Getting the information you need
Most first-stage arguments are won or lost on documents the parent had to ask for. How your application was scored, which criterion the last place went to, how far away that family lived — none of it is published, all of it is held, and one sentence of the Appeals Code entitles you to ask for it. Asking late is the commonest avoidable mistake in the whole process.
Send the request on the day you lodge
Not because the reply is slow — although it can be — but because of what happens at the other end. Paragraph 2.1(c) requires the admission authority's timetable to include reasonable deadlines for appellants to submit additional evidence, and paragraph 2.7 requires the written notification of your hearing to include that deadline for anything not sent with the initial appeal. It also has to warn you that material submitted after it might not be considered.
So a request that arrives back after that date has bought you a document you are no longer entitled to rely on. Paragraph 2.10 puts the decision with the panel — it decides whether to consider material not submitted by the specified deadline, taking into account its significance and the effect of a possible need to adjourn the hearing. That is a decision about your case that you could have kept.
You have at least 20 school days from the date on your refusal letter and at least 10 school days' notice of the hearing. The request costs you an email. Send it first and write afterwards.
The sentence this page rests on
Paragraph 2.8 of the Appeals Code
Admission authorities must comply with reasonable requests from parents for information which they need to help them prepare their case for appeal.
One sentence, and it is the whole of the entitlement. Three things in it are worth reading slowly.
- "Must comply" — not "should consider". This is a duty on the admission authority in the same register as the deadlines it is held to elsewhere in section 2.
- "Reasonable requests" — which is where the limit sits. A numbered list of six specific documents about your own application is a reasonable request. Every email exchanged about the year group is not, and a request that reads like a fishing expedition invites a refusal that is hard to argue with in the time you have.
- "Which they need to help them prepare their case" — the test is what your appeal needs, so say what each item is for. "The last distance offered under criterion 4, because our first-stage point is about how our distance was measured" is a request that answers its own objection.
What 2.8 does not give you: a date
Every other duty around it is counted in school days. You get at least 20 school days from the date on your refusal letter under 2.1(a), at least 10 school days' notice of the hearing under 2.1(b) and 2.7, a hearing within 40 school days of the deadline for lodging appeals under 2.3(a), and a decision within 5 school days of the hearing, wherever possible under 2.27. Paragraph 2.8 carries no period at all — the duty is to comply, and the Code does not say by when.
Read that as the reason to ask early rather than as a reason not to ask. A request sent the day you lodge has weeks of slack in it. The same request sent a fortnight before the hearing has none, and there is no paragraph you can point at to speed it up.
What to ask for
Seven items, and the first four are the ones first-stage points are actually built out of. Ask for them by name, in one numbered email, and say what each is for.
| Ask for | Why, and what it has to contain | Code |
|---|---|---|
| The determined admission arrangements for the year you applied for | The document both limbs of the first-stage test are measured against. Paragraph 1.49 of the Admissions Code requires every admission authority to determine its arrangements, including its published admission number, every year — even where nothing has changed — and 1.50 requires the determined copy to be published on the school's or the local authority's website by 15 March. Ask for the set for your entry year by name and by year, not for "the admissions policy". | Admissions 1.49, 1.50 · Appeals 3.2 |
| How the oversubscription criteria were applied to your application | Which criterion your child was placed in, on what information, and by whom. This is the material paragraph 3.2(b) is about — whether the arrangements were correctly and impartially applied in the case in question — and it exists: paragraph 2.7 of the Admissions Code requires the admission authority to keep a clear record of any decisions on applications. Paragraph 2.9 of the Appeals Code also requires it to give the clerk details of how the arrangements applied to your application, so it is being written down for the hearing anyway. | Appeals 2.9, 3.2(b) · Admissions 2.7 |
| How many places were offered, and how far down the criteria they went | The published admission number, how many offers were made in the relevant age group, and the last criterion at which a place was offered. Paragraph 3.10 of the Appeals Code requires the panel to take the published admission number into account while requiring the admission authority to demonstrate prejudice over and above it having been reached, so both numbers are in front of the panel regardless. Paragraph 1.2 of the Admissions Code makes setting that number part of determining the arrangements. | Appeals 3.10 · Admissions 1.2 |
| The last distance offered, where distance is a criterion | Ask for it alongside the method: paragraph 1.13 of the Admissions Code requires arrangements to set out clearly how distance from home to school and any nodal points will be measured, including how the home address is determined and the exact point at the school that distances are measured from. Your recorded distance, the last distance offered under the criterion you were in, and the method are three separate facts, and a measurement point needs all three. | Admissions 1.13 · Appeals 3.2(b) |
| Your application as they hold it, with dates | The submitted form, any supplementary form, and the date each was received. Paragraph 2.4 of the Admissions Code permits supplementary forms only where the additional information has a direct bearing on decisions about oversubscription criteria or on selection, so a form that was received and not scored is a point, and a form recorded as not received is a different point. Both are settled by a date stamp rather than by argument. | Admissions 2.4 · Appeals 3.2(b) |
| The admission authority's own case papers | Its reasons for refusing your child and its explanation of how admitting another would cause prejudice. Paragraph 2.9 of the Appeals Code requires these to go to the clerk and 2.10 requires the clerk to send them to you, so this is one to chase rather than to request from scratch — see below. | Appeals 2.9, 2.10 |
| Where the waiting list stands, and how it is ranked | Worth having, and not for the appeal. Paragraph 2.15 of the Admissions Code requires a clear, fair and objective waiting list maintained until at least 31 December of the school year of admission, re-ranked against the published oversubscription criteria every time a child is added, with no priority for how long you have been on it. But paragraph 3.21 of the Appeals Code says the panel must not take account of where you have been placed on it and must not make any decision relating to your placement, so this is information for you rather than for the hearing. | Admissions 2.15 · Appeals 3.21 |
Send it to whoever the refusal letter names as the contact for appeals — paragraph 2.5 requires that letter to give you contact details for making an appeal — and copy the clerk once you have their address. Put it in writing even if you have already asked on the phone, because what you need at the hearing is a record of having asked and of what came back.
