Appeal guide for infant class size appeals

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This guide is for parents or guardians who wish to appeal against the decision of an admission authority not to admit their child to their preferred school. Once you have submitted an appeal, you become the appellant.

The guide relates to an appeal against the decision of a place in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 where infant class size regulations are the basis for refusal.

The School Standards and Framework Act 1998 requires infant classes (those which  contain pupils who reach the age of 5, 6 and 7 during the school year) to be limited to a maximum of 30 pupils with a single teacher.

The admission authority has a duty to admit a child to the parent/guardian's preferred school unless the admission of an additional child would breach the infant class size limit and there are no measures it could take to avoid this without prejudicing the provision of efficient education or efficient use of resources.

Due to the infant class limits, there are limited circumstances in which a panel can uphold an infant class size appeal, these are:

a) The admission of an additional child would not breach the infant class size limit of 30 pupils; or

b) The admission arrangements did not comply with admissions law and the child would have been offered a place if the arrangements had complied with admissions law; or

c) The admission arrangements had not been correctly and impartially applied and the child would have been offered a place if the arrangements had been correctly and impartially applied; or

d) The decision to refuse a place at the school was not one which a reasonable admission authority would have made in the circumstances of the case.

Your appeal can only be successful if one of the above applies.

The threshold for a panel to determine that an admission authority's decision to refuse admission was unreasonable is high. The panel will need to be satisfied that the decision to refuse to admit your child was 'perverse in the light of the admission arrangements', i.e. it was 'beyond the range of responses open to a reasonable decision maker' or 'a decision which is so outrageous in its defiance of logic or of accepted moral standards that no sensible person who had applied his mind to the question could have arrived at it'.

1. Who is the panel

The Panel that hears your appeal will normally consist of three members from the following categories:

• One or two persons (not councillors) who have experience in education or who are familiar with local educational circumstances in Gateshead, or who are parents of registered pupil(s) at a school (not the school to which you are appealing).
• One or two lay members, (persons without personal experience in the management of a school or the provision of education in any school otherwise than in a voluntary capacity).

The Panel is impartial and acts independently of the Admission Authority and its decisions are binding on all parties.

The Panel must act in accordance with the law and the School Admissions Appeal Code.

The Panel is supported by a Clerk. This is an officer from the Council's Democratic Services Team. The Clerk constitutes the Panel and provides advice to all parties.

2. Before the appeal

You will be given at least 10 schools days' notice of the date on which your appeal will be heard. This notification will include a deadline for the submission of any further information relating to your appeal that you would like the panel to consider. If you are appealing following National Offer Day, it is likely that your appeal will be heard as part of a multiple appeal. As it is important for appeals for the same school 
to be heard by the same panel, it will not be possible to alter the date that is set for your appeal.

Around a week before the hearing, you will be sent a copy of the paperwork for your appeal hearing.

The Admission Authority (the school Governing Body or the Local Authority) will provide a statement summarising the Authority's policy for allocating school places and their reasons for not giving your child a place at the school you have chosen. 

The Panel will be sent a copy of the Admission Authority's statement, a copy of your appeal form and any additional information you have submitted, along with your application and refusal letter. The school will be sent a copy of all the documentation relating to your appeal.

3. Attending the hearing

While your appeal must be submitted in writing, you are given the opportunity to attend the hearing to put your appeal in your own words to the Panel. Appeal hearings are held at the Civic Centre, Gateshead.
You may be represented at the appeal hearing or accompanied by a friend for support. You may also call witnesses.

If you do not wish to or are unable to attend the hearing, your appeal will be decided on the written information you have provided. The admission authority would still be allowed to attend the hearing and present their case to the panel.

4. Order of proceedings

If you are appealing after being refused a school place on 'national offer day' then it is likely that your appeal will be heard as a multiple appeal. A multiple appeal is when there is more than one appeal for the same year group at a school. 

The procedure outlined below is for when there is only one appeal for a year group at a school and is different for a multiple appeal. The procedure for a multiple appeal is explained in section 5.

