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| Admission Process |
 There is a limitation to the quantity of pupils in an infant class with one qualified teacher. The maximum is 30 pupils in the class. In this type of appeal, the panel is only allowed to look at two things:
• Whether the admission authority keep its own rules which were published in its admission arrangements. If the admission authority broke its own rules - either deliberately or by mistake - then your appeal can succeed, but only if your child would have been accepted if the rules had been applied properly.
• Whether the admission authority made unreasonable actions. In these cases the law determines "unreasonable" very carefully. It must be completely irrational or not based on the facts of the case for a decision or action to be "unreasonable". These facts contain the published admission arrangements for the school, the number of applicants and the capacity of the school to admit pupils without breaching the infant class-size limit.
Remember: you
may give the panel fresh information relating to your case, which was not available at the time the decision to refuse admission was made. Nevertheless, the panel can only use this to help it define whether, in the circumstances (which at the time of the hearing will include the fact that all available places have already been allocated), the original decision was unreasonable.
After appeal
The admission authority must provide your child a place at the school if your appeal succeeds. If your appeal does not succeed, you can ask the school to include your child into their waiting list (if the school has one), because after the beginning of the school year places may become free.
You could complain to the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO), if you are unsatisfied about the way the appeal hearing was carried out. The LGO can investigate written complaints about maladministration on the part of an admission appeal panel. This is not a right of appeal and connected to such problems as failure to follow proper procedures or a failure to act independently and fairly. You can not address the Ombudsman only because you do no like the result of your appeal.
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