Writing your appeal statement

What the panel is looking for in it

Before deciding what to write, it is worth being exact about what the document is for. Paragraph 2.10 requires the clerk to send all the papers needed for the hearing to both parties and to the panel members a reasonable time before the date — so your statement is the first thing the panel knows about your child, and it arrives alongside the admission authority's explanation of why admitting another child would cause prejudice (2.9).

For every appeal except infant class size, paragraph 3.1 requires the panel to work through two stages in order. Between them they are the whole of what it may act on:

A statement is well organised when a panel member reading it for the first time can find those two things without hunting. That is the entire design brief. It is not a letter, it does not need to build to anything, and nothing is gained by keeping your best point until the end.

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

The thing that feels like the argument and is not

Almost every statement written without help says a version of this: we have wanted this school since she was small, it is where her friends are going, we were devastated by the letter, and we would be so grateful if the panel would reconsider.

All of that is true and none of it is what is being decided. Paragraph 3.2 is about the admission authority's paperwork — the footnote to paragraph 3.3 records that at that stage the characteristics and circumstances of the particular child will not, except in extreme cases, be relevant to whether admission would cause prejudice. And at the second stage, where your child does become the subject, 3.8 is weighing your case against harm to a school that is already full. Strength of feeling is the one thing in the document that every other family that day will also have.

What a first-stage mistake looks like: A mistake in how the decision was made

The structure, block by block

Six blocks, in this order, each with its own heading in your document. The order is the Code's order rather than a house preference, which is why every row names the paragraph it exists to answer.

Use those as literal headings. A panel reading a stack of appeals for one school (2.21) is looking for the same things in each of them, and headings are how it finds yours without deciding for itself which paragraph was meant to be the argument.

Each first-stage point in three moves

This is the part of the structure worth getting exactly right, because it is the only stage where the panel has no discretion. One heading per point, and three moves inside it. If a point cannot be written in all three, it is not yet a first-stage point.

1. Here is what the arrangements say Appeals Code 3.2(a), 3.2(b) Quote the published admission arrangements for the year you applied for, by criterion number, in their own words. Both limbs of paragraph 3.2 are measured against this document — whether the arrangements themselves complied with the School Admissions Code and Part 3 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, and whether they were correctly and impartially applied to your application — so a point that does not start with what the arrangements say has nothing to be tested against.
2. Here is what happened instead Appeals Code 3.2(b) The specific difference, with the date and the document. Your supplementary faith form was received on the 12th and the refusal says nothing was received. The distance was measured to a gate that the arrangements do not mention. Your daughter was scored under criterion 5 when the arrangements put a child in her position in criterion 3. One point, one heading, one paragraph.
3. Here is why that cost me the place Appeals Code 3.5(a), 3.7(b) The move almost everyone leaves out, and the one paragraph 3.5(a) is built on: the panel must uphold the appeal at the first stage where the arrangements were unlawful or wrongly applied AND your child would have been offered a place if they had not been. So say what should have happened — which criterion your child belonged in, and that children in that criterion were offered places. Without this, 3.7(b) sends the point to the second stage instead.

Written out, one point looks like this — three sentences, not three pages:

The distance was not measured as the arrangements specify. The determined arrangements for September 2027 give criterion 4 as distance "measured in a straight line from the address point of the home to the address point of the school". The decision letter of 1 March gives our distance as 1.87 miles; measured between those two address points it is 1.61 miles. The last place under criterion 4 went to 1.74 miles, so on the measurement the arrangements specify our son would have been offered a place.

Note what that does not contain. No adjectives, no history of the family's hopes, and no accusation — just the published rule, the difference, and the consequence. It is also entirely checkable, which is the quality that makes a first-stage point uncomfortable for a presenting officer to answer and a preference paragraph easy to.

One thing that happens either way, and is worth knowing before you decide a point is too small to make: 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 identify is referred on even in an appeal you lose.

Getting the documents these points are built on: Getting the information you need

Answer the school's case, not just your own

This is the section missing from most statements, and leaving it out concedes half the appeal in silence.

The admission authority's case is not "we are full". Paragraph 3.3 has the panel decide whether admitting additional children would prejudice the provision of efficient education or the efficient use of resources, and paragraph 3.10 is explicit about what that takes:

Paragraph 3.5(b) is the other half of why this matters: if the panel finds that admitting additional children would not prejudice efficient education or the efficient use of resources, it must uphold your appeal at the first stage. No second stage, no balancing, no comparison with anyone.

