Appeal deadlines and the timetable

What a "school day" actually is

Almost nothing in the appeals timetable is counted in calendar days. The time to lodge (2.1(a)), the notice you get of the hearing (2.1(b) and 2.7), the time within which you must be heard (2.3) and the decision letter (2.1(d) and 2.27) are all measured in school days.

The Appeals Code never defines the term. The definition used across education law is in section 579(1) of the Education Act 1996: a school day, in relation to a school, means any day on which at that school there is a school session. In ordinary language, a day the school is open to pupils.

So none of these count:

• Saturdays and Sundays
• bank holidays
• half-term
• the Christmas, Easter and summer holidays
• any other day the school is closed to pupils, including a teacher training day — there is no session, so there is no school day

Twenty school days is therefore four complete school weeks before you add a single day of half-term. A refusal dated 1 March does not expire on 21 March; the earliest it can run out is the end of March, and in a year when Easter falls early it will be well into April.

One wrinkle worth knowing. Section 579(1) defines a school day in relation to a school, which means the school's own calendar. Academies and free schools set their own term dates and closure days, so two schools a mile apart can be counting different days. That is the second reason to take your date off the published timetable rather than off your own arithmetic.

The timetable the Code fixes

Paragraph 2.1 requires every admission authority to set a timetable for organising and hearing appeals, and paragraph 2.3 requires appeals lodged by the appropriate deadlines to be heard within set periods. Those are the floors. A council may give you longer than any of them; it may not give you less.

Three of those rows behave differently from how they read, and it is worth knowing which.

The notice of the hearing is yours to give up. Paragraph 2.7 requires the admission authority to give you written notification of the date and arrangements no later than 10 school days before the hearing, and says in terms that parents may waive that right. Some councils offer an earlier slot on that basis. What you are trading away is preparation time, and the slowest part of preparing is evidence written by other people, so it is rarely the bargain it looks like.

The evidence deadline is a real deadline. The same notification must set a date for any further evidence not sent with your initial appeal, and must tell you that anything submitted after it might not be considered. Under paragraph 2.10 it is the panel, not you, that decides whether to look at late material — weighing how significant it is against whether the hearing would have to be adjourned. This is the deadline parents discover last and regret most.

The five days for the decision is the softest number here. Paragraph 2.1(d) says decision letters must be sent within five school days "wherever possible", and paragraph 2.27 says as soon as possible after the hearing but not later than five school days, "unless there is good reason". Do not build travel or childcare plans on it. Where the application was made outside the normal admissions round, 2.27 adds that a child who wins must be admitted without unnecessary delay.

In detail: Getting the information you need · What actually counts as evidence

Three clocks, and they do not start in the same place

The commonest confusion after school days is assuming there is one timetable. There are several, and which one you are on decides whether lodging early does anything for you.

The normal admissions round

You are told on National Offer Day — 1 March for secondary places and 16 April for primary, or the next working day where those fall on a weekend or bank holiday (paragraphs 2.12(b) and 2.12(c) of the School Admissions Code). You then get at least 20 school days from the date on your refusal letter — paragraph 2.1(a) puts it as running from the date of notification that your application was unsuccessful.

The clock to be heard, though, runs from somewhere else. Paragraph 2.3(a) measures its 40 school days from the deadline for lodging appeals, not from the day you lodge. Sending yours on the first morning does not move your hearing forward by a day. It is still the right thing to do, but for a different reason: it starts your own preparation, and everything that takes weeks — a letter from a clinician, a record from a school, a written answer from the council — has to start before you find out how long it takes.

In-year

Here the day you lodge is the day the clock starts. Paragraph 2.3(d) gives you a hearing within 30 school days of the appeal being lodged, so lodging early genuinely does bring the date forward.

There is an earlier clock most people do not know they are owed. Paragraph 2.30 of the School Admissions Code says that on receipt of an in-year application the admission authority should aim to notify parents of the outcome in writing within 10 school days, and must notify them within 15. Your appeal clock cannot start until that refusal arrives, so if you have heard nothing after three school weeks, chase it in writing.

In detail: In-year admissions

Sixth form

Post-16 timings split in two. Where the offer of a place would have been conditional on exam results, paragraph 2.3(c)(i) requires the appeal to be heard within 30 school days of confirmation of those results — a compressed timetable running through late summer with very little slack in it. Where the offer would not have been conditional, 2.3(c)(ii) puts you back on the ordinary rule: the appeal must be heard within 40 school days of the deadline for lodging appeals.

The other post-16 difference is who may appeal. Paragraph 2.6 gives the young person refused a sixth form place and their parents the same right of appeal, and where they appeal separately requires the admission authority to arrange the appeals so that they are heard together.

In detail: Sixth form places

Late applications

An application treated as late has its own limb: paragraph 2.3(b) says the appeal should be heard within 40 school days of the deadline for lodging appeals where possible, or within 30 school days of the appeal being lodged. Note that this is the one row of the table where the Code says "should" before it says "must" — it is a weaker entitlement than the others, and worth reading twice if you are on it. Whether the application should have been treated as late at all is a separate question, and it is an argument a panel can act on rather than a scheduling matter.

In detail: A late application

If you miss the deadline

This is the question almost everyone arrives on this page with, and the answer is not the one most sites give.

Must, not may. A late appeal is not a refused appeal, and there is no discretion in that sentence to refuse you a hearing because you were late. If an admission authority tells you your appeal cannot be heard because you missed the date, point them at 2.4 in writing.