A request that gets answered looks like a list, not a letter. Number the items, keep each to a line, name your child and the school in the first sentence, and give the date on the refusal letter. Nothing about how much you want the place belongs in it: this email is administrative, and the person opening it is not the person deciding your appeal.
What to do with the documents once they arrive: Writing your appeal statement
Get the right year's arrangements
This is the commonest self-inflicted wound on this page, and it is avoidable in about a minute.
Paragraph 1.49 of the School Admissions Code requires all admission authorities to determine their admission arrangements, including their published admission number, every year — even where nothing has changed from the previous year and no consultation was required — by 28 February in the determination year. Paragraph 1.50 then requires the determined copy to be published on the school's website, or the local authority's, by 15 March in the determination year, and to keep being displayed for the whole offer year.
Two consequences follow, and they pull in opposite directions.
- There are always at least two sets in circulation. By the time you are appealing in the May or June after a March offer, the arrangements for the next entry year have already been determined and published. A school website showing one document at the top is showing the newer one.
- Yours should still be up. Paragraph 1.50 requires the determined arrangements to continue being displayed for the whole offer year — the school year in which offers are made — so the set that governed your application should still be findable rather than archived. If it is not, that is itself something to ask for under 2.8.
The reason the year matters more than it looks: paragraph 2.7 of the Admissions Code requires admission authorities to allocate places on the basis of their determined admission arrangements only, and paragraph 3.2(b) of the Appeals Code has the panel decide whether the arrangements were correctly and impartially applied in the case in question. The arrangements in question are the ones your application was decided under. A criterion quoted from the following year's set is not a weaker point than the right one — it is not a point at all, and it takes the credibility of everything else in your statement with it when the presenting officer names the date.
Where else to find them
Paragraph 1.54 of the Admissions Code requires every local authority to publish a composite prospectus for parents online, with hard copies for those without internet access, by 12 September in the offer year, containing the admission arrangements and any supplementary information forms for each state-funded school in its area. It is the single document with every school's criteria in it, and because 1.54 ties it to one offer year, finding the right edition settles the question of which year's rules you are reading. Paragraph 1.52 also requires local authorities to publish by 15 March details of where the determined arrangements for all schools, including academies, can be viewed.
What a point built on these documents looks like: A mistake in how the decision was made
Some of it arrives without being asked for
Parents routinely request material they were always going to be sent, and never request the material nobody sends. Two paragraphs decide which is which.
Paragraph 2.9 — them to the clerk
The admission authority must supply the clerk with all relevant documents needed to conduct the hearing in a fair and transparent manner, in accordance with the specified timetable. The Code names three things this must include:
- details of how the admission arrangements and the co-ordinated admissions scheme apply to your application;
- the reasons for the decision to refuse admission;
- an explanation of how the admission of an additional child would cause prejudice to the provision of efficient education or the efficient use of resources.
Paragraph 2.10 — the clerk to you
The clerk must send all the papers required for the hearing, including the names of the panel members, to both parties and to the panel a reasonable time before the date of the hearing.
The Code gives the reason for the names in the same sentence: it allows any objections about the impartiality of panel members to be notified to the clerk. That is a window with a purpose, and it closes when the hearing starts.
So the first item in the table above — how the criteria were applied to your application — is being written down for the clerk whether you ask or not. Asking under 2.8 gets it to you weeks earlier, which is the entire difference between a first-stage point you can prepare and one you think of in the room.
