So what actually is the test for winning an appeal for a secondary school place?

[nonicknamemum]

Literature issued by our local admissions authority suggests that you will only win on appeal if you can show that the admissions authority has failed to properly apply its own admissions policy. However, the head teacher at our local popular school has said that last year five pupils got in on appeal. That makes me wonder whether there were really five cases in which the local authority failed to apply its criteria properly. The main criteria for determining places are whether a pupil has a sibling already at the school, and straight line distance from home to school as measured by a computer system. To me, those seem quite straightforward criteria, which makes me wonder whether there are other grounds for winning an appeal, apart from being able to show that the admissions authority failed to properly apply its admissions policy.

medical and social grounds which can end up as second critera

The gurus will be here soon and can quote chapter and verse, but the grounds for appeal (outside of infant class size) is: will your child be more disadvantaged by not going to this school than the other children in the class will be disadvantaged by having one more student in the class.
So you have to show why this school is necessary for your child and if possible show they can take an extra child (e.g. Measuring classrooms).

As a secondary school appeal, there are two main ways of winning an appeal.
In the first part of the appeal the panel hear from the admission authority representative why they refused admission and why they believe that they cannot take any more pupils in that year group. Both the panel and the appellants have the opportunity to ask questions of the representative. What comes from this are two decisions that the panel has to make

1. was the admission process correctly carried and if not would the appellant have been offered a place if it had been done correctly. If it is the latter they will admit.
2. have the school made an adequate case to say that the school is full in that year group and that admitting another pupil will prejudice the efficient education of all the other pupils. It is for the panel to decide what weight will be given to the various arguments presented. If the panel believe that admitting another pupil would not cause problems then they can admit.

If there is more than one appellant that satisfies the above criteria then the panel have to decide whether they can admit all or not. If they do not believe that they can admit all those that meet the criteria then no-one is admitted at stage 1.

In stage 2 each appellant has the opportunity to say why they believe that their child should be given a place and the reasons for their belief. In effect you can say anything you want but again the panel have the responsibility of deciding how much weight to attach to each argument. The panel will hear all the cases to admit and then individually determine whether each case meets the threshold to admit. If you like it is deciding which way the balance tips, is there more prejudice to the pupil for not admitting to the school or more prejudice to the school in admitting the pupil.

If having considered each case separately the panel comes to the conclusion that they can not admit all that meet the threshold, then they will decide how many can be admitted and then decide which of the appellants have the strongest cases to admit.

OP in your case, it could be at stage 1 that for instance a mistake has been made on the distance measurement which meant you were not offered a place or it could be that the school simply put up such a poor case not to admit that the panel believes that the appellants should be admitted. At stage 2 you might be arguing that the school is nearest to you, that it has after school clubs that your child wants to go to, that the school has a very strong bias towards sports and your child is already a national champion in something, that the school you have been offered a place at takes 2 hours by bus to get to etc. So there are opportunities other than a mistake having been made to admit, the local authority advice is somewhat biased towards trying to put people off appealing I would conclude.

We won an appeal based on transport. An 8 mile journey involving train and bus and an hour and a half travel time that also couldn't guarantee arriving at school before registration meant that we were successful.

Mummytime is right.

If the admissions authority has not followed the law or has not operated its admissions correctly and your child should have been offered a place an appeal will succeed unless the mistake affected so many children that the school can't cope with all of them.

If the admissions authority cannot show that admitting your child will prejudice the school (i.e. cause problems) the appeal will succeed.

After that the panel has to balance prejudice, i.e. decide whether the prejudice to your child through not being admitted outweighs the prejudice to the school through being forced to accept another pupil.

If the literature from your LA is referring to infant class size appeals it is correct - you should only win an infant class size appeal if the LA has made a mistake. However, if it is referring to appeals generally it is seriously misleading. Personally I would complain as it may deter some people from appealing when they have excellent cases.

Thank you for your very helpful responses.