Siblings

Start with the definition, not with your family

Find the determined admission arrangements for your admission year and read the sibling clause word for word. It will resolve most of these questions before you write anything:

• Who counts. Full siblings almost always. Half-siblings, step-siblings, adopted and fostered children, and children of a partner living at the same address are all treated differently by different schools — some include all of them, some require a blood relationship, some require only that the children live at the same address.
• Whether they must still be there. Most definitions require the sibling to be on roll at the point your child would start, not at the point you applied. A brother or sister in Year 11 who leaves that summer often does not count for a Year 7 place the following September — a common and painful surprise.
• Whether the sixth form counts. Frequently excluded, on the basis that the sixth form is a separate phase.
• Whether the same address is required. Many definitions require siblings to live at the same address as the applicant, which matters where parents live apart.
• Split sites and linked schools. Where a school operates across sites, or is federated with another, check whether a sibling at one counts for the other.

If you did not meet the definition

The appeal is not over — it moves to the second stage, where the panel weighs the harm to the school against your case for this school. Having children at two schools is a genuine argument there, but only if you make it concretely. What lands is the specific and evidenced:

• two sets of school runs at overlapping times, with the actual times and distances, and why they cannot both be made
• the effect on a child with a particular need who relies on a sibling being present — with evidence from someone who knows the child
• wrap-around care that exists at one school and not the other, where you depend on it

What does not land is "it would be much easier for us", stated generally. The panel is weighing your case against real harm to the school, and "easier" does not weigh much. See medical and social need for how second-stage arguments are actually built.

Twins and multiple births

Worth knowing separately, because the rules are unusually favourable.

In an infant class, paragraph 2.16(g) of the School Admissions Code makes a child an excepted pupil where their twin or sibling from a multiple birth is admitted otherwise than as an excepted pupil. In plain terms: if one twin is admitted as the thirtieth child, the other can be admitted over the limit rather than the pair being separated. Because admitting an excepted pupil does not breach the class size limit, this is a route to winning what would otherwise be a very hard appeal — see infant class size.

Outside infant classes the excepted-pupil rules do not apply, but many admission authorities have their own multiple-birth provision. Check the arrangements.

What to ask for

• the determined arrangements for your admission year, with the sibling definition
• which criterion your application was actually ranked under, and why not the sibling one
• how many places went to each criterion, and where the intake ran out — because if it ran out above the sibling category, the sibling point could not have secured you a place, and the panel must dismiss it at the first stage

That last one is the check most worth doing early. It tells you whether this ground can carry your appeal, or whether your time is better spent on the second stage.

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.
• 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.