Paragraph 3.10 then lists the factors a panel may consider in reaching a decision on prejudice. They are the questions your section should put:

• what effect an additional admission would have on the school in the current and following academic years as the year group moves through the school (3.10(a));
• whether any changes have been made to the school's physical accommodation or organisation since the admission number was originally set for the relevant year group (3.10(b));
• the impact of the locally agreed Fair Access Protocol (3.10(c));
• the impact on the organisation and size of classes, the availability of teaching staff, and the effect on children already at the school (3.10(d)).

You will not have the school's internal figures, and you are not expected to. Two or three sentences is enough — that you have read the admission authority's prejudice case (which paragraph 2.9 requires it to give the clerk, and 2.10 requires the clerk to send you), that it rests on the admission number having been reached, and that 3.10 asks for more than that. If the school has admitted above its published admission number in this year group in a recent year, say so and say which year.

Where the school's own case names a specific harm — a class that would go to 32, a practical room at capacity, a subject with one teacher — answer that specific harm rather than the general point. The parts of a hearing that change a panel's mind are usually here, in the difference between the school's paperwork and its argument.

The second-stage case, in the Code's words

Paragraph 3.8 tells you what to write, almost as a form. The panel must take into account your reasons for expressing a preference for the school, including what that school can offer the child that the allocated or other schools cannot. Four things make that sentence true of your child rather than of any child:

1. What your child needs Stated as a need rather than as a wish, and specific enough that somebody could check it. Not "she is anxious" but what the anxiety does, when it started, and who is involved in it.
2. What this school has that meets it Named. A unit, a programme, a language taken to A level, a nurture provision, a named member of staff who already works with your child, a sibling in the building. Taken off the school's own website or prospectus, and quoted.
3. What the allocated school does not have This is the comparison 3.8 asks for, and it is a factual gap, not a judgement about quality. "The allocated school does not offer X" is a fact a panel can act on. "The allocated school is not a good school" is an opinion it cannot, and it makes the rest of the document sound like one too.
4. Who says so other than you A GP, a paediatrician, a CAMHS clinician, a social worker, a SENCO, a head of year at the current school, a specialist service. A panel weighs the same need very differently depending on who is asserting it, and material from other people is the slowest thing to obtain — which is why 2.7's later deadline for further evidence exists, and why requesting it is the first thing to do rather than the last.

Paragraph 3.9 is worth knowing while you write this. In multiple appeals the panel must not compare the individual cases when deciding whether an appellant's case outweighs the prejudice to the school — but where it finds there are more cases which outweigh prejudice than the school can admit, it must then compare the cases and uphold those with the strongest case for admission. The comparison is real and it comes last. That is a reason to make your own case specific, and not a reason to say anything at all about anybody else's.

The second-stage argument most families lead with: Medical and social need

Length, tone and format

The Code sets no length for a statement, so anyone quoting you a word count is describing custom. What it does fix is the reading conditions: your statement goes to the panel with everything else in the bundle (2.10), and where several families are appealing for the same school one panel is reading all of it (2.21).

• Two to four sides, with headings. Long enough for three or four first-stage points written properly and a specific second-stage section; short enough to be read twice. If it is running past four sides, the excess is almost always narrative rather than argument.
• One point per heading. Two points in one paragraph get answered as one, and the weaker one decides how the stronger one is read.
• Dates and documents, not adjectives. "On 2 March the letter said X; the arrangements say Y" is a sentence a panel can check. "We were treated appallingly" is one it cannot.
• No anger at the school, however earned. The panel is independent of it (1.6) and cannot act on how you were treated except where it goes to whether the arrangements were correctly and impartially applied (3.2(b)). Anger in a statement gets read as the absence of a better point.
• Write it knowing the other side will read it. Paragraph 2.24(c) makes it a principle of natural justice that written material and evidence has been seen by all the parties, so the presenting officer sees your statement and its attachments before the hearing. That is a protection — it is why you also see their case and can answer it — but it means nothing in the document is private.

Sign it and date it. If your child is appealing as well as you, which paragraph 2.20 provides for and paragraph 2.6 makes the ordinary position at sixth form, you may each put your own case and they may argue different things — so write two statements rather than one signed by both.

