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Secondary education

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Original poster

Secondary school appeal advice

12 replies

HollyJ2 · 03/03/2025 13:07

Hi All,
We received an offer today for my son which wasn't in our list of preferred schools. The school he has been offered is around the same distance as that of our first choice but is under subscribed whereas our first choice is over subscribed and we are just out of the catchment area (ends at the bottom of our road).
Our reason for selecting the school we did was due to the additional support my son requires. He has been referred for an ADHD assessment after many interventions at primary school. He also suffers with terrible anxiety which we believe is linked. Due to the high turnover of SENCO at his primary school and the lack of willingness to help from the GP, the referral for the assessment only got sent off in October last year and we are expecting to have to wait quite some time.
The referral details the many interventions that the school have tried and the support they have put in place (Interventions have been delivered 1:1 and in small groups on a daily basis, weekly basis, and as ad hoc support. He receives additional adult support in class to help him both academically and emotionally as he shows a lot of anxious behaviours and this can be an additional barrier to his learning). He is currently also receiving before and after school tutoring fro the head teacher and his class teach to help him prepare for SATS due to his anxiety.
The school we chose as our first choice caters for a wide range of students with additional needs in the mainstream school and they also have two additionally resourced provisions onsite.
He struggles academically and needs a high level of support which we feel this school in particular could offer, They state that numeracy and literacy needs are supported with small group structured teaching and peer support programmes, e.g. additional literacy lessons and a Paired Reading Scheme which is part of what appealed to us as he has received this level of support in primary and it has been invaluable.
He has a very keen interest in sport and physical activity and this is where he excels; this school also offer a number of extra curricular activities aswell which we feel would allow him to channel his strengths.

We feel that moving him to a school without any of his peers and the familiarity and support system he has in place currently will have a huge detrimental effect on his mental health and heighten his anxieties.
The school we have applied to is on the way to his current primary school and so is a familiar route for him which is important and i worry that he wouldn't be safe travelling to a school in an area he has never really been to before.

I am looking for any help and advice as to how i could strengthen my appeal. I have spent a huge amount of time reading through the other appeal posts and have found them so informative.

Happy to answer any further questions if you feel i have missed anything/

OP posts:
atriskacademic · 03/03/2025 13:19

@HollyJ2 Hi! I have been through this process last year, successfully. I'll post some general advice soon, hopefully tonight, after work. We learned a lot about the process last year.

Bluevelvetsofa · 03/03/2025 13:42

You have to show that the detriment to your child of not having a place at the school of your choice, is greater than the detriment to the school of taking a child over numbers.

Secondary school pupils are expected to travel to school independently, so I don’t think that would be a strong argument to put forward. It could and will probably be argued, that all schools have an SEND department, which would support your child.
There will be numbers of children going to secondary schools that are different from their peer group, so that might not be a strong argument. Children generally find like minded people fairly quickly, although, from what you say, your son might find that more difficult.

You say that your child is interested in sport. Does he have an aptitude for one or more sports that the preferred school offers and the offered one doesn’t? Is he part of a team outside of school, or do clubs and extra curricular activities connected with his interest.

In the meantime, accept the place and get in the waiting lists of any other schools you feel would be better. If you reject the place, there’s no obligation for the LA to find another, as I expect you know.

Have you considered applying for an EHCNA?

Original poster
HollyJ2 · 03/03/2025 14:30

Thank you for taking the time to apply.

Yes he plays football 5 times a week and has had trails for academies so he is pretty good and extremely passionate about it. He is part of both a saturday and sunday team.

Yes i have thought about applying for an EHCNA, i am just looking into it now. I suppose this won't help with him getting a place at the school we hoped for but it would put extra support in place for whichever school he does end up attending?

OP posts:
prh47bridge · 03/03/2025 14:37

If you get an EHCP for your son, you will be asked what school should be named on it. There are only limited grounds under which the LA can refuse to name a school. If you get an EHCP naming the school you want, they will have to admit your son even if they are already full.

If you want to talk about his mental health you will need evidence from a medical professional saying that, in their opinion, your son needs to attend this school. Without that, I would keep away from the mental health aspect.

The travel point may not be given any weight by the panel, but I would still put it in. They may think it is significant given your son's difficulties.

