The school admission appeals data collection (also known as APAD) is a statutory data collection that local authorities submit to us every January. You must complete statutory collections by law unless there’s a good reason not to.

Important dates

Deadlines for the 20252026 collection:

• include admission appeals that were logged by SundayMonday 1 September 20242025
• data collection opens on Monday 1312 January 20252026
• submit data by Friday 2423 January 20252026

What data to collect and submit

The data collection gathers information about appeals that parents have asked for (lodged) before 1 September because their child was not admitted to their preferred school.

It only covers community and voluntary-controlled primary and secondary schools (including middle-deemed schools). For each phase, you must report:

• total number of lodged appeals
• total number of heard appeals
• appeal outcomes

How to submit your data

You’ll need to:

• register and sign in with DfE Sign-in
• use COLLECT to submit your data

We’ll only be able to change the status of your data submission to ‘authorised’ once you’ve cleared all errors in the data in COLLECT.

Contact your school or local authority approver if:

• you want to request a DfE Sign-in username or password so you can access COLLECT
• ‘APAD 2025’2026’ is not on the list of collections you can see in COLLECT

Data collection guidance documents

Our guidance will help you complete the data collection:

• data collection guide 2025
• COLLECT guide

Get help using DfE Sign-in

Use DfE Sign-in help if:

• you do not know who your approver is
• you’ve forgotten your password

Feedback

If you have any comments about our data collection service, use the feedback form.