What You Need to Know if Your Child Didn’t Get Into Your Chosen Primary

There are only a few reasons for making a primary school admissions appeal. You must show one of the following:

• The school’s admissions process did not comply with the School Admissions Code and your child would have been allocated a place at the school had this not been the case;
• The school’s admissions criteria were not applied correctly, for example if they wrongly calculated the distance you live from the school and your child would have been given a place had this not happened; and/or
• The decision made ‘was not one which a reasonable admission authority would have made’.

This last one is extremely difficult to prove, as this is a legal term. What many parents consider unreasonable would not be enough to mean that an appeal would succeed on this basis.  

It’s likely that you already think the decision was not ‘reasonable’ if you’re making an appeal, but you’ll have to prove that is was legally unreasonable. This means the decision was outrageous, illogical or immoral, but it’s much harder to define if you’re not a legal expert and even harder to prove to an Independent Appeal Panel.

If you’re going to make an appeal on the grounds that the decision was not reasonable, you should get legal advice from a specialist Education Lawyer.