The following procedure will be followed: 

i) The representative of the admission authority will explain the admission arrangements, the application of the admission arrangements and why your child had been refused admission, including the steps which would need to be taken should another child be admitted over the 30 pupil class size limit. 

ii) You and the panel members will ask any questions of the admission authority's representative and challenge their case. 

iii) You will put your case for your child's admission to your preferred school. 

iv) The admission authority's representative and the panel members will ask questions of you. 

v) The admission authority's representative will sum up its case. 

vi) You will be given the opportunity to sum up your case. 

vii) You leave the meeting, together with the admission authority's representative, to enable the panel to make a decision based on the limited circumstances available for an infant class size appeal to be upheld, as set out at the beginning of this page.

You will be informed of the decision of the panel in writing, within 5 school days of the appeal hearing.

5. Multiple appeals

Where a number of appeals have been received for the same year group at a school it is expected that the same panel will consider all the appeals for that school at the same meeting. In those circumstances the procedure outlined above will be divided into two parts with all appellants invited to attend Stage one Part I at the same time, with a private individual appointment for Stage one Part II.

To ensure all appellants hear the same evidence from the admissions authority regarding the admission arrangements but to allow appellants privacy for their own circumstances, there are two parts to stage one infant class size multiple appeals.

Part I

The panel will first decide on whether:

a) The admission of any additional children would breach the infant class size limit; 
and
b) If the admission arrangements were lawful

This will be done using the following procedure: 

i) The representative of the admission authority will explain the admission arrangements, the application of the admission arrangements and why your and the other appellants' children had been refused admission.

ii) You, other appellants and the panel members will ask any questions of the admission authority's representative and challenge their case. 

iii) You and the other appellants leave the meeting, together with the admission authority's representative, to enable the panel to make a decision on a) and b) above. 

At this stage the panel can only uphold your appeal if it decides that a) applies and the admission of additional children would not breach the infant class size limit. 

If the panel does decide that a) applies then your appeal and those of the other appellants will be upheld and the hearing will conclude unless the number of children appealing for a place is a number that would seriously prejudice the provision of efficient education or the efficient use of resources in the school.

In these circumstances the hearing will continue to Part II to hear about your individual circumstances and then the Second stage - Comparing cases, before it can make its decision.

If the panel decides that admitting more children would breach the infant class size limit but that b) applies and the admission arrangements were unlawful, the appeal must proceed to Part II to allow you to present your case in private and for the panel to determine whether, if they had been lawful, your child would have been offered a place. 

Part II

In Part II the panel will consider the particular circumstances of your case. This part of the hearing will be held in private without the attendance of the other appellants.

In order to do this, the representative of the admission authority will explain how the admission arrangements were applied to your child. You will then be invited to put forward your grounds for the appeal. There will be an opportunity for all parties to ask questions.

No decision will be taken on any individual case until Part II and, if necessary Stage two, for all the appeals for the school have been completed.

At this stage the panel can only uphold your appeal if it decides that:

c) the admission arrangements had not been correctly and impartially applied to your child and your child would have been offered a place if the arrangements had been correctly and impartially applied; and/or

d) the decision to refuse a place at the school was not one which a reasonable admission authority would have made in the circumstances of the case.

If the admittance of the number of children whose appeals the panel determines have met the limited circumstances required for an infant class appeal to be upheld would seriously prejudice the provision of efficient education or the efficient use of resources in the school, the panel must proceed to Stage two - comparing cases.

Stage Two - comparing cases

Stage two will only be undertaken where, at either Part I or Part II of Stage one, the number of appellant children which meet the limited criteria for upholding an appeal would seriously prejudice the provision of efficient education or the efficient use of resources at the school if they were to be admitted.

At this stage the panel will compare the cases of the children to be admitted for each of the appellants who met the criteria and decide which of them to uphold.

6. After the hearing

The Panel's decision is binding on all parties. There is no further right of appeal for the same school for the same academic year unless, in exceptional circumstances, the admission authority has accepted a second application from you and that in turn has been refused.

If you feel there has been maladministration by an admissions appeal panel you can make a complaint to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

The Ombudsman may investigate complaints of maladministration in the conduct of an appeal hearing or in respect of its organisation. However, the Ombudsman can only, at most, request a re-hearing and cannot overturn the decision of any appeal panel.

If the school is an Academy then you may complain to the Department for Education.

An appeal panel's decision can only be overturned by the courts where the appellant or admission authority is successful in a judicial review of that decision.