What to attach

Attach documents, number them, and refer to them by number in the text. What earns a place in the bundle:

• The refusal letter. Paragraph 2.5 requires it to give the reason admission was refused, and that reason decides which test your appeal is heard under. If yours does not give one, say so in the statement.
• The published admission arrangements for the year you applied for, or the relevant pages. This is the document both limbs of 3.2 are measured against.
• Anything showing how the arrangements were applied to you — the criterion you were placed in, the distance recorded, the last distance or criterion at which places were offered. Paragraph 2.8 requires admission authorities to comply with reasonable requests from parents for information they need to help prepare their case, so this is material you are entitled to ask for.
• Dated correspondence that establishes what was sent and when — the submitted application, an email receipt, a supplementary form.
• Letters from people other than you about your child's needs, addressed to what your child needs and why this school can meet it — not to how much your family would like the place.
• Anything you have actually measured, with how you measured it. A journey timed on a school morning is evidence; an estimated one is not, and a figure a panel finds soft makes it wonder about the others.

What a panel weighs and what it does not: What actually counts as evidence

Five things to leave out

Not because they are weak, but because the Code puts them beyond the panel's reach. A paragraph a panel is required to ignore is not a bad argument — it is space in the one document whose length is entirely up to you.

The waiting list one is worth being clear about, because leaving it out of the statement is not the same as ignoring it. Paragraph 3.21 stops the panel taking account of your position on the list; it does not stop the list working. Staying on it is often the better of the two routes and it needs no hearing — just keep it out of the document the panel has to read.

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

And the letter of support one is worth acting on today rather than discovering later. Paragraph 2.14 is a rule about conflicts of interest, not about your child, and it bites at the point where there is no time left to replace the evidence.

How 2.14 plays out on the day: What happens at the hearing

If your refusal letter says infant class size

Then the structure above is the wrong one, and this is the most important paragraph on the page for you. Paragraph 4.2 sends a refusal made on the ground that admitting your child would breach the infant class size limit to a separate and much narrower process, and paragraph 4.6 lets the panel uphold the appeal at the first stage only where admitting additional children would not breach the limit, or where the arrangements did not comply or were not correctly and impartially applied and your child would have been offered a place if they had been, or where it decides the decision to refuse admission was not one which a reasonable admission authority would have made in the circumstances of the case (4.6(c), which is the last of the four matters paragraph 4.4 requires the panel to consider).

What that means for a statement is stark: how much your child needs the place is not one of the three, so the section that carries the second-stage case here carries nothing. Across England 9.4% of infant class size appeals heard were upheld — 1,500 of 15,927 appeals heard in 2024–2026 — against 19.4% for all appeals heard. Both are national figures for every such appeal heard in England.

Read the ground before writing a word, and check the reason on your letter carefully first: paragraph 4.2 is explicit that a refusal in an infant class for any reason other than the class size limit is decided under the ordinary two-stage process in section 3, which is the better test to be judged under and the one this page describes.

In detail: Infant class size

What a statement cannot do

Everything above is about not wasting the document. It is not a claim about outcomes, and it would be easy to read it as one, so: nothing on this page will improve your chances of a place, and we are not going to tell you otherwise. No figure exists that would show it — appeal outcomes are published by council, not by school and not by how the case was written — and the tests do not move. Paragraphs 3.2, 3.3 and 3.8 ask the same three questions of a beautifully written statement and a hurried 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, and most of those were always going to be: the school is genuinely full, the arrangements were applied correctly, and the family's reason for preferring it, however real, does not outweigh the prejudice at 3.8. Structure does not change that. Rates vary a great deal between councils and the figures for yours are here, but nobody publishes a rate for an individual school, so treat all of it as a description of what happened to other families rather than a forecast about yours.

What the structure is for is narrower and worth an evening anyway. A panel has to find your two decisions somewhere in what you send it, and it is reading yours alongside a dozen others for the same school. If you have a first-stage point, the three moves are what make it one instead of a complaint. If you do not, the honest second-stage version is shorter than most people write and stands a better chance of being read as what it is. And if, having read the two stages, your case is that you would much prefer this school and there is nothing else in it — read the grounds pages before you spend a weekend on the writing, because that is the half that decides most appeals.

Every paragraph number on this page is from the School Admission Appeals Code 2022. Where this page says a panel or an admission authority "must" do something, the Code uses that word too; where it says "may" or "might", so does the Code. The example first-stage point is illustrative — the distances, dates and criterion numbers in it are invented, and yours come from your own arrangements and decision letter. 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.
• 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.
• 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.