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

[busySunflower]

Does being a young carer adds any advantage in secondry school appeal process ? for year 7 entry ?

In what respect would it?

Not really, unless its particularly exceptional circumstances, such as caring for a parent with a terminal illness. But including it in any case will enable whichever school does offer a place to monitor and support the child to reduce the disadvantages they experience as a result.

No. None. I have lots of experience in school appeals.

It might help for a wl place if it is a priority criteria but unless there is specific related provision at the appeal school or a reason it uniquely supports their caring role probably not.

It might, if there is evidence to show that attending the preferred school will in some way support the child in their role as a young carer.

If the school has an oversubscription category for medical and social need, it might also be helpful to apply to the admission authority for consideration under this category, if it wasn’t done at the time of applying; being placed in the medical/social category won’t immediately provide a school place in the way that a successful appeal would, but it would move the child up the waiting list.

A year 7 appeal will be looking at whether the detriment to the child of not attending is greater than the detriment to the school of taking other pupil.

As such, there is no prescribed list of reasons that absolutely do and don't count; of course some arguments are stronger than others.

it could absolutely be the case that, for example, a young carers responsibilities mean they need to be in a school very close to home, or the young carer needs themselves to access support that School will be required to facilitate. These could be part of a winning appeal, particularly if the School's case itself is quite weak. (These are both examples in cases I've heard in the last few years chairing Appeal panels)

Being a carer just itself won't win an appeal, and there would probably need to be other reasons the School was suited to them, but it's far more complicated than just saying no it won't help.

Yes, exactly.

the allocated school clearly mentioned in writing that dont provide any support within the school it has been always outsourced to a 3rd party which is not realiable(we have evidence for that as well), whereas the school that we are appealing for provides in school support+3rd party support and they confirmed that in writing that they have been doing this for many years now and well aware of YC needs, we didnt get this school because of the oversubscription.
this wasnt the only reasons there are other reasons as well.
our appeal is already over, waiting for an outcome now and this waiting time is what killing us

Pannel said there are many appeals for this school they can only take a decission once they heard everything, my worry is, though we our case is strong, there could be other families they too might have a strong reasons as well, in that case how do they decide to whoom they will up held

another question: when multiple appeals are being heard nearly 15+ do they take a decission immediately after the appeal or they revisit each case once again at the end of hearing everyones case, how does it work ?

pannel didnt probe much asked few generic questions or the most common questions only, do they really go through all the details specially when you share all the evidence and writeup and medical history that are really long ?

Will pannel assume that every school provides the same/similar support for YC even though we shared all the details that they dont, infact allocated school mentioned that its not mandatory for the school support to YC but providing support to SEN is mandatory.

What happens during the pannel training ? would they be aware that YC also face disadvantage or barier to education like FSM/PP

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.

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.

Is getting probed during the appeal is good sign or not getting probed is a good sign ?
We had two appeals for two different school on the same ground, one panel probe in detail, cross questioned a lot to validate everything and we felt it went really well

Another panel didnt probe into the details but I can assure that they read everything both, we feel it didnt go well

which one is a good a sign ?

@PanelChair @PatriciaHolm @LIZS
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.

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.

Though the appeal is over, but now worried and have been sleepless

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.

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.

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.

thank you so much @prh47bridge the nature of the evidence was the number of YC in the school that we were appealing, our evidence didnt say a number, the evidence had the words for example: many, few, significantly high, significantly low, etc and it was validated by an independentent professional who had access to this information shared it with us.
It was the argument from the school representative or AA that we should never have access to this sensitive information as they themselvs dont have it for other school.

As an answer, we replied saying the evidence didnt say exact numbers as this is a sensitive information thats why it used the words like many, few, significantly high, significantly low, etc. but the panel agreed to disagree and eventually said we shouldnt have access to this information to which we appologies and remain silent, after that we couldnt continue explaining our situation in great detail verbally but we already submitted a detailed writeup and they did mention quite few times the writeup is in great details and said good luck to the child in the end.

the entire appeal was over in 15mins

I dont know what should I take away from that discussion but since then we have been worried about it a lot

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.

Thats amazing to know, is there a posibility that you could share where I can find this information, this will help us just prepare for the worst

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

yes, we wrote everything added all the evidence, the school that we are appealing for runs a weekly club for exclusively for YC, they have been doing it for many years, they have a good number YC's there and the number is big that they can organise a football match, the allocated one cant even organise a chess game exclusively thats why the number mattered a lot