Parents are finding it harder and harder to win appeals against primary schools which turn their children down for a place.

Statistics just released show a dramatic fall in the success rate of parental appeals against primary schools in the past six years.

If parents win an appeal, it means the school in question has to offer a place to their child.

In the school year of 2000/01, 35% of parents who appealed won their case.

In the previous year, 39% were successful, while in 1995/6, almost half of all appeals were successful (48%).

The job of appeals panels, which are independent from the school, is to decide whether a school has carried out its admissions procedures fairly.

Fair system

The chances of parents succeeding in an appeal at secondary school level have remained about the same over the past few years.

In 2000/01, 32% of appeals were successful, compared with a rate of 31% in 1995/6.

The proportion of parents appealing against schools' decisions has fallen in primary schools but risen in secondary schools.

At primary level, the number of appeals per 1,000 new admissions fell from 52.4 in 1999/00 to 47.4 in 2000/01.

For secondary schools in England, there was a rise in the number of appeals, from 96.2 to 102.9 per 1,000 admissions over the same period.

Class sizes

The Advisory Centre for Education (ACE), which gives parents advice on the education system says fewer parents are winning their appeals against primary schools because of legislation limiting class sizes to 30.

The organisation's Margaret McGowan said: "It's obviously down to class size legislation.

"It is now much harder to win an appeal. There are only two grounds - that there has been some mistake or that the educational authority has acted in what is called an unreasonable way."

She said while fewer parents saw the point in lodging appeals, more were likely to get a place.

"Local authorities have been quite good at trying to make enough places available because they knew the class size legislation was coming in," she said.

Difficult

One London mother has just lost an appeal against a primary school's decision not to offer a place to her youngest son, even though she already has two older boys there.

The church school is very popular and under its criteria, living in the parish boundary is more important than having siblings already at the school.

The woman told BBC News Online: "Life is going to be very difficult. Even if we find a place at another school, I can't be in two places at once to drop all the boys off at nine o'clock.

"I might have no choice but to educate my son at home."

New proposals

The Department for Education and Skills says the government's policy is to ensure that school admissions arrangements work for the benefit of local parents and children.

A spokeswoman said: "There are proposals in the Education Bill, currently before Parliament, for the school admissions process to be co-ordinated by local education authorities so that every parent in an area can be offered a place for their child on the same day.

"This will eliminate the current situation where some parents hold multiple offers of places, while others have none."