"A reasonable time before" is not a number, but your council has turned it into one. Paragraph 2.1(c) requires its timetable to include reasonable deadlines for the clerk to send appeal papers to the panel and the parties, and paragraph 2.2 requires that timetable to be published on its website by 28 February each year. The date you are owed is in there.
If the papers have not arrived
Ask the clerk, in writing, today. Paragraph 1.11 makes it part of the clerk's role to respond to queries from appellants in advance of the hearing or to identify the appropriate person to provide a response, and to be an independent source of advice on procedure and admissions law. Paragraph 1.4 requires the clerk to be independent of the school and of the local authority's education functions. They are not the school's representative and they do not vote on your appeal, so this is the right person to chase and the right person to ask a procedural question of.
Going into a hearing without having read the prejudice case is the one avoidable way to waste it. Paragraph 3.10 requires the admission authority to demonstrate prejudice over and above the fact that the published admission number has been reached, and you cannot answer an argument you have not seen.
One awkward case worth planning for. If the papers reach you after your own deadline for further evidence under 2.7, and reading them makes you want to put in something new, do not simply turn up with it — under 2.10 it is the panel that decides whether to consider material not submitted by the specified deadline, weighing its significance against the effect of a possible need to adjourn. Send it to the clerk with a short note saying when the papers reached you and why the material answers them. That is a better position to be in than handing over paper at the table.
Who the clerk is, and everyone else in the room: What happens at the hearing
2.8, a subject access request, or an FOI?
"Just do an FOI" is the standard advice online, and for a parent inside a 20 school day window it is usually the wrong tool. All three routes are real. They get different things, on different clocks, from different people.
| Route | What it gets | How long they have | When it is the right tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| A paragraph 2.8 request | Information you need to help prepare your case for appeal, from the admission authority. Everything in the table above. | None. The Appeals Code sets no period for a reply, which is the reason to ask on the day you lodge. | First, always, and for nearly everything. It is free, it is addressed to the people who hold the documents, and it is the only one of the three built for this situation. |
| A subject access request | Your own and your child's personal data held by the school or council, and a copy of it — UK GDPR Articles 15(1) and 15(3). | One month from the request, which the controller may extend by two further months where that is necessary because of the complexity or the number of requests (UK GDPR Article 12A). | When what you need is what somebody wrote about your child — case notes, internal correspondence, how your application was scored — and a 2.8 request has not produced it. Note the limit: another family's distance is not your child's personal data. |
| A freedom of information request | Recorded information held by a public authority. Governing bodies of maintained schools are public authorities, and so is the proprietor of an academy in respect of information held for the purposes of its functions under Academy arrangements (FOIA 2000, Schedule 1, Part IV, paragraphs 52 and 52A). | Promptly, and in any event not later than the twentieth working day after receipt (FOIA 2000, section 10(1)). | For non-personal, countable facts a 2.8 request has been refused on: how many places were offered in a given year, how many children were admitted above the published admission number, the last distance offered in previous years. |
Look at the middle column against your own timetable. A subject access request lodged the day you are refused can lawfully be answered after your hearing has happened, and an extended one months after it. Twenty working days for an FOI is four calendar weeks, which is most of the time you have to lodge and prepare. Neither is a reason not to use them — they are genuine rights and they do not expire when the appeal does — but neither is a substitute for asking the admission authority directly, under a paragraph written for exactly this.
In practice: send the 2.8 request first, and send it to the admission authority for the school. For a community or voluntary controlled school that is the local authority — paragraph 1.3 of the Admissions Code names it as the admission authority for those schools. For an academy, a free school, a foundation or a voluntary aided school it is the school or its trust, which is why the answer sometimes comes from the school office rather than from the council. If 2.8 produces nothing on a countable, non-personal fact, that is the point to use FOI for that one item rather than for the lot.
One thing none of the three will get you
The panel's own notes. Paragraph 2.29 requires the clerk to keep an accurate record of the points raised at the hearing, including the proceedings, attendance, voting and reasons for decisions, and paragraph 2.30 requires those records to be kept securely for at least two years — while noting that they will in most cases be exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Data Protection Act 2018, and telling admission authorities that receive such requests to obtain legal advice.
What you get instead is the decision letter, and it is required to be substantial. Paragraph 2.28 requires it to be easily comprehensible, to contain a summary of the relevant factors raised by the parties and considered by the panel, and to give clear reasons — including how and why any issue of fact or law was decided. A letter that just says "dismissed" does not meet 2.28.
What the decision letter has to say, and what follows it: After the decision
If they will not give it to you
First, get the refusal in writing, and get it to say which part of your request is being refused and why. Paragraph 2.8 is a "must", and the only room in it is the word "reasonable" — so a refusal is either an argument that your request was unreasonable or it is nothing, and it is worth making them say which.
