Appeal for a school place

School place appeals 

The law says that there can’t be more than 30 pupils in an infant class. If your child has been refused a place an appeal will only be successful in very limited circumstances.

The appeal panel must consider whether:

• the child would have been offered a place if the admission arrangements had not been contrary to mandatory provisions in the School Admissions Code and the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 (or, the admission arrangements are found to be unlawful)
• the child would have been offered a place if the admissions arrangements had been followed properly
• the decision to refuse admission was not one which a ‘reasonable’ admission authority would have made in the circumstances of the case

So the panel can judge whether an admissions authority has acted unreasonably, they’ll have to be satisfied that the decision to admit the child was ‘perverse in the light of the admission arrangements’ - the decision taken was so outrageous in its defiance of logic or of accepted moral standards that no sensible person could ever have reached it.