Most appeals are unsuccessful as:
- they do not demonstrate maladministration of the admission process. This is difficult and almost unprovable as the Local Authority takes care of all this.
- appellants do not provide compelling reasons why the child can only attend the school they are appealing for.
- appellants use reasons such as, all my child’s friends are going to X school or X school is close to my place of work - these are weak arguments and mostly do not lead to a successful outcome
- appellants who have a child with special educational needs (SEND) state this as a reason for choosing X school. Students with a diagnosis of SEND, and most do not or do not show any evidence of this, believe they should be prioritised for a place. Again, this is not a robust argument and factual incorrect
- All schools are required to provide support for students with SEND, so you would need to effectively justify why X school is the only school can provide an education for your children. Bear in mind, children with EHC Plans follow a completely different application process - if this is the case, your child’s case officer will be working with you to agree on what school will be named in their EHCP
- often the appellant is appealing for a school that is further away than the closest school to their home, and will, by attending school x, pass several schools closer to their home address. Then to confuse matters and weaken the appellant’s argument at the same time, they say the child has a medical condition which requires them to attend X school. I am sure from the scenario you can see that this is not a robust argument. In order to for children to be happy at school, making successful social connections is paramount - as such, a student is better suited to going to their local school and particularly when they have a managed medical or mental health condition eg diabetes, bladder weakness, anxiety, etc
- Medical conditions is another reason used, and again these appeals are usually unsuccessful. By Law, all schools must support students to manage their medical conditions whilst at school. All schools have a policy on their website. It would be impossible to demonstrate with evidence that a school your child is not a pupil at has weaker medical support for students than another
- Using a school’s examination results or OfSTED rating - again in my experience these are not robust arguments
- Poor supporting documents eg, the name of the school you are appealing for is not included in the special/social circumstances statement or on any of the supporting documentation and more often than not, includes the name of another school the parent has been to see a professional to request supporting docs for (not school x)
- the student has been offered a school and appellants rarely robustly set out the potential impact not attending school X will have on their child, and have limited evidence to corroborate the statement made by the parent
Consider taking a look on school websites to see how many appeals they heard and were successful. You’ll see that appellants rarely win (upheld) as they do not demonstrate compelling and robust reasons why their child can only attend the school they want (appealing for).
On a philosophical note, School Admissions is a completely parent driven process. The system is designed to give parents choice. Most schools will happily have as much children as want to come to the school. However, resources, size etc. mean this isn’t possible. In addition, appeals create significant workload for Headteachers and school leaders, most of whom want children to come to the school but instead are forced to spend time arguing why the child cannot come to the school. Another bonkers waste of time for schools, who would much rather spend their time on teaching, learning and student wellbeing. Apologies for the rant.
… The oversubscription criteria of the admission policy is designed to give those who most need it the opportunity to be bumped up the queue irrespective of distance from the school. If parents all supported their local schools, there would be enough places and all schools would be operating more or less on a level playing field.
One last thing you can try is making a request for special/social circumstances. Guidance on making these applications under this criteria is in the school’s admission policy and you’ll find more guidance on the local authority Admission webpages.
This in affect bypasses the appeals process and the school make the decision on whether the student meets the criteria for entry to the school under the special/social circumstances criteria. The school can still refuse and you have the right to appeal. If they refuse, you can appeal and this is heard by an independent panel. The school will still apply the tests set out above under “why most appeals are unsuccessful”.
I hope this post isn’t too disappointing but gives you some hooks to guide your application.
Good luck with it!