Accept the place you have been offered, even if it is not the one you wanted. Accepting does not remove you from a single waiting list and does not weaken an appeal. Declining leaves you with nothing.
Almost every worry parents have about accepting is the wrong way round, so it is worth being clear about what actually happens.
Accept it. Always
Offers arrive from your home local authority on National Offer Day, 1 March, or the next working day. the King Edward VI Foundation gave the date as 2 March for the 2026 cycle.
Three things are true at once, and holding all three is the whole of this article:
- Accepting a place does not take you off any waiting list. You stay on every list you are on, in the same position.
- Accepting does not weaken an appeal. You can accept and appeal.
- Declining does not improve anything. It simply means that if nothing else comes through, your child has no school place at all and the authority allocates wherever one remains.
So there is no version of this where declining helps. Accept, then pursue what you wanted through the lists and, if you have grounds, an appeal.
The deadlines after offer day
| Roughly when | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 March | Offers issued by your home local authority |
| Within about two weeks | Deadline to accept. Check your letter, it is stated there |
| March or April | Deadline to lodge an appeal, stated in the decision letter |
| May and June | Appeal hearings are normally held |
| March onwards | Waiting lists start clearing as other families accept elsewhere |
| 31 December | Some schools run their Year 7 waiting list until this date |
Reply by the date on the letter. A non-reply is not treated as an acceptance, and the one thing you do not want is to lose a place you were actually given.
How waiting lists keep running
This is where the real movement happens, and it is nothing like as hopeless as March feels.
Every offer made is one family choosing one school, which releases their other offers. That cascade runs for months. Lists are reordered by the admissions criteria whenever anyone joins or leaves, so a position is not a queue number you hold: it can improve or worsen as the list changes.
Make sure you are actually on the lists you want. At some authorities you join automatically for schools ranked above your offer, and at others you must ask. Ask anyway, in writing, and keep the reply. See our guide to how waiting lists really move.
Appealing at the same time
An appeal and a waiting list run in parallel and do not interfere with one another.
Be realistic about the odds, though. Birmingham heard 422 secondary transfer appeals in 2025 and upheld about 4%. If you do not have specific grounds, the lists are a better use of the same energy. Our guide to appeals sets out what counts as a ground.
When an offer can be taken away
Rarely, and for one main reason: the application was wrong.
Policies state that an offer will be withdrawn where it was made on the basis of incorrect, fraudulent or misleading information, which in practice usually means an address the family does not live at. That can happen after a child has started.
So if anything about your circumstances changes between applying and September, tell the school and the authority in writing. See our guide to moving house after applying.
See where your child stands today
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Nobody ever lost a place by accepting one
Every March I have the same conversation with a family who are thinking about declining the offer they got, because they are worried that accepting it will somehow count against the school they actually wanted. It does not. It never has.
You stay on the waiting lists. You can still appeal. The only thing accepting does is guarantee that your child has somewhere to go in September, which is the one thing you cannot buy back later.
Then put the energy into the lists. They genuinely move from March onwards as families take places elsewhere, and in my experience far more children get where they wanted through a waiting list than through anything else that happens in the spring.
Mushtaque Ahmed, Founder of GrammarPath and Bright Mentors
Frequently asked questions
Should I accept a school place I do not want?
Yes. Accepting does not remove your child from any waiting list and does not weaken an appeal, while declining means that if nothing else comes through your child has no place at all and the authority allocates wherever one remains.
Does accepting an offer take me off the waiting list?
No. You stay on every list you are on, in the same position. This is the single most common misunderstanding after National Offer Day, and it causes families to decline places they should have kept.
When do I have to accept a school offer by?
Usually within about two weeks of National Offer Day on 1 March, with the exact date stated in your offer letter. A non-reply is not treated as acceptance, so reply by the date given.
Can I appeal and stay on the waiting list?
Yes, they run in parallel and do not interfere with each other. Given that Birmingham upheld about 4% of secondary transfer appeals in 2025, the waiting list is usually the better prospect unless you have specific grounds.
Can a school offer be withdrawn?
Yes, where it was made on the basis of incorrect, fraudulent or misleading information, most commonly an address the family does not actually live at. That can happen even after a child has started, so report any change of circumstances in writing.