entirely — paragraph 3.20 of the Appeals Code puts appeals about the school named in a plan, or about no school being named, to the First-tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability). Do not spend your 20 school days on an appeal a panel has no power to decide.

What the Codes do not say

In-year is the part of the process where the gap between what parents are told and what is actually written down is widest, so it is worth setting out both. Rows with no paragraph number have none.

The fourth and fifth rows are the ones that cost families most, and both are silences rather than rules. Nobody is obliged to hold a place for you while an appeal runs, and nobody is obliged to treat an address you have not moved into yet as yours. Where you need either, ask in writing and early, and understand that you are asking rather than requiring.

What to do this week

In order, because the first three take a day and the rest depend on them. Paragraph numbers below carry their Code, since this list mixes the two.

• Make a formal application, in writing, for a named child, a named school and a named year group, and date it. Not a request to be added to a list. Paragraph 2.30 of the Admissions Code is what stops them offering you the list instead, and the application is the only thing that produces a decision you can appeal.
• Ask the council which schools have places. Paragraph 2.27 of the Admissions Code makes that a duty. If your child is out of school, this is the fastest route to a place and it needs no hearing.
• Find the two published documents. The council's in-year page under paragraph 2.23 of the Admissions Code and the school's under 2.26 of the same Code. Between them they tell you who is handling your application, when you will be told, and how to appeal — and they are what a first-stage argument is measured against.
• Diary 15 school days from the application. That is the outer limit under paragraph 2.30 of the Admissions Code for being told the outcome in writing, with 10 as the aim. If it passes in silence, chase it in writing that day.
• Lodge promptly once refused. You have at least 20 school days from the date on your refusal letter under paragraph 2.1(a) of the Appeals Code, but the hearing clock at 2.3(d) of that Code starts when you lodge, so lodging early moves the hearing earlier rather than costing you preparation time — the evidence deadline is set later, in the notification you receive under paragraph 2.7.
• Ask for the information the same day. How many places are available in the year group, what the published admission number is, how many children are on roll in it, and the explanation of prejudice the admission authority has to give the clerk under paragraph 2.9 of the Appeals Code. Paragraph 2.8 of that Code requires them to comply with reasonable requests for the information you need to prepare.
• Ask to go on the waiting list as well, if one is kept. Paragraph 3.21 of the Appeals Code forbids the panel from taking any account of your position on it or making any decision about it, so the two cannot touch at either end and running both costs you nothing.
• Keep the place your child has. Giving it up demonstrates nothing to a panel, is not one of the published criteria anywhere, and takes you out of category (l) of the Fair Access Protocol list.

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

The whole process from the refusal letter onwards, if this is your first one: How a school appeal works, start to finish

When an in-year appeal is weak, and what to do instead

Across England 19.4% of appeals heard were upheld — 22,402 of 115,695 appeals heard in 2024–2026 — so roughly four in five were dismissed. That is a national figure covering every 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 in-year appeals at any level, no rate for any individual school, and nothing here is a forecast about your case. Rates vary a great deal between councils, which is context worth having and is still a description of what happened to other families.

What this page can tell you is what the test is, and where an in-year case usually fails it. If all of the following are true, an appeal is very unlikely to succeed and the next few weeks are better spent elsewhere:

• the year group is at or above its published admission number and the school can say what an extra child would do to it — the 3.10 factors, in the papers, with numbers;
• nothing in the arrangements or the in-year documents was breached or misapplied in your case, so there is no first-stage point at 3.2;
• and the honest answer to "what can this school offer my child that the allocated one cannot" is a comparison of reputations rather than a specific provision somebody other than you would put in writing.

That combination is the ordinary in-year case and it loses. Saying so is not discouragement — an appeal costs you a fortnight of evenings that could go into the routes below, and there is no charge for finding out early.

• The list, where one is kept. Paragraph 2.29 of the Admissions Code requires that if a waiting list is maintained in-year it is maintained in line with paragraph 2.15 of the same Code — ranked on the published oversubscription criteria, re-ranked every time a child is added, and never ordered by when you applied. Places genuinely come free through the year and a place from the list needs no hearing.
• Schools with space. Paragraph 2.28 of the Admissions Code means a school with places available generally has to take you. Paragraph 2.27 of that Code means the council has to tell you, on request, where those places are. For a child out of school that pair is worth more than any appeal on this page.
• The Fair Access Protocol, if you are in one of the categories above. It has a 20 school day clock under paragraph 3.21 of the Admissions Code and it does not cost you the right to appeal for the school you actually want (paragraph 3.18 of that Code).
• Apply again for a later year. Paragraph 5.3 of the Appeals Code 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. There is no second appeal for the same school in the same academic year except in the narrow case at 5.1.

And one thing that is true whichever way it goes. If the appeal is upheld, paragraph 2.27 of the Appeals Code requires that, for an application outside the normal admissions round, the child must be admitted without unnecessary delay, and paragraph 2.31 of the Admissions Code says arrangements should be made for the child to start as soon as possible, particularly where they are out of school. A school with no room told you it had none; a panel that heard that and upheld your appeal has decided otherwise, and "we will look at January" is not an answer to it.

What the decision letter has to contain, and what is left if the answer is no: After the decision

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. This page names the Code on nearly every citation rather than relying on that default, because in-year is the one topic where the two Codes collide on the same numbers: both have a 2.5, a 2.27, a 3.10, a 3.15 and a 3.21, and in each pair they mean different things. In-year admissions are at paragraphs 2.23 to 2.31 of the Admissions Code and Fair Access Protocols at 3.14 to 3.22; the in-year hearing deadline is at 2.3(d) of the Appeals Code and the definitions of "late" and "in-year" applications in that Code's footnotes 9 and 10. Paragraph 4.3 of the Appeals Code misnumbers its own cross-reference to waiting lists and Fair Access Protocols, as noted above. Where this page says the Codes do not address something — which address counts before you move, whether a place is held during an appeal, what the panel is told about a child being out of school — that is a statement about the Codes' contents, not a claim about what admission authorities do in practice. Appeal statistics are Department for Education figures used under the Open Government Licence, published by council and phase with no in-year 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.
• 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.