School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Penistone Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 4 families who named Penistone Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 309 and 311 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Barnsley actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.

1.01

first choices for every place available

311 first preferences for 309 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Penistone Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Penistone Grammar School, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Barnsley as a whole and cover every state-funded school in the authority. Anyone quoting you odds for a named school is making them up.

Across Barnsley, 30.6% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 95 of 310 appeals heard in 2024–2026. The England figure is 20.1%.

A panel is not deciding whether you want the school. It decides whether the admission arrangements were lawful and correctly applied, and then whether the harm to your child of not being admitted outweighs the harm to the school of going over its published number. Cases built on preference rather than on those two questions are the ones that fail.

See the full appeal figures for Barnsley.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Barnsley ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.

How contested this school has been

Penistone Grammar School turned first-choice families away in 9 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Penistone Grammar School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.32 per place 338 first choices 256 places 2016/17 1.12 per place 294 first choices 263 places 2017/18 1.07 per place 308 first choices 289 places 2018/19 1.03 per place 325 first choices 315 places 2019/20 1.13 per place 343 first choices 304 places 2020/21 1.17 per place 354 first choices 302 places 2021/22 1 per place 318 first choices 319 places 2022/23 1.06 per place 321 first choices 302 places 2023/24 1.13 per place 337 first choices 299 places 2024/25 0.97 per place 293 first choices 302 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 307 first choices 315 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 311 first choices 309 places
First preferences per place at Penistone Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 311 first preferences for 309 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Penistone Grammar School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 256 338 255 1.32
2016/17 263 294 262 1.12
2017/18 289 308 288 1.07
2018/19 315 325 309 1.03
2019/20 304 343 298 1.13
2020/21 302 354 301 1.17
2021/22 319 318 316 1
2022/23 302 321 301 1.06
2023/24 299 337 299 1.13
2024/25 302 293 292 0.97
2025/26 315 307 299 0.97
2026/27 309 311 307 1.01

Places offered

309

in 2026/27

Named first choice

311

472 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

98.7%

307 of 311

Offers to families outside the council

8%

24 of 309 offers

Was the school full?

This is the question a panel spends most of its time on. At the second stage of an appeal it weighs the harm to the school of taking an extra child against the harm to your child of being refused — and how much room the school has is the heart of that. The admission authority has to show harm over and above the fact that its published number has been reached, so it is fair to ask what the specific harm is — how the second stage actually works.

Places, Years 7 to 11

1,607

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,610

100.2% of capacity

Over its capacity by

3

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

300

excluded from the figures above

Read this before you use these numbers

These are whole-school figures across Years 7 to 11, not the year group you are appealing for. A school can hold spare places in its upper years while the year you want is genuinely full, and the panel will have the year-group numbers in front of it. So this does not show that Penistone Grammar School has room for your child.

They are also the school's own reported capacity, as at 1 May 2025 — a year behind the application figures further up this page, and a description rather than a finding.

On the published figures Penistone Grammar School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Penistone Grammar School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,000 2,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,463 places 1,564 on roll 2010/11 1,700 places 1,578 on roll 2011/12 1,700 places 1,568 on roll 2012/13 1,700 places 1,558 on roll 2013/14 1,700 places 1,553 on roll 2014/15 1,700 places 1,592 on roll 2015/16 1,700 places 1,584 on roll 2016/17 1,700 places 1,559 on roll 2017/18 1,700 places 1,564 on roll 2018/19 1,700 places 1,632 on roll 2020/21 1,820 places 1,778 on roll 2021/22 1,820 places 1,818 on roll 2022/23 1,820 places 1,869 on roll 2023/24 1,820 places 1,889 on roll 2024/25 1,907 places 1,920 on roll
Whole-school figures including any sixth form, as at 1 May each year. 2019/20 is missing because the 2020 School Capacity survey was cancelled.

Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Barnsley

Postcode S36 7BX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 106653).

Other contested secondary schools in Barnsley

Applications and offers: Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27. Appeal figures: Admission appeals in England. Both under the Open Government Licence.