Sixth form places

Who appeals, and who sits in the room

At every earlier stage the right of appeal is the parent's. At sixth form it is both. Paragraph 8 of the Appeals Code's Statutory Basis section gives children the right to appeal against an admission authority's decision to refuse them admission to a school sixth-form, and the same paragraph extends that to a school where they wish to receive education other than sixth form education once they have ceased to be of compulsory school age.

Paragraph 2.6 of the Appeals Code then sets out how the two fit together: where a child is refused admission to a sixth form, they and their parents have the same right of appeal, and where they appeal separately admission authorities must arrange the appeals so that they are heard together. Nobody is displaced. One appeal between you is usually the sensible arrangement, and if two are lodged they must be heard as one hearing.

Practically, that means the student can lodge the appeal, sign the statement and speak at the hearing — and paragraph 2.13 of the Appeals Code says appellants may be represented or accompanied by a friend, so a seventeen-year-old appellant may bring a parent exactly as a parent appellant may bring somebody. Decide between you who is the appellant before you lodge, and put both names on the correspondence either way.

One exception that is easy to miss. Paragraph 6.8 of the Appeals Code records that where a child has been permanently excluded from two or more schools and the most recent exclusion occurred within the past two years, section 95 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 means arrangements do not have to be made for the parent — or, in the case of sixth form education, the child — to appeal against a refusal.

The two reasons a sixth form place is refused, and the two tests

This is the distinction the whole page turns on, and your refusal letter should tell you which you are in. Paragraph 2.5 of the Appeals Code requires it to include the reason why admission was refused, information about the right to appeal, the deadline for lodging one and the contact details for making it.

You met the entry requirements, but the sixth form was full

Paragraph 3.16 of the Appeals Code is written for this: where applicants have been refused admission because there are more eligible children than places available and oversubscription criteria have been applied, appeal panels must follow the two stage process at paragraphs 3.2 to 3.9. That is the ordinary appeal, and everything else on this site applies to you.

• First stage — 3.2 and 3.5. Whether the admission 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. Under 3.5(a) the panel must uphold the appeal where they were not and you would have been offered a place otherwise.
• Prejudice — 3.3 and 3.10. Whether admitting additional students 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 already been reached.
• Second stage — 3.8. The panel balances the prejudice against your case, taking into account your reasons for preferring the school including what it can offer that the allocated or other schools cannot. At sixth form that comparison is often unusually concrete: a specific combination of A-levels, a course another provider does not run, continuity of a subject taken to GCSE with the same specification.

You did not meet the published entry requirements

A different and narrower test, and the one most sixth form appellants are actually in. Paragraph 3.17 of the Appeals Code:

Read what that does and does not let you argue. It is a reasonableness test about the decision, not a fresh look at the student. A panel cannot decide your child is capable of the course after all, however persuasive the case, because it is forbidden from making its own assessment of ability. What it can decide is that the decision the admission authority reached, on the information it had, was not a reasonable one — or that a process the school has for cases like yours was not applied consistently and objectively.

So the argument to make is about the decision and the process, and it has three natural forms:

• They did not have the information. If something material was not in front of the decision-maker — a grade issued late, a subject result they did not have, evidence of circumstances the published arrangements say they take into account — then the decision was made in light of incomplete information, and that is directly within 3.17's wording.
• They did not follow their own requirements. If the published entry requirement is five grade 5s including English and maths and you have that, this is not a 3.17 case at all — it is a first-stage argument under 3.2(b) that the arrangements were not correctly applied, and it is the strongest position on this page. Get the published requirements for your year and read them against your results, line by line.
• Their process was applied inconsistently. The second sentence of 3.17. If the school has a route for considering cases that do not fit the standard requirements, ask what it is, who it was applied to, and how yours was decided.

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 comparison worth knowing: a grammar school selection appeal does ask about academic standard, and is a different test from this one — Grammar schools and the 11-plus

What the published entry requirements have to be

Everything above is measured against a document, so find it first. Paragraph 2.6 of the Admissions Code is the one that governs it, and it carries four requirements worth checking one by one.

• Academic entry criteria are permitted, and admission authorities can set them for their sixth forms. Selection by ability at 16 is lawful in a way it is not at 11 — this is not a loophole and it is not going to be overturned.
• They must be the same for external and internal places. A higher bar for outside applicants than for the school's own Year 11 is a breach of 2.6 on its face, and it is checkable against two published documents.
• External arrangements must be consulted upon, determined and published on the same timetable as every other entry point. That pulls in paragraph 1.49 of the Admissions Code — determine by 28 February in the determination year — and paragraph 1.50, publish on the school's website by 15 March and keep them up for the whole offer year. If the requirements you were held to are not the ones that were published for your year, that is a first-stage point.
• Looked after and previously looked after children who meet the academic entry criteria get the highest priority in the oversubscription criteria for sixth form places, as at every other point of entry.

And one thing they must not do. Paragraph 1.9(m) of the Admissions Code says admission arrangements must not interview children or parents. For sixth form applications a meeting may be held to discuss options and academic entry requirements for particular courses, but that meeting cannot form part of the decision making process on whether to offer a place. If you were told after a meeting that the school did not think the course was right for you, and that is why you were refused, that is worth putting to the panel with 1.9(m) attached.

How to ask for the arrangements, the criteria as applied and the school's case papers before the hearing: Getting the information you need

Results day, and the clock that runs from it

The sixth form timetable is the only one in the Appeals Code that runs from something other than a lodging deadline, and it exists because a conditional offer is not settled until the grades are in.

