Secondary School Appeal

[Lionesses2026]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone had any advice about appealing our secondary school place please. We received our second choice but my daughter is unhappy.

I see it is often suggested to check whether there has been an error with the allocations. Im not sure how I would do this. Can anyone advise in more detail about what this means?

The reason my daughter is not happy with her second choice is that she currently plays for a girls football academy. She chose a school with excellent sporting facilities and that has a partnership with a premiership football club. The school she has been allocated doesn't even have an astroturf facility :-( They do have a grass football pitch but it is built on a flood plain and is frequently unusable during the winter months.

I realise this might sound a very weak reason, but it is something that is very important to my daughter's happiness and wellbeing.

Can anyone advise if this would even be considered as a reason or would I be laughed out of the appeals process?

Thank you

I've sent you a PM, happy to send you my write up for you to get any ideas from!

Some schools don't prioritise siblings. If they don't, having a sibling at the school carries no weight at appeal.

I have been advising parents on here for over a decade. I hate to blow my own trumpet, but I am regularly mentioned as an expert. I am always happy to answer PMs.

The one I appealed for did, both sibling in catchment, and sibling not in catchment are both in the criteria... I just had a very strong case, so it can be done.

Sorry, but it is likely that you have misunderstood the sibling case. If a mistake was made in applying the sibling criteria, then they would have won their appeal with no need for any "balancing" arguments. So if that didn't happen then clearly the sibling criteria did not apply to them.

Without knowing the circumstances it is difficult to comment further, but it may be to do with the definition of a sibling in the specific policy e.g. they usually have to reside at the same address. Or, as you imply, if they are outside of a formally defined catchment area they may have lower priority than siblings who are in catchment.

Yes but in my area all the premier partnerships are along these lines. Op needs to check. She’d look daft if appeal was based on elite coaching for her daughter if that’s not what the programme is. Never seen it be that. But overall sporting offer and law gcse etc I think is a decent angle

I see that @Littletreefrog knowledge of premier club link mirrors mine.
She can defo play for school team and can trial for county girls etc but as others have said school footy itself can be limited anyway

@prh47bridgesorry to crash this thread but would you mind if I messaged you.

Feel free 🙂

Feel free.