The rest of your first post sounds like a good case to me. The only way you could strengthen it is by identifying as much as possible that this school offers him that he needs and is missing from the offered school.

SallyWD · 03/03/2025 15:00

Hi, I saw you on the other thread. I think you have a strong case as it's similar to the case we had for my sensitive, anxious son. We were successful at appeal. You need to provide evidence of his struggles, of the extra support he's been receiving. Try and get evidence from the school, the doctor, any third party that's been providing support.
With us, the primary school hired in extra support for DS and they provided a strong letter of support to our appeal, saying how it would be beneficial for my son to be at the same school as his established friendship group.
You need to describe the detriment to him of not going to your preferred school. In our case, I painted a vivid picture of how life for him would be - spiralling anxiety, diminishing confidence, lack of friendship group, and how this would impact him academically.
Another good tip is to Google for evidence to support your arguments. For example, one of our arguments was the importance of DS being with his established friendship group due to his anxiety and past mutism. By Googling this, I found a lot of relevant info and studies to support me. I did this for every argument I had. You can Google (for example) "the importance of friendship groups for the highly anxious child."
Good luck! Throw everything at it.

Original poster
HollyJ2 · 03/03/2025 20:12

prh47bridge · 03/03/2025 14:37

If you get an EHCP for your son, you will be asked what school should be named on it. There are only limited grounds under which the LA can refuse to name a school. If you get an EHCP naming the school you want, they will have to admit your son even if they are already full.

If you want to talk about his mental health you will need evidence from a medical professional saying that, in their opinion, your son needs to attend this school. Without that, I would keep away from the mental health aspect.

The travel point may not be given any weight by the panel, but I would still put it in. They may think it is significant given your son's difficulties.

The rest of your first post sounds like a good case to me. The only way you could strengthen it is by identifying as much as possible that this school offers him that he needs and is missing from the offered school.

Thank you for your detailed response. It’s really helpful and Im going to take all your points on board when drafting my appeal.
I’ve also downloaded the paperwork for getting an EHCNA carried to look at hopefully getting an EHCP in place.

OP posts:
Original poster
HollyJ2 · 03/03/2025 20:17

SallyWD · 03/03/2025 15:00

Hi, I saw you on the other thread. I think you have a strong case as it's similar to the case we had for my sensitive, anxious son. We were successful at appeal. You need to provide evidence of his struggles, of the extra support he's been receiving. Try and get evidence from the school, the doctor, any third party that's been providing support.
With us, the primary school hired in extra support for DS and they provided a strong letter of support to our appeal, saying how it would be beneficial for my son to be at the same school as his established friendship group.
You need to describe the detriment to him of not going to your preferred school. In our case, I painted a vivid picture of how life for him would be - spiralling anxiety, diminishing confidence, lack of friendship group, and how this would impact him academically.
Another good tip is to Google for evidence to support your arguments. For example, one of our arguments was the importance of DS being with his established friendship group due to his anxiety and past mutism. By Googling this, I found a lot of relevant info and studies to support me. I did this for every argument I had. You can Google (for example) "the importance of friendship groups for the highly anxious child."
Good luck! Throw everything at it.

Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I’m so glad you had a positive outcome.
I’ve spent the afternoon researching and pulling together what I can to support our appeal.
As expected, once I broke the news when he got back from school, he was devastated. We have had lots of questions and tears this evening. I think it’s going to be a really stressful time for him but I’m going to throw everything I can into this appeal.

I called admissions this afternoon who advised that the last person offered a space on offer day this year was priority 5 out of catchment 0.7 miles so that also leaves me ever so slightly hopeful that we may not be too far down the waiting list but who knows!

OP posts:
atriskacademic · 03/03/2025 21:34

As promised, here are my pearls of wisdom from going through appeals last year. Hope this helps someone!

