DfE releases admission appeals statistics for 2014/15

The Department for Education today released its report ‘Admission appeals for maintained and academy primary and secondary schools in England: 2014 to 2015’, but what did it show for primaries? Here are some of the key figures:

Across all schools (infant, other primary classes and secondary) there were 1,481,704 admissions, and 54,600 appeals lodged by parents (3.7 per cent of admissions). The number of appeals that were heard by a panel was 40,014 (2.7 per cent) and the number decided in the parents’ favour was 9,124 (22.8 per cent of appeals heard).

The 54,600 admission appeals made by parents in 2014/15, is up from 50,553 the year before. This does, however, remain relatively stable with the rise in applications this year, with 1,481,704 applying for a place compared with 1,443,871 in 2013/14.

Other primary classes had the highest proportion of appeals heard at 3.9 per cent, while infant classes were the lowest at 2.3%.

Other primary classes also had the highest rate of appeals upheld (decided in the parent’s favour) at 33.7 per cent, while infant classes again had the lowest at 13.1 per cent.

At primary level there is wide variation in the appeal rates by school type. For other primary classes the rate of appeals heard varies from 2.5 per cent in foundation schools to 7.3 per cent in voluntary aided schools.

The variation in appeals upheld ranges from 20 per cent in academies to 38.3 per cent in community and voluntary controlled schools.

For infant class appeals, community and voluntary controlled schools show the highest number of appeals heard 2.8 per cent, but the lowest percentage upheld with 11.5 per cent of appeals heard. Voluntary aided schools had 20.3 per cent of their heard appeals upheld.

Nick Gibb announced last month that he intends to ensure that siblings are guaranteed a place in the same school to avoid parents having to drop children off at different schools every morning.