Transfer to upper/secondary school 2023
Parents of children due to transfer to Upper School (Year 9) or Secondary (year 7) in September 2023 will be sent a letter on Wednesday 1 March 2023 advising them of the school at which a place has been offered.
You can appeal against this decision if you have not been allocated a place at each of the schools you applied for.
Your appeal must be received by the deadline of Wednesday 29 March 2023. If your appeal is received after this date and cannot be added to an already scheduled hearing, it will be heard at a later date. Upper/Secondary School appeals have to be heard by Thursday 15 June 2023 (within 40 school days after the deadline for appeals being lodged). Please use the online appeal form below if you would like to appeal online.
You will receive email confirmation (or by letter if you have no email address) within 5 working days that your appeal has been received and we will write to you (by email) after Wednesday 29 March 2023 to tell you the date, time and venue of your appeal hearing. You will be given at least 10 school days' notice of your appeal hearing.
Transfer to middle school and starting school - first admission to primary/lower school appeals 2023
Parents of children due to transfer to Middle School (Year 5) and children who are due to start primary/lower school in September 2023 will be sent a letter on Monday 17 April 2023 advising them of the school at which a place has been offered.
You can appeal against this decision if you have not been allocated a place at each of the schools you applied for.
Your appeal must be received by Tuesday 16 May 2023. If your appeal is received after this date and cannot be added to an already scheduled hearing, it will be heard at a later date.
Middle school and primary/lower appeals have to be heard by Tuesday 18 July 2023 (within 40 school days after the deadline for appeals being lodged). We will aim to hear all appeals before the end of the academic term in July 2023. Please use the online appeal form below if you would like to appeal online.
You will receive email confirmation (or by letter if you have no email address) within 5 working days that your appeal has been received and we will write to you (by letter or email) after Tuesday 16 May 2023 to tell you the date, time and venue of your appeal hearing. You will be given at least 10 school days' notice of your appeal hearing.
Guidance booklet (PDF)
All other applications
If you have applied for a place in a year other than in the intake year (when children would normally start Lower, Middle or Upper School) and have not been offered a place, you can appeal against this decision. You will have been sent a letter advising you that a place cannot be offered at your preferred school(s).
The clerk will contact you to acknowledge that your appeal form has been received and will write to you in due course letting you know the date, time and venue of your appeal. You will be given at least 10 school days' notice of your appeal. We aim to hear all appeals within 30 school days.
Request a school in-year appeal
Guidance booklet (PDF)
If you have any questions on the appeal process please email School.Appeals@bedford.gov.uk
Infant class size appeals (ICS)
Most appeals for admission into Reception, Year 1 or Year 2 are infant class size appeals.
Statutory limits on class sizes mean that apart from some very limited exceptions, infant classes of 5, 6 and 7-year-olds may not contain more than 30 pupils with a single teacher.
Where the published admission number of a school allows for classes of 30 pupils, the admission authority will have refused admission on the grounds that to admit one more child would breach the infant class size limit.
Although you have a legal right to appeal under these criteria, there are very limited circumstances in which a panel can direct a child to be admitted to a school.
The panel can uphold an appeal on "class size prejudice" grounds only if they are satisfied that one of the following very limited grounds applies:
- the admission of additional children would not breach the infant class size limit or;
- your child would have been offered a place if the admission arrangements had complied with the mandatory requirements in the School Admissions Code and the School Standards & Framework Act 1998 ("SSFA") and/or;
- the decision to refuse admission was not one which a reasonable admission authority would have made in the circumstances of the case*
*The courts have defined an unreasonable decision in this context as being one which is "perverse in the light of the admission arrangements". The word 'perverse' has a stronger meaning in its legal sense. It means "beyond the range of responses open to a reasonable decision maker".
Success rate of infant class size appeals
The grounds for upholding an appeal of this type are very limited, so the percentage success rate is minimal. Please be aware that your personal reasons for wanting the school, however strongly you feel, cannot be taken into account, unless any of the above circumstances apply.
Please note that a decision by the admission authority to refuse admission to your child, which subsequently makes it impossible for you to transport all your children to school on time or even impossible for you to continue working, is very unlikely to be confirmed as an unreasonable decision. The courts have confirmed this position.
Of the Infant Class Size appeals heard for admission, very few succeed. Parents are often distressed that their personal reasons were not considered due to the very limited criteria that the appeal panel can consider, therefore please think carefully before submitting an appeal.
For more information please read a fact sheet published by the Local Government Ombudsman.
Equality questions monitoring form
Please find below a monitoring form for completion, this does not form part of the appeal process but it will help us to ensure that we are listening to the views of all sectors of our community.
