Offer Day: waiting lists and appeals

If you were offered the school you wanted

Reply to the council by the date in your offer email or letter. If you don’t, the place may be offered to someone else.

If you weren’t

1. Accept the place you were offered

   Accept it by the council’s deadline, even if it wasn’t your first choice, so your child has a school in September either way. You can still join the waiting list for other schools after you’ve accepted a place.

2. Get on the waiting lists you want

   Ask the council whether you’re added automatically to the waiting lists of schools you ranked higher, or need to ask. You can put your child’s name on a waiting list even if they’ve been offered a place at another school.

3. Decide whether to appeal

   You can appeal for any school that refused your child a place. Use the checklist below, and note the deadline in your refusal letter.

How waiting lists work

• Every school must keep a waiting list until at least 31 December of the year your child starts.
• The list is ranked by the school’s admission criteria, the same rules used on Offer Day. It is not first come, first served: when you joined makes no difference.
• Each time a child is added, the list is ranked again, so your position can go down as well as up.
• Looked-after and previously looked-after children, and children placed through the council’s Fair Access Protocol, go ahead of everyone on the list.
• When a place comes up, it is offered to the child at the top of the list.

How far waiting lists moved

Most councils don’t publish how far waiting lists moved after Offer Day. We only show figures a council has published, so there aren’t any here yet. We’ll add them, with a link to the source, as soon as councils publish them.

Appeals checklist

Appeals follow the School Admission Appeals Code, which every council and school must follow. The panel that hears your appeal is independent of the school and the council.

1. Read your refusal letter. It must give the reason your child was refused, explain your right to appeal, and give the deadline and who to send your appeal to.
2. Note the deadline. You must be given at least 20 school days from the date you were told your application was unsuccessful. Each admission authority publishes its appeals timetable on its website by 28 February.
3. Write down your reasons. Appeals are made in writing. You can give any reason; the school or council can’t limit your grounds.
4. Send your evidence on time. You’ll be given a deadline for further evidence. Anything sent after it might not be considered.
5. Prepare for the hearing. You must get at least 10 school days’ notice of the hearing, and appeals lodged on time must be heard within 40 school days of the appeal deadline. You can bring a friend or representative.
6. Know the infant class size rule. Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 classes are limited to 30 children per teacher. If your child was refused because the class is full, the panel can only uphold the appeal if:
   • admitting your child wouldn’t take the class over the limit; or
   • the admission arrangements broke the law or weren’t applied correctly and fairly, and your child would have been offered a place if they had been; or
   • the decision to refuse wasn’t one a reasonable admission authority would have made.
7. Wait for the decision. It should be sent within five school days of the hearing wherever possible.
8. Keep your offered place while you wait, so your child has a school whatever the outcome.

For dates and forms, see the admissions pages of Wandsworth Council.