Does being a young carer help in a Year 7 school appeal?

"The appeal panel will therefore be considering (amongst other things) whether the preferred school offers things which the child needs (such as support for young carers which isn’t available at other schools) and whether there is detriment to the child if they don’t have those things."

I'm just emphasising these points made in @PanelChair 's post because it's really easy to skim over them and think 'well of course!'.

The appeal panel’s role is not the same as that of the medical-social need panel. The appeal panel will be considering the prejudice (detriment) to the child if not given a place and the prejudice to the school and the pupils already there if an additional child is admitted and weighing up which of these is greater. The appeal panel will therefore be considering (amongst other things) whether the preferred school offers things which the child needs (such as support for young carers which isn’t available at other schools) and whether there is detriment to the child if they don’t have those things. They should be looking at all the evidence submitted by both sides.

Where I live if you don’t live in catchment young carers will definitely not get the place as it would put even more pressure on them.

If the school is in catchment and your closest school you should try and get legal advice & appeal again.

It's impossible to say at this stage. For example, if a school could squeeze one pupil in and there is a pupil with safeguarding issues that make this school essential, a young carer isn't going to win. If a school could squeeze one pupil in and there is a young carer who needs the special programme run by a school, then a pupil who would benefit from the drama club is probably going to be disappointed.

All you can do is trust that the panel has the best interests of all appellants and all pupils already at the school in mind as they deliberate, and they come to the best decision they can with the information given. They don't take these decisions lightly and when they turn appeals down, they don't take delight in it.

So, what data did you present to them and how was it obtained?

Did you mention it in your original application ? It might help if you can prove how this particular school would lighten their duties. If you can evidence it, and the impact.

I think you're thinking too much about it @busySunflower . It isn't as granular as you are making it. The panel has to make an overall assessment of whether your case for admission outweighs any prejudice to the school, and then if there are more cases that succeed in this than the school could take without creating a serious prejudice, which cases are strongest.

Some panels will want the parents to present oral evidence. In my LA the chair tended to say: "Is there anything that you'd like to add to your written evidence, that we have read carefully?" A parent is completely within their rights to read out their case, to read out a summary statement, or to simply say 'No'. It has no influence on the panel.

The panel will be deciding whether the school has established that they would be prejudiced by taking any other child, then, if they wouldn't, how many other children they could reasonably take, then (if that number is lower than the number of potentially successful appellants) which appellants have the strongest case.

In your case, they will be looking at whether being a young carer means that this school in particular is necessary for your child, and whether they will suffer prejudice by being denied a place.

All schools should provide support for young carers but if you have evidence that this one is particularly good, and perhaps evidence of why your child needs particularly good support, that will strengthen your case.

The only way I could think of it being unacceptable to them is if it were obtained by somebody going into GIAP and using the personally identifying data about students that they are only permitted to access for the purposes of their role to provide the OP with the data. Or using the children's data from this Summer's Census, as that won't be published yet, either.

That wouldn't be acceptable in the slightest and anybody doing that to help out a friend - or their own child's appeal - should be under investigation for Gross Professional Misconduct.

Indeed, so the figures in the spreadsheet may understate the true figure for some schools. However, since the information is supposed to be publicly available there is no way an appeal panel should prevent a parent from using it.

You do need to bear in mind that reporting of Young Carers at Summer Census was not mandatory until 2023 and it still doesn't throw a query on validation if there are few (or none). One school could be better at recording and reporting than another; this could mean that they are better at identifying and support or that they have a very persistent Data Manager ensuring that it's properly recorded.

Go to Explore and download data - Schools, pupils and their characteristics - Explore education statistics - GOV.UK then scroll down to "School level underlying data 2025" and click on Download. This will download a spreadsheet with one row for each school. One of the columns is "number of pupils who are a young carer" - column JF in Excel. The total number of full-time pupils at the school is column GZ, so if you really want to get into it you can use these two columns to calculate the percentage of pupils at the school who are young carers.

The school and the panel were completely wrong. This is not even vaguely sensitive data. You can find out the number of young carers at any school from the school census data which is available to anyone through the government website. I can, for example, tell you that Charles Darwin school in Bromley had 13 young carers at the time of the 2025 census, whilst Canons High School in Harrow had 59. If you lose this appeal, you have grounds to refer this to the ESFA (assuming this is an academy). The panel should not disadvantage you by preventing you from using publicly available information.

And sometimes, it's just not necessary or the panel is of the opinion that expecting a parent to argue their case verbally is potentially discriminatory towards those less fluent in English or of a different level of education; otherwise, appeals could be determined more by the socioeconomic status of the parent than the actual legal test.

What would be the tought process of the Chair, for strong cases do they find reasons to upheld or do they find reasons to dismiss.

It is a balancing exercise. The panel (not just the Chair) are balancing the case to admit against the case to refuse admission.

One of our evidence had a very sensitive information (an independent validation) about the school as an evidence, both school representative and pannel members agreed among themselfs that as a parent we should not have the access to this sensitive information, but that sensitive information is actualy the core of our argument, without which we will not be able to say the support is real.

Without knowing more about the nature of this information it is impossible to comment. However, if the panel decide not to take this information into consideration that may give you grounds to take the case to the ESFA or LGO (depending on the type of school) who may order a fresh hearing with a different panel.

I agree with @PanelChair and @PatriciaHolm.

Re questioning, I wouldn't regard whether or not you were probed as a sign either way. Some panels ask lots of questions, some don't.

When there are multiple appeals and the panel decides that the school could take some extra pupils but not all, they have to decide which appellants had the strongest case, so they will review all the cases to decide which ones should be given a place.

Panels will take into account all evidence, so if you have told them why being a young carer impacts your child, and what you were told by the schools, then they will consider that.

Every appeal is individual. A panel may decide that one young carer doesn't need to go to a school, but another young carer does.

Yes, they would be aware and they don't dismiss an appeal because 10 others have also met the test for a successful appeal - the school would have to deal with the admissions.

Don't forget that your child will remain on the waiting list until 31 December - there are almost always changes where some dont arrive/move away/get places at other schools in that time.