Paragraph 2.3(c) of the Appeals Code splits it. Where the offer of a place would have been conditional upon exam results, appeals must be heard within 30 school days of confirmation of those results. Where the offer would not have been conditional on exam results, appeals must be heard within 40 school days of the deadline for lodging appeals — the same 40 school days as the normal round.

Which limb you are on decides how fast everything moves. On the results limb the clock starts from confirmation of the results rather than from a shared deadline, so the whole appeal — lodging, papers, evidence, hearing — is compressed into the weeks after results day, when schools are closed and the people whose letters you want are on holiday.

And run the ordinary routes in parallel, because they move faster than an appeal in August. Ask to go on the waiting list. Ask the school directly whether a place has come free — sixth form intakes move sharply in the days after results day, when students who did better than expected go elsewhere. Paragraph 3.21 of the Appeals Code forbids the panel from taking any account of your position on a waiting list or making any decision about it, so the two routes cannot interfere with each other at either end.

How school days are counted — and August matters here, because they are not counted through the summer holiday: Appeal deadlines and the timetable

What the Codes do not say about post-16

Post-16 is the other place, alongside in-year, where the gap between what applicants are told and what is written down is wide. Rows with no paragraph number have none — that is the finding, not an omission.

The two dashes are the rows that cost applicants most, and both are silences rather than rules. Nobody is obliged to hold a place while a grade is reviewed, and nothing in either Code deals with a full course inside a sixth form that has room. Where you need either, ask in writing and early, and understand that you are asking rather than requiring.

One thing that does not apply, and one that does

Infant class size rules are irrelevant. Section 4 of the Appeals Code and paragraph 2.16 of the Admissions Code deal with classes where the majority of children reach the age of 5, 6 or 7 during the school year. Nothing in either reaches Year 12. If you have read the infant class size page, discard all of it.

Paragraph 3.10 does apply, and it is your best lever. The admission authority must be able to demonstrate prejudice over and above the fact that the published admission number has been reached, and the panel must not reassess the capacity of the school but must consider the impact of admitting additional students. "The sixth form is full" is not, on its own, the case the Code requires. Ask, before the hearing, what the published admission number for Year 12 is, how many students are on roll in it, and what specifically one more would do — paragraph 2.9 of the Appeals Code requires the admission authority to give the clerk an explanation of how admission of an additional child would cause prejudice.

One related point about numbers. Paragraph 1.4 of the Admissions Code says the published admission number applies only to the relevant age group, which means an admission authority may not refuse admission to other age groups on the ground that the number has been reached — though it may still refuse where admitting another child would prejudice efficient education or the efficient use of resources. Where a school admits external applicants to its sixth form, Year 12 is a relevant age group and does have a number of its own.

When a sixth form 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 sixth form appeals at any level, none for any individual school, and nothing here is a forecast about your case.

Where these fail is predictable. If all of the following are true, an appeal is very unlikely to succeed:

• you did not meet the published entry requirements, and the requirements that were applied are the ones that were published;
• the admission authority had all your results in front of it when it decided, so the decision was made in light of complete information;
• the school has no separate process for near-miss cases, or it has one and it was applied to you the same way as to everyone else;
• and the case you want to make is that your child would do well on the course — which is precisely the assessment paragraph 3.17 forbids the panel from making.

That is the ordinary version of this appeal and it does not succeed. It costs you nothing but a fortnight of a summer to find out, and there is no charge for finding out early — but here are the things that move faster.

• Ask the school what it would take. Sixth forms frequently admit on a different subject combination, or with a condition, or after a re-sit. That conversation is not an appeal and does not need one.
• Take the place elsewhere and apply again. 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, and post-16 there is a genuine route in at the start of Year 13 or after a re-sit year that does not exist lower down the school.
• Stay on the waiting list. Paragraph 2.15 of the Admissions Code requires a list ranked on the published oversubscription criteria and re-ranked each time a child is added, never ordered by when you applied. Sixth form lists move in the fortnight after results day.
• Look at the other providers properly. A sixth form college or an FE college is outside this Code and outside the appeal system — which also means it is outside the queue, and its offer does not depend on a panel.

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

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

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)
• where the offer would have been conditional on exam results, the appeal heard within 30 school days of confirmation of those results — paragraph 2.3(c)(i)
• where it would not have been conditional on exam results, the appeal heard within 40 school days of the deadline for lodging appeals — paragraph 2.3(c)(ii)
• the decision letter within 5 school days of the hearing, wherever possible — paragraph 2.1(d)

A late appeal must still be heard. Paragraph 2.4 of the Appeals Code says any appeal submitted after the appropriate deadline must still be heard, in accordance with whatever timescale the published table sets out — so missing the deadline costs you position in the timetable rather than the appeal itself, which in an August case can mean a hearing after term has begun.

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

What the hearing is actually like — worth reading if the student is going to speak at it: What happens at the hearing

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 admission to sixth forms are at paragraphs 3.16 and 3.17 of the Appeals Code, the timescales at 2.3(c), and the shared right of appeal at 2.6; the children's right of appeal and the exclusion of stand-alone 16-19 provision are at paragraphs 8 and 2 of that Code's "Statutory Basis" section, which is numbered separately from its sections. Sixth form admission arrangements are at paragraph 2.6 of the Admissions Code. Where this page says the Codes do not address something — re-sits, appealed grades, a full course inside a sixth form with room — 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 by phase with no post-16 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.
• 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.
• 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.