Admission to Secondary School (2025)

Appealing against admission decisions

If your child has been refused a place at any school for which you have expressed a preference, you have the right to appeal against this decision. Information about the appeals procedure for voluntary aided schools and academies is available directly from the school in question.

Appeals for community schools

The letter informing you that a place cannot be offered to your child will advise you how to appeal if you wish to do so. If you decide to appeal you should contact the School Admissions Team following receipt of your refusal letter and request an appeal form. Once completed, you should send your appeal form to:

Strategic Director

Corporate Services and Governance

Civic Centre, Regent Street

Gateshead

NE8 1HH

Please note that the council is required where possible to arrange and conduct all admission appeal hearings for September 2025 before the end of the current academic year (i.e. by July 2025). Accordingly, the council requests that all parents wishing to have an appeal return their appeal forms duly completed on or before the 31 March 2025. If parents submit appeal forms after this date it may result in appeal hearing dates having to be re-arranged at short notice with inconvenience to other parents and appeal panel members.

Before deciding whether to appeal, you will probably want to think about the admission policy for admitting pupils, your reasons for wanting your child to attend the school and how strong a case you have. You may also want to consider visiting the school where you have been offered a place or alternative schools that still have places available.

Please contact the School Admissions Team on: 0191 433 2757 if you would like information on the availability of places at other schools you may consider.

If you decide to appeal, your appeal will be heard by a panel which is independent of the school and Gateshead Council.

You may want to attend an appeal for more than one school at which you have been refused a place. The outcome of one appeal does not prevent you from attending the other.

You will be informed of the date and place of the appeal hearing. You should be given at least 7 days notice. Ten days before the hearing, you will be sent copies of the statement of case that will be put before the appeal panel in support of the local authority's decision not to offer your child a place.

You are advised to attend the appeal hearing, where you will be given the opportunity to put your case forward and to ask questions. You can take a friend if you wish. If you are unable to attend, the case made by you in writing will be considered in your absence. In making your case, you will probably want to refer back to your original reasons for choosing the school.

If you want the panel to take any additional information into account, you should, if possible, submit any supporting documents with your appeal form or provide these to the clerk in good time for the members of the panel and local authority to be able to consider them properly.

There will be a representative from the local authority and the school at the hearing to explain to the panel why it was not possible to offer your child a place.

At the end of the hearing, the clerk should be able to give you an idea of how soon you can expect to receive the panel's written decision, this decision is binding on all parties.

You can only appeal once for admission of your child to a particular school for any given academic year. The Council will only determine a second application for any given academic year where it accepts there has been a significant and material change in your circumstances relevant to the question of admission.