Summary: We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint about the Council’s school’s admissions appeal panel refusing her appeal. It is unlikely we would find fault which caused Miss X to lose out on a school place.

The complaint

1. Miss X says the school’s admissions appeals panel should have granted her a place at School Y.

Back to top

The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints of injustice caused by ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. I have used the word fault to refer to these. We consider whether there was fault in the way a school admissions appeals panel made its decision. If there was no fault in how the panel made its decision, we cannot question the outcome. (Local Government Act 1974, section 34(3), as amended).

Back to top

How I considered this complaint

3. I considered information provided by Miss X and the appeal papers.
4. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

Back to top

My assessment

The appeals’ process

5. Statutory guidance about school admissions and appeals can be found in The School Admissions Code and School Admission Appeals Code. Both are published by the Department for Education. 
6. Parents/carers have the right to appeal an admission authority’s decision not to offer their child a school place.  
7. Appeal hearings must be held in private and conducted in the presence of all panel members and parties. Appeal panels must act according to the principles of natural justice. 
8. A clerk supports the appeal panel. Parents can give information in support of their appeal.
9. The admission authority must provide a presenting officer at the hearing to explain the decision not to admit the child and to answer questions from the appellant and panel. 
10. Appeal panels must allow appellants the opportunity to make oral representations.
11. Appeal panels must either uphold or dismiss an appeal and must not uphold an appeal subject to any conditions. Appeals must be decided by a simple majority of votes cast. A panel’s decision that a child shall be admitted to a school is binding on the admission authority concerned. 
12. The clerk to the panel must write to the appellant, the admission authority and the council with the panel’s decision and reasons. 

Infant appeals

13. The Education Act 1996 states a child reaches compulsory school age on the prescribed day following his or her fifth birthday. The prescribed days are 31 December, 31 March and 31 August.
14. The School Standards and Framework Act limits the size of infant classes (a class in which most of the children will reach the age of 5, 6 or 7 during the school year) to 30 pupils a teacher. The Appeals Code refers to these as infant class size (ICS) appeals. Panels can only uphold these appeals in limited circumstances.  
15. Admission authorities must provide parents with information on the limited circumstances in which an infant class size appeal can be upheld so they can make an informed decision about whether to submit an appeal. 
16. The Appeals Code says in an ICS appeal the panel must consider:

• whether the admission of an additional child or children would breach the infant class size limit; 
• whether the admission arrangements complied with the mandatory requirements of the School Admissions Code and Part 3 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998; 
• whether the admission arrangements were correctly and impartially applied in the case in question; and 
• whether the decision to refuse admission was one which a reasonable admission authority would have made in the circumstances of the case. 

17. What is ‘reasonable’ is a high test. The panel needs to be sure that to refuse a place was “perverse” or “outrageous”. For that reason, panels rarely find an admission authority’s decision to be unreasonable. 
18. In limited circumstances, children can be admitted as exceptions to ICS limit. These exceptions include children of compulsory school-age who move into the area outside the normal admissions round for whom there is no other available school within reasonable distance.  
19. ICS appeals also applies where admitting a further child would lead to a breach of the infant class size limit in future years.

Events in this case

20. Miss X applied in early September 2024 for a place for her child, D, to start in Reception in September 2025. After she applied an elder sibling moved to the school. There were more applicants than places. The Council applied its admissions criteria. The Council did not consider Miss X’s application in the sibling link category because Miss X had not included the elder sibling on the application form as at that time they did not attend School Y and she did not update the Council’s admissions team after they had moved to School Y. Miss X missed out on a place based on distance.
21. Miss X appealed to the school’s admissions appeals panel. It considered her appeal in June 2025. She told the appeal panel:
• About the sibling moving to School Y and that she could not get two children to two different schools.
22. The appeal panel dismissed the appeal. It said the reason to refuse the application was in line with the admissions policy.

Analysis

23. The appeal panel’s detailed decision letter records the reasons Miss X gave the appeal panel for wanting a place, including their personal reasons. It is clear from the appeal panel’s clerk’s notes it actively considered the case before making its decision. It is unlikely we would find fault in the appeal panel’s decision based on the information I have seen which supports its decision. It is a decision it was entitled to take.

Back to top

Final decision

24. We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because it is unlikely we would find fault in the appeal panel’s decision which has caused them to lose out on a place at this school.

Back to top

Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman