What next after national offer day in Northern Ireland?

3 mins read

Monday 12 May 2025

Tags: northern ireland, education, secondary school national offer day, school admissions, education appeals

This news story is for families in Northern Ireland only. If your child has a statement of SEN, please see our Education in NI pages as the process is different.

In Northern Ireland, secondary school offers were sent out on Saturday 10th May. Keep an eye on your inbox or letterbox! Below, we explain what happens and what your options are if you’re not happy with the offer you’ve received.

What happens on national offer day?

Each child gets a single offer of a school. The offer will be the highest preference school on your list that can give your child a place.

Schools can only take a set number of pupils, so if a school has more applications than places, they use their admissions criteria to decide who gets in.

If none of your preferences can offer your child a place, you’ll be offered another school.

What if I’m not happy with the school offer?

If you are not happy with the school offer, don’t panic. There are a few things you can do:

  • Keep your child on the waiting list for any schools you originally applied for. Sometimes there is quite a bit of movement before September.
  • Consider other options – you could apply for schools not on your original list. Admission to a different school does not affect your right of appeal or the decisions of a tribunal.
  • Appeal against the decision (see below)

How do I appeal?

In Northern Ireland, you can only appeal against a decision if you think the school didn’t correctly apply its admissions criteria. An Independent Admissions Appeal tribunal hears the case. If successful, your child will be offered a place at the school of your choice.

The first step is to make contact with the school to discuss the reason they didn’t offer your child a place. You should also ask for details of their admissions criteria. This will help you to decide whether to appeal.

The Education Authority website has details on how to appeal using EA Connect (if you used this to submit your original application) or how to request a paper application.

This year, the deadline to make your appeal is on 22 May 2025, so you don’t have long to do it.

Exceptional Circumstances appeal

Parents can also apply to the independent Exceptional Circumstances Body (ECB) if they believe that there are exceptional reasons why their child must go to a particular secondary school.

There is no deadline for applications to the ECB.

A claim of exceptional circumstances can only be considered after you have applied to a secondary school through the normal admissions process and been refused a place.

More information and the application form for exceptional circumstances can be found on the NI Direct website.