  • Understand the process. You are appealing FOR the school you want, not against the school you don’t want. You need to find reasons in favour of the school you want, best rooted in the educational experience, e.g. specific SEN offer,
  • Provide evidence for all your appeal reasons. For example, for our son, we appealed based on the appeal school offering my own home language as GCSE choice and on my son’s emerging SEN needs (borderline dyslexia and dyspraxia, suspected ADHD). We provided
  • Letter from grandparents stating need to learning the language and why doing this at home alone was not sufficient
  • Letter from head of a club at my parents’ home village stating that my son would better integrate with village children if his language would be further developed
  • Letter from SENCO at current school
  • Letter from Occupational Therapist who had helped him with handwriting previously
  • Letter from specialist dyslexia tutor who helped him with spelling
  • outcome of dyslexia assessment
  • outcome of dyspraxia assessment, stating need for further sessions
  • evidence that paediatric OT practice was walkable from appeal school in 15 minutes, meaning he would be able to attend sessions there with minimum loss of school time; evidence that this was the only paediatric OT practice in town (true!!!)
  • evidence of his brother’s additional health needs (more about this later)
  • evidence that, given his borderline dyslexia, it would be better for him to learn X foreign language rather than Y foreign language (from the website of the British dyslexia association), but that X foreign language was only offered at appeal school.
  • Don’t rush with putting together the appeal documents – in my local authority, we had until after the Easter break to submit (but do check your deadline). Better to have good evidence.
  • Over- rather than undersell your child’s needs. At times, we really felt we had to ‘upgrade’ our child’s SEN needs to something worse than they were. Watch the language you are using. Not “This might impact my son….”, but “This WILL impact my son”. On the subject of language, also try to mirror the language they are using in the appeals guidance.
  • If additional evidence comes to light after you submit your documentation, you can normally submit this at a later stage, but there will be a deadline for any additional evidence.
  • It is true that the appeals panel will not normally take into account other siblings’ needs. However, we made a good case that our younger son’s additional health and learning needs (which we documented, too!) also negatively affected our older son’s education. In the appeals hearing, we were able to make a case that a place at the appeal school would enable our older son to attend his own OT appointments independently, whereas at allocated school we would not be able to facilitate these appointments at all because all our energy and time off work is used for younger son’s appointments.
  • Before the panel hearing, you will get document from the appeal school in which the school will lay out their case to say that they don’t have space for your child. Don’t worry about this – they will always say this. However, read this document carefully and use it to weaken the case of the school during the appeals hearing. For example, our document said that admitting more students would lead to further overcrowding and the school not being able to offer particular extracurricular activities anymore. The document also stated that in the past two school years was always 4 students over PAN. My husband picked up on this and asked whether being 4 over PAN had meant that the school was not able to offer any planned extracurricular activities, which the school representative answered with a “no”. My husband used this, during the appeals meeting, to make a very clear case that admitting all 4 children appealing would just keep the status quo the school has.
  • Prepare for the panel meeting. You will be able to provide short summary of your case at the beginning. Write done bullet points on what you will say. Similarly, think of questions you might be asked and write down bullet points for sample answers. Perhaps rehearse with a friend (or with ChatGPT as sparring partner!). We were also given the chance to sum up after the questions were asked and used it to get our main points across again.
  • Finally, a last killer point I think we made during the appeals hearing. Whilst officially the fact that you accepted a place at a school ranked lower in your preferences cannot be held against you, the issue that “the school you were allocated was on your preferences list” still hangs in the air. In the appeals panel, we also made a case that due to our son’s emerging needs, this school we originally put on our preferences list and were allocated would now not meet his needs anymore. Whilst this of course goes against the principle of appealing for your appeal school and not against your allocated school, I think this point was nevertheless heard.
Original poster
HollyJ2 · 04/03/2025 10:42

atriskacademic · 03/03/2025 21:34

As promised, here are my pearls of wisdom from going through appeals last year. Hope this helps someone!

