Section 1 of the School Standards & Framework Act 1998 imposes a limit on "class sizes for infant classes" i.e. any class where the majority of children will have reached the age of 5, 6 or 7 by the end of the academic year. More detailed regulations say that:

            "no infant class ….shall contain more than 30 pupils while an ordinary teaching session is conducted by a single school teacher". 

 An 'ordinary teaching session' does not include a school assembly or other school activity usually conducted with large groups of pupils, and such activities should not be included in the class size count for School Census purposes

 How does this affect the admissions process?

 If they receive sufficient applications for their normal year of entry (usually Reception), schools' admission authorities must admit pupils up to their published admission number - even if the effect of this might be that they would have to employ another teacher or restructure classes in order to comply with the class size duty e.g. a school with an admission number of 40 might employ two teachers, or combine Reception and Year 1 and have 80 pupils split between 3 teachers.

 Permitted exceptions to the infant class size limit

 Regulations prescribe the limited circumstances in which pupils may be admitted as exceptions to the infant class size limit. These exceptions are:

 a.      children with statements of special educational needs who are admitted to the school after the normal admission round;

b.      children moving into the area outside the normal admission round for whom there is no other available school within a reasonable distance. From February 2007, legislation has required admission authorities to get local authority confirmation that a child falls into this category before admitting them as a permitted exception. This means that the LA will need to check whether there are places available for the child at any other school within a reasonable distance of their home;

c.      children admitted outside the normal admission round because the person responsible for making the original decision recognises that an error was made in implementing the school's admission arrangements and that a place should have been offered;

d.      children admitted where an admissions appeal panel upholds an appeal;

e.      from February 2007, where the child is looked after and the local authority which is the corporate parent either (as admission authority) decides to admit the child to one of its community or voluntary controlled school, or directs another admission authority to admit the child outside the normal admissions round.

The admission authority may put forward a case to an appeal panel, claiming that they refused admission because this would have breached the infant class size limit. But it is up to the panel to determine whether this would be the case. 

If the panel agrees that admission would have breached the limit, it can then only uphold an appeal if the child had been refused a place in error, or if the decision to refuse admission was unreasonable i.e. wholly irrational.

But, if the appeal panel finds that admission would not have resulted in the limit being breached (e.g. where an Admission Number is less than 30 and the number has been set because of available capacity, rather than with class-sizes in mind), the appeal hearing should proceed in the same way as one for a Key Stage 2 or secondary school place.

Only very exceptional cases are upheld on the basis of a decision to refuse admission being unreasonable.