What lateness actually costs you is the protection of the timescales in the table above. Paragraph 2.3 opens by requiring authorities to ensure that appeals lodged by the appropriate deadlines are heard within 40 or 30 school days. Lodge outside those deadlines and you fall outside that guarantee: 2.4 puts you on whatever timescale the authority has published for late appeals instead, which in the normal round usually means being heard after the main round of hearings for that school.

That is a real cost rather than a technical one. Paragraph 2.21 requires all reasonable steps to be taken so that multiple appeals for the same school are heard by one panel, which must not decide any of them until it has heard them all. Being outside that group means being heard after the other families have been heard and decided — and if any of their appeals were upheld, the year group your panel is looking at is a fuller one than the one they looked at.

What you keep, whatever the date you lodged on:

• The 10 school days' notice. Paragraphs 2.1(b) and 2.7 attach to the hearing, not to when you lodged.
• The information duty. Paragraph 2.8 requires the admission authority to comply with reasonable requests from parents for the information they need to prepare their case, and says nothing about punctuality.
• Everything about how the hearing is run. An independent panel, the papers in advance (2.10), the chance to make oral representations (2.11), the same two-stage test.

So the answer to "what do I do now" is the same either way, and it is urgent rather than complicated: lodge today, in writing. Do not wait until the statement is finished. Paragraph 2.5 requires you to be told that grounds have to be set out in writing, but paragraph 2.7 requires a separate deadline for further evidence that was not sent with the initial appeal — the Code assumes you will add to it. A short appeal lodged now beats a polished one lodged in a fortnight.

In detail: Writing your appeal statement

What meeting the deadline does not do

Being on time is not a ground of appeal. There is no box for it in either stage of the test at paragraphs 3.2 to 3.9, and a punctual case with nothing in it is dismissed exactly as briskly as a late one. Across England 19.4% of appeals heard were upheld — 22,402 of 115,695 appeals heard in 2024–2026. Four in five are dismissed.

If, having read the grounds pages, what you have is that you would strongly prefer this school and there is nothing further to say about it, then the honest advice is that your 20 school days are better spent elsewhere. Chiefly on the waiting list: paragraph 2.15 of the School Admissions Code requires it to be maintained until at least 31 December of the school year, requires it to be re-ranked against the published oversubscription criteria every time a child is added, and forbids priority being given by the date an application was received or a name was added. It needs no hearing, it has no deadline, and it keeps running while an appeal is pending.

Lodging is not a commitment to anything, either. Across England 155,672 appeals were lodged in 2024–2026 and 115,695 were heard by a panel; the Department for Education does not publish what became of the rest. Get inside the deadline, then decide.

In detail: Waiting lists, and when they beat an appeal

The first week, in order

1. Find the actual date. Your refusal letter has to carry it (2.5) and the admission authority has to publish its timetable by 28 February each year (2.2). If the two disagree, ask which governs, in writing.
2. Check the count. If the published deadline gives you less than 20 school days from the day you were told, that timetable does not meet paragraph 2.1(a). Raise it in writing straight away — and lodge by the published date anyway while you do.
3. Lodge in writing, now. Even a paragraph. You can add evidence up to the deadline set under 2.7.
4. Join the waiting list the same day. Separate route, separate rules, no hearing.
5. Ask for the information you need. Paragraph 2.8 makes this a duty on them, and first-stage arguments are built out of documents you had to request.
6. Start the third-party evidence. A letter from a clinician or a caseworker takes weeks and the evidence deadline under 2.7 will arrive before you expect it.
7. Put the hearing window in the diary. Normal round: within 40 school days of the deadline for lodging appeals, so most are heard between May and July.

The whole process in order: How a school appeal works, start to finish

Paragraph numbers on this page are from the School Admission Appeals Code 2022 unless stated otherwise. National Offer Day (2.12), the in-year notification deadlines (2.30) and waiting lists (2.15) are in the School Admissions Code 2021. "School day" is defined at section 579(1) of the Education Act 1996. Where this page says an admission authority "must" do something, the Code uses that word too — and where it says "should", so does the Code.

The rest of the process

• How a school appeal works, start to finish The whole process in order: what the refusal letter has to tell you, who hears the appeal, what the two stages are, and what the panel can and cannot do at the end of it.
• Getting the information you need The admission authority must meet reasonable requests for the information you need to prepare. What to ask for, when to ask, and the handful of documents that decide most first-stage arguments.
• What actually counts as evidence The difference between a letter that moves a panel and one that does not is almost always who wrote it. What to gather, what to leave out, and why the strongest evidence is written by somebody other than you.
• Writing your appeal statement How to structure a written case so the panel can find the two things it is required to decide. Most statements are an account of how much the family wants the school, which is the one thing that carries no weight.
• Who decides your appeal The panel is independent of the school and the council, constituted under the Code, and its decision binds the admission authority. Who sits on it, who is disqualified from sitting, and what independence does and does not mean.
• What happens at the hearing The running order, who speaks when, what you will be asked, and what to do about the questions parents are routinely thrown by. Hearings are shorter and less formal than almost everyone expects.
• Appealing for more than one school Every school that refused you carries its own right of appeal, and paragraph 5.1 bars a second appeal only for the same school. Each runs on its own admission authority's timetable — and a thin case for three schools is usually worse than a strong case for one.
• Waiting lists, and when they beat an appeal A waiting list must be ranked by the published oversubscription criteria, not by when you joined it, and must run to at least 31 December. For a lot of families this is the better of the two routes, and it needs no hearing.
• After the decision The decision letter has to show the panel's working, and there is no second appeal for the same school in the same academic year — the one exception is narrower than the version circulating online. What a complaint can reach, and why the waiting list is now the live route.