Infant Class Size Appeals: The 8.1% Success Rate, the Three Grounds and Every Council

If your child has been refused a Reception, Year 1 or Year 2 place because the class is full, the appeal you are facing is not an ordinary school appeal. It is decided under a separate and much narrower test, and the national figures show it. This page sets out the numbers for every council in England, the three grounds a panel can use, and who counts as an exception to the 30 pupil limit.

What is the success rate for infant class size appeals?

8.1% nationally in 2026. Families lodged 7,671 infant class size appeals, equal to 1.3% of the 604,007 admissions to infant classes. 4,757 of those, 62%, were heard by a panel, and 387 were upheld. The DfE measures success as a share of appeals heard, so an appeal withdrawn before the hearing is not counted as a loss.

That is well below every other kind of school appeal. Secondary appeals succeeded 19.5% of the time. Infant class appeals are counted inside the DfE’s primary figures, so taking them out shows that the other primary appeals succeeded 26.4% of the time: 759 of 2,870 heard. That comparison is our calculation from the DfE tables.

What counts as an infant class size appeal?

An infant class is one containing Reception, Year 1 or Year 2 pupils. Regulation 4 of the 2012 regulations, made under section 1 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, says no infant class may contain more than 30 pupils while an ordinary teaching session is conducted by a single school teacher, or 30 per teacher where there are more.

It becomes an infant class size appeal when the admission authority refused the place because admitting another child would breach that limit, and there were no measures it could take to avoid that without prejudicing efficient education or the efficient use of resources (Appeals Code paragraph 4.2). If your child was refused for any other reason, the panel uses the ordinary two stage process instead, which is where most successful appeals come from.

A school that admits fewer than 30 children a year can still face infant class size appeals. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman gives the example of a school admitting 20 a year but teaching Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 in two classes of 30.

What are the three grounds for winning an infant class size appeal?

Under paragraph 4.6 of the School Admission Appeals Code, the panel may only uphold the appeal where:

1. Admitting more children would not breach the limit. The class would not actually go over 30 per teacher.
2. The admission arrangements broke admissions law, or were not applied correctly and impartially, and your child would have been offered a place if they had been. Both halves are needed: a mistake that would not have changed the outcome is not enough.
3. The refusal was not one a reasonable admission authority would have made in the circumstances of the case.

Paragraph 4.8 says the panel must dismiss the appeal where the arrangements were lawful and correctly applied, or a mistake would not have changed the outcome, and the refusal was one a reasonable admission authority could have made. Where several appeals succeed on these grounds but admitting them all would seriously prejudice efficient education or the efficient use of resources, the panel moves to a second stage and compares the cases (paragraphs 4.7 and 4.9).

Admission authorities must tell parents about these limited circumstances before they decide whether to appeal (paragraph 4.12).

How high is the “unreasonable” bar?

Very high. Paragraph 4.10 of the Code says the panel must be satisfied that the refusal was “perverse in the light of the admission arrangements”, meaning beyond the range of responses open to a reasonable decision maker. The Ombudsman says that a refusal which makes the school run or keeping a job impossible is very unlikely to meet that bar, and that it does not usually uphold complaints that a panel should have found a refusal perverse.

What mistakes can win an infant class size appeal?

The Ombudsman’s fact sheet gives examples of the kind of mistake that can lead a panel to uphold an appeal:

• not taking account of a sibling already at the school
• measuring the home to school distance inaccurately
• not treating the child as an excepted pupil
• wrongly giving a place to a child from outside the catchment area

So the useful evidence is the detail of how your application was ranked: which oversubscription criterion your child was placed under, the distance used, and where the last place offered fell. Compare that with the school’s published admission arrangements.

Who counts as an excepted pupil?

