When school admission rules are challenged
Every state school in England has to publish the rules it admits by, and anyone can object that those rules break the School Admissions Code. The objection goes to the Office of the Schools Adjudicator, who publishes a determination naming the school and saying whether the rules complied.
Since 2011 the adjudicator has decided 1,251 of them. In 854 — 68.3% — the arrangements did not comply.
of decided objections found the school's admission rules did not comply
854 of 1,251, 2011–2026
This is a rate among objections, not among schools. That is the share of objections that were decided, not of schools. Objections are made by people who already believe something is wrong, so most schools never appear here at all. Nor is it an appeal statistic: an objection is about the rules a school admits by, and an appeal is one family's case about one child. A school whose arrangements were found wanting does not thereby have a better appeal success rate — nobody publishes appeal outcomes for individual schools at all.
It depends on who writes the rules
Community and voluntary controlled schools have their admission arrangements written for them by the council. Academies, foundation schools and voluntary aided schools — which includes most faith schools — write their own. Split the determinations that way and the rate runs from 48.2% to 80.4%.
View as a table
| School type | Arrangements set by | Decided | Did not comply | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voluntary aided | governing body | 265 | 213 | 80.4% |
| Foundation | governing body | 47 | 32 | 68.1% |
| Academy or free school | academy trust | 752 | 506 | 67.3% |
| Voluntary controlled | local authority | 71 | 46 | 64.8% |
| Community | local authority | 110 | 53 | 48.2% |
The two ends are the clear ones. Voluntary aided schools, whose arrangements are set by the governing body, were found at fault in 80.4% of decided objections (213 of 265) — the highest of any type. Community schools, where the council writes the rules, in 48.2% (53 of 110) — the lowest.
The middle three are closer together than the split implies, and worth being careful about: voluntary controlled schools, whose arrangements the council writes, sit within a few points of academies, whose trusts write their own. So this is not a clean line between the two groups. What the figures support is narrower — that the type of school most likely to be found at fault is the one whose governing body writes its own faith-based arrangements, and the least likely is the one that uses the council's.
That is not evidence of bad faith. Faith criteria, banding, aptitude tests and sibling definitions are the hardest parts of the Code to get right, and they are exactly the parts a school only has to write if it sets its own arrangements. A council writing one set of rules for two hundred community schools has one thing to get right; two hundred academy trusts have two hundred. The counts behind each bar differ a great deal too: the foundation and voluntary controlled rows rest on 47 and 71 decisions against 752 for academy or free school schools, so read the small ones as indicative rather than settled.
What this means for an appeal
An upheld objection means the school had to change its arrangements. It does not undo any decision already made about a child, and it is not a finding about your case. But it is the clearest published evidence that the rules a school admits by can be wrong — and if the rules that were applied to your application were wrong, or were applied wrongly, that is one of the grounds a panel can act on at the first stage.
- A determination is dated. An upheld objection requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from several years ago describes rules that no longer exist. What matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under.
- You can read the determination. Every one is published in full and names the school. If the objection concerned the criterion you were refused under, it is worth reading before you write your case.
- Most schools have never had one. The adjudicator only rules on objections that were actually made. Silence here means nothing either way.
Where the objections are
Ranked by how many were decided, not by the fault rate. A council is not the admission authority for its academies or its voluntary aided schools, so a table ordered by rate would read as a judgement on councils for rules most of them did not write.
| Council | Decided | Did not comply | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Surrey | 60 | 35 | 58.3% |
| Hertfordshire | 59 | 35 | 59.3% |
| Buckinghamshire | 39 | 18 | 46.2% |
| Warwickshire | 34 | 16 | 47.1% |
| Essex | 33 | 25 | 75.8% |
| Barnet | 29 | 25 | 86.2% |
| Wigan | 26 | 26 | 100% |
| Kent | 25 | 9 | 36% |
| Birmingham | 24 | 14 | 58.3% |
| Medway | 23 | 18 | 78.3% |
| Worcestershire | 23 | 22 | 95.7% |
| Leicestershire | 22 | 20 | 90.9% |
Only councils with at least 10 decided objections are shown. 144 councils have at least one.
The most recent findings
The latest determinations where the adjudicator found the arrangements did not comply. Each links to the determination itself on GOV.UK.
| School or authority | Council | Determined |
|---|---|---|
| Barclay Primary School | Waltham Forest | 2026-08-04 |
| The Cottesloe School | Buckinghamshire | 2026-07-23 |
| Crowthorne Church of England Primary School | Bracknell Forest | 2026-07-08 |
| Bishopshalt School | Hillingdon | 2026-06-25 |
| Brindishe Manor School | Lewisham | 2026-06-18 |
| The Aylesbury Vale Academy | Buckinghamshire | 2026-06-15 |
| Royal Latin School | Buckinghamshire | 2026-06-15 |
| Waddesdon Church of England School | Buckinghamshire | 2026-06-15 |
| Balcarras School | Gloucestershire | 2026-06-09 |
| Buckingham School | Buckinghamshire | 2026-06-08 |
| Royal Latin School | Buckinghamshire | 2026-06-08 |
| Bohunt Horsham | West Sussex | 2026-02-06 |
How the objection process works
Objections are made to the adjudicator, not to the school and not to the council. Anyone may object to the arrangements of a school they are not connected with, and the Admissions Code sets an annual deadline of 15 May for objecting to arrangements determined that year. The adjudicator's decision is binding, and the admission authority must revise its arrangements to comply.
This is a separate process from appealing a refused place, and it is far slower — objections are decided over months, and a determination cannot give a specific child a place. If your child has been refused, the appeal deadline is the one that matters. The two are worth understanding together, though: what the adjudicator publishes about a school is evidence about the rules, and the rules are what your appeal is partly about.
Source
Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations, 2011–2026. Compiled from 2,253 published determinations, of which 2,100 concern admission arrangements — the rest are statutory proposals about opening and closing schools, and school land disputes, which are also the adjudicator's work but nothing to do with admissions. Used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.