  • Understand the process. You are appealing FOR the school you want, not against the school you don’t want. You need to find reasons in favour of the school you want, best rooted in the educational experience, e.g. specific SEN offer,
  • Provide evidence for all your appeal reasons. For example, for our son, we appealed based on the appeal school offering my own home language as GCSE choice and on my son’s emerging SEN needs (borderline dyslexia and dyspraxia, suspected ADHD). We provided
  • Letter from grandparents stating need to learning the language and why doing this at home alone was not sufficient
  • Letter from head of a club at my parents’ home village stating that my son would better integrate with village children if his language would be further developed
  • Letter from SENCO at current school
  • Letter from Occupational Therapist who had helped him with handwriting previously
  • Letter from specialist dyslexia tutor who helped him with spelling
  • outcome of dyslexia assessment
  • outcome of dyspraxia assessment, stating need for further sessions
  • evidence that paediatric OT practice was walkable from appeal school in 15 minutes, meaning he would be able to attend sessions there with minimum loss of school time; evidence that this was the only paediatric OT practice in town (true!!!)
  • evidence of his brother’s additional health needs (more about this later)
  • evidence that, given his borderline dyslexia, it would be better for him to learn X foreign language rather than Y foreign language (from the website of the British dyslexia association), but that X foreign language was only offered at appeal school.
  • Don’t rush with putting together the appeal documents – in my local authority, we had until after the Easter break to submit (but do check your deadline). Better to have good evidence.
  • Over- rather than undersell your child’s needs. At times, we really felt we had to ‘upgrade’ our child’s SEN needs to something worse than they were. Watch the language you are using. Not “This might impact my son….”, but “This WILL impact my son”. On the subject of language, also try to mirror the language they are using in the appeals guidance.
  • If additional evidence comes to light after you submit your documentation, you can normally submit this at a later stage, but there will be a deadline for any additional evidence.
  • It is true that the appeals panel will not normally take into account other siblings’ needs. However, we made a good case that our younger son’s additional health and learning needs (which we documented, too!) also negatively affected our older son’s education. In the appeals hearing, we were able to make a case that a place at the appeal school would enable our older son to attend his own OT appointments independently, whereas at allocated school we would not be able to facilitate these appointments at all because all our energy and time off work is used for younger son’s appointments.
  • Before the panel hearing, you will get document from the appeal school in which the school will lay out their case to say that they don’t have space for your child. Don’t worry about this – they will always say this. However, read this document carefully and use it to weaken the case of the school during the appeals hearing. For example, our document said that admitting more students would lead to further overcrowding and the school not being able to offer particular extracurricular activities anymore. The document also stated that in the past two school years was always 4 students over PAN. My husband picked up on this and asked whether being 4 over PAN had meant that the school was not able to offer any planned extracurricular activities, which the school representative answered with a “no”. My husband used this, during the appeals meeting, to make a very clear case that admitting all 4 children appealing would just keep the status quo the school has.
  • Prepare for the panel meeting. You will be able to provide short summary of your case at the beginning. Write done bullet points on what you will say. Similarly, think of questions you might be asked and write down bullet points for sample answers. Perhaps rehearse with a friend (or with ChatGPT as sparring partner!). We were also given the chance to sum up after the questions were asked and used it to get our main points across again.
  • Finally, a last killer point I think we made during the appeals hearing. Whilst officially the fact that you accepted a place at a school ranked lower in your preferences cannot be held against you, the issue that “the school you were allocated was on your preferences list” still hangs in the air. In the appeals panel, we also made a case that due to our son’s emerging needs, this school we originally put on our preferences list and were allocated would now not meet his needs anymore. Whilst this of course goes against the principle of appealing for your appeal school and not against your allocated school, I think this point was nevertheless heard.

Thank you so much for taking the time to share some detailed tips! They have been really helpful and i will spend some time over the next couple of days digesting them whilst pulling together the evidence i can.

We only have untill 31st March to submit our appeal so it doesn't feel like a great deal of time but i have started the ball rolling and working through our evidence before i compile the statement.

RE your last point....we haven't been offered any of our preferences and have been offered a school we know nothing about. I have spent some time researching it and ave contacted them today and asked for us to go and visit with our son to try and alleviate some of his anxieties to be told "no, sorry that is not something we offer. You will have to wait for the induction in July" This confirms that this school would not be the right fit for him,

OP posts:
Kkkggg · 16/03/2026 18:48

I know this is from last year but how did it go, did you win your appeal?

Original poster
HollyJ2 · 16/03/2026 22:18

Kkkggg · 16/03/2026 18:48

I know this is from last year but how did it go, did you win your appeal?