Some children can be admitted to an infant class without counting towards the 30 pupil limit. The Schedule to the 2012 regulations lists them. In summary:

• a child with an EHC plan admitted outside a normal admission round because the council named the school in the plan
• a looked-after child, or a previously looked-after child who was adopted or is under a child arrangements order or special guardianship order, admitted outside a normal admission round
• a child first refused because the admission arrangements were not properly implemented, and later offered a place
• a child admitted outside a normal admission round by an appeal panel
• a child admitted outside a normal admission round who did not live within a reasonable distance of the school when places were allocated, for whom it is now the only school within a reasonable distance providing suitable education, where the council confirms that in writing
• a child whose parent is in the armed forces, admitted outside a normal admission round
• a twin or other child from a multiple birth, where a sibling from that birth is admitted normally
• a child registered at a special school who spends part of their education at the school by arrangement, or a child in a special unit at the school who spends a minority of their time in the infant class

A child only counts as excepted where they could not be given suitable education in an infant class at the school without measures that would prejudice efficient education or the efficient use of resources (regulation 5).

Infant class appeal success rate by region

Every panel applies the same legal test, so a low figure is not evidence of an unfair panel and a high one is not a promise. With that said, the regional spread is wide.

Infant class appeal success rate by council

Of the 118 councils where at least 10 infant class appeals were heard, the middle figure was 5.1%, and 42 were above the national 8.1%. 47 councils had no infant class appeal succeed, 30 of them after hearing 10 or more. Small numbers swing percentages, so a council that heard a handful is marked with an asterisk. Each council name links to its full appeals page, with secondary and primary figures and the trend.

The full dataset is available as JSON at /data/school-appeals-by-council.json, and every council is compared across all phases on our school appeal success rate by council page.

Is it worth appealing an infant class size refusal?

You have the right to appeal, and the decision is yours. The honest position from the figures is that where a class is genuinely full and the admission arrangements were applied correctly, a panel has very little room to uphold an appeal. Where you can point to a specific mistake that would have changed the outcome, it is a different prospect.

• You get at least 20 school days from the date you were told the application was unsuccessful to lodge a written appeal (Appeals Code 2.1a).
• You normally get one appeal per school per academic year. A second is only possible in exceptional circumstances, where the admission authority has accepted a second application because of a significant and material change in circumstances (5.1).
• If the appeal fails and you think the panel got the process wrong, you can complain about maladministration: to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman for a maintained school, normally within 12 months, or to the Secretary of State for an academy (Appeals Code 5.4). Neither re-hears the appeal, and a panel’s decision can only be overturned by the courts on judicial review (5.5).

Sources

• Department for Education: Admission appeals in England, reporting year 2026
• Department for Education: School Admission Appeals Code 2022 (PDF)
• legislation.gov.uk: The School Admissions (Infant Class Sizes) (England) Regulations 2012
• Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman: Infant class size appeals

Common questions

What percentage of infant class size appeals are successful?

In England in 2026, 8.1% of infant class size appeals heard by a panel were upheld, 387 of 4,757. That compares with 26.4% for other primary appeals and 19.5% for secondary appeals. Figures are from the DfE’s Admission appeals in England, reporting year 2026.

Can you win an infant class size appeal?

Yes, but only on three grounds under paragraph 4.6 of the School Admission Appeals Code: admitting another child would not breach the 30 pupil limit, the admission arrangements were unlawful or wrongly applied and your child would otherwise have got a place, or the refusal was not one a reasonable admission authority would have made.

Does having a sibling at the school help an infant class size appeal?

Only if the school’s published admission arrangements give siblings priority and that was not applied correctly, so your child would otherwise have been offered a place. Having a sibling there is not a ground on its own.

Are twins an exception to the infant class size limit?

A twin or other child from a multiple birth can be an excepted pupil where a sibling from the same birth is admitted normally, under the Schedule to the School Admissions (Infant Class Sizes) (England) Regulations 2012. They only count as excepted where they could not otherwise be given suitable education in the class without measures that would prejudice efficient education or the efficient use of resources.

How many councils had no successful infant class size appeals?

47 councils in England had no infant class size appeal upheld in 2026, and 30 of those had heard 10 or more. Every council’s figure is in the table on this page.

How long do I have to lodge an infant class size appeal?

At least 20 school days from the date you were told the application was unsuccessful, under paragraph 2.1a of the School Admission Appeals Code. The admission authority sets the exact deadline and must publish its appeals timetable by 28 February each year.