Then narrow it. A request for six named documents about your own application is much harder to refuse than a broad one, and re-sending a shorter list is faster than arguing about the long one.
Then tell the clerk. Under paragraph 1.11 the clerk must respond to queries from appellants in advance of the hearing or identify the appropriate person who can, and must be an independent source of advice on procedure and admissions law. Under 1.4 they are independent of the school and of the council's education functions. This is not a complaint about your case; it is a procedural question, which is precisely their job.
And if it still has not come, say so in your statement and ask the question at the hearing. Paragraph 2.12 requires the admission authority to provide a presenting officer to present the decision not to admit and to answer detailed questions about the case in question and about the school. A document you were refused becomes a question they have to answer out loud, in front of a panel that is deciding under 3.2(b) whether the arrangements were correctly and impartially applied. Put it as a question rather than as a grievance: "we asked on 12 March for the last distance offered under criterion 4 and have not had it — what was it?"
Be realistic about the remedy
Nothing in the Appeals Code gives an appeal panel the power to order disclosure, and there is no penalty in it for an admission authority that answers a 2.8 request slowly or not at all. A request refused is a gap in your evidence, not a ground of appeal, and you should not plan your case around a document you may never see.
What the Code does do is separate: paragraph 3.4 requires the panel, in all cases, to refer to the local authority — and to the admission authority where the school is its own — any aspects of the admission arrangements that do not comply with admissions law. A defect you find gets referred on even in an appeal you lose.
A different route exists for the arrangements themselves rather than for your case, and it is usually shut by the time you need it. Paragraph 1.53 of the Admissions Code requires objections to determined admission arrangements to be referred to the Schools Adjudicator by 15 May in the determination year — which, for arrangements determined by 28 February, is more than a year before your child would start. It is worth knowing about for next year's applicants and it will not help this appeal.
The request that most often changes an outcome: Distance and catchment
What the documents will usually show
That the arrangements were applied correctly. That is the honest common outcome, and it is worth saying before you spend a week chasing paper: in most refusals the school was full, the criteria were published, and your child was placed in the criterion the arrangements put them in. Across England 19.4% of appeals heard were upheld — 22,402 of 115,695 appeals heard in 2024–2026 — so four in five are dismissed, and getting better documents does not change a case that has nothing in it. Those are national figures for every appeal heard in England. Nobody publishes an appeal rate for an individual school, so none of it is a forecast about yours.
The check is still worth making, for three reasons that survive the odds. It is cheap — an email, and the reply either shows something or it does not. It is aimed at the only stage where the panel has no discretion: paragraph 3.5(a) requires it to uphold your appeal where the arrangements did not comply with admissions law or were not correctly and impartially applied and your child would have been offered a place if they had been. And under 3.4 anything genuinely wrong gets referred on whatever happens to you.
What the documents cannot do is turn a preference into a ground. If they come back and everything in them is in order, that is useful information rather than a wasted week — it tells you your appeal is a second-stage one under 3.8, and that the time is better spent on what this school can offer your child that the allocated one cannot. Before you decide which of those you are in, read the grounds pages; they are about what a panel is permitted to act on, which is the half that decides most appeals.
What a panel weighs, and who has to have written it: What actually counts as evidence
Every date in the process, and how school days are counted: Appeal deadlines and the timetable
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. Where this page says an admission authority "must" do something, the Code uses that word too. The subject access right and its time limit are at Articles 15 and 12A of the UK GDPR; the freedom of information right and its time limit are at sections 1 and 10(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and the entries for school governing bodies and academy proprietors are at paragraphs 52 and 52A of Schedule 1 to that Act. Appeal statistics are Department for Education figures — how we source and calculate them.
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.
- Appeal deadlines and the timetable Twenty school days to lodge, ten days' notice of the hearing, forty days to be heard in the normal round and thirty in-year. What is fixed by the Code, what each council sets for itself, and what happens if you miss it.
- 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.
Two things that are true on every page here
This is not legal advice. We are not a law firm. Admission appeals are not a reserved legal activity, and you do not need a lawyer to bring one — but what you are reading is an explanation of a statutory process, not advice about your case.
Nobody publishes appeal odds for individual schools. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and releases them by council only. Across England 19.4% of appeals heard were upheld — 22,402 of 115,695 appeals heard in 2024–2026 — and that is a description of what happened to other families, not a forecast about yours. Figures for your council.
The statutory framework is the School Admission Appeals Code 2022, which came into force on 1 October 2022. Paragraph numbers cited on this page refer to it. Appeal statistics are Department for Education figures used under the Open Government Licence — how we source and calculate them.