Hello,

we ended up withdrawing our appeal as we got offered our second choice school around 8 weeks after offer day which we were really pleased about. We didn’t think we would get offered it as we are way out of catchment for it but we were lucky enough to be offered a place from the wait list.

sorry, not much help in terms of appeals but if you’re in a similar position all I can say is good luck and hold in there. It was a tense few weeks and I felt like it was utterly hopeless but the pain wait lists really do move around quite significantly! X

OP posts:
Kalimero · 30/03/2026 18:58

atriskacademic · 03/03/2025 21:34

As promised, here are my pearls of wisdom from going through appeals last year. Hope this helps someone!

  • Understand the process. You are appealing FOR the school you want, not against the school you don’t want. You need to find reasons in favour of the school you want, best rooted in the educational experience, e.g. specific SEN offer,
  • Provide evidence for all your appeal reasons. For example, for our son, we appealed based on the appeal school offering my own home language as GCSE choice and on my son’s emerging SEN needs (borderline dyslexia and dyspraxia, suspected ADHD). We provided
  • Letter from grandparents stating need to learning the language and why doing this at home alone was not sufficient
  • Letter from head of a club at my parents’ home village stating that my son would better integrate with village children if his language would be further developed
  • Letter from SENCO at current school
  • Letter from Occupational Therapist who had helped him with handwriting previously
  • Letter from specialist dyslexia tutor who helped him with spelling
  • outcome of dyslexia assessment
  • outcome of dyspraxia assessment, stating need for further sessions
  • evidence that paediatric OT practice was walkable from appeal school in 15 minutes, meaning he would be able to attend sessions there with minimum loss of school time; evidence that this was the only paediatric OT practice in town (true!!!)
  • evidence of his brother’s additional health needs (more about this later)
  • evidence that, given his borderline dyslexia, it would be better for him to learn X foreign language rather than Y foreign language (from the website of the British dyslexia association), but that X foreign language was only offered at appeal school.
  • Don’t rush with putting together the appeal documents – in my local authority, we had until after the Easter break to submit (but do check your deadline). Better to have good evidence.
  • Over- rather than undersell your child’s needs. At times, we really felt we had to ‘upgrade’ our child’s SEN needs to something worse than they were. Watch the language you are using. Not “This might impact my son….”, but “This WILL impact my son”. On the subject of language, also try to mirror the language they are using in the appeals guidance.
  • If additional evidence comes to light after you submit your documentation, you can normally submit this at a later stage, but there will be a deadline for any additional evidence.
  • It is true that the appeals panel will not normally take into account other siblings’ needs. However, we made a good case that our younger son’s additional health and learning needs (which we documented, too!) also negatively affected our older son’s education. In the appeals hearing, we were able to make a case that a place at the appeal school would enable our older son to attend his own OT appointments independently, whereas at allocated school we would not be able to facilitate these appointments at all because all our energy and time off work is used for younger son’s appointments.
  • Before the panel hearing, you will get document from the appeal school in which the school will lay out their case to say that they don’t have space for your child. Don’t worry about this – they will always say this. However, read this document carefully and use it to weaken the case of the school during the appeals hearing. For example, our document said that admitting more students would lead to further overcrowding and the school not being able to offer particular extracurricular activities anymore. The document also stated that in the past two school years was always 4 students over PAN. My husband picked up on this and asked whether being 4 over PAN had meant that the school was not able to offer any planned extracurricular activities, which the school representative answered with a “no”. My husband used this, during the appeals meeting, to make a very clear case that admitting all 4 children appealing would just keep the status quo the school has.
  • Prepare for the panel meeting. You will be able to provide short summary of your case at the beginning. Write done bullet points on what you will say. Similarly, think of questions you might be asked and write down bullet points for sample answers. Perhaps rehearse with a friend (or with ChatGPT as sparring partner!). We were also given the chance to sum up after the questions were asked and used it to get our main points across again.
  • Finally, a last killer point I think we made during the appeals hearing. Whilst officially the fact that you accepted a place at a school ranked lower in your preferences cannot be held against you, the issue that “the school you were allocated was on your preferences list” still hangs in the air. In the appeals panel, we also made a case that due to our son’s emerging needs, this school we originally put on our preferences list and were allocated would now not meet his needs anymore. Whilst this of course goes against the principle of appealing for your appeal school and not against your allocated school, I think this point was nevertheless heard.

Would you say that pointing negative things about offered school would make appeal unsuccessful?

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