School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Darwen Vale High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 9 families who named Darwen Vale High School as their first choice did not get a place: 209 put it first and 200 of them were offered one.

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

9

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

209 first preferences for 233 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Darwen Vale High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Darwen Vale High 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 Blackburn with Darwen 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 Blackburn with Darwen, 9.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 58 of 594 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 Blackburn with Darwen.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Blackburn with Darwen 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

Darwen Vale High School turned first-choice families away in 2 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 Darwen Vale High 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 0.86 per place 96 first choices 112 places 2016/17 0.82 per place 115 first choices 141 places 2017/18 0.82 per place 106 first choices 129 places 2018/19 0.83 per place 129 first choices 155 places 2019/20 0.9 per place 171 first choices 189 places 2020/21 0.84 per place 189 first choices 224 places 2021/22 0.75 per place 155 first choices 208 places 2022/23 0.89 per place 207 first choices 232 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 251 first choices 235 places 2024/25 1.09 per place 258 first choices 236 places 2025/26 0.93 per place 218 first choices 235 places 2026/27 0.9 per place 209 first choices 233 places
First preferences per place at Darwen Vale High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 209 first preferences for 233 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Darwen Vale High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 112 96 96 0.86
2016/17 141 115 115 0.82
2017/18 129 106 105 0.82
2018/19 155 129 129 0.83
2019/20 189 171 171 0.9
2020/21 224 189 187 0.84
2021/22 208 155 154 0.75
2022/23 232 207 207 0.89
2023/24 235 251 220 1.07
2024/25 236 258 211 1.09
2025/26 235 218 218 0.93
2026/27 233 209 200 0.9

Places offered

233

in 2026/27

Named first choice

209

528 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.7%

200 of 209

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 233 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

1,200

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,057

88.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

143

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

0

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 Darwen Vale High 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 Darwen Vale High School reported 143 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 88.1% of capacity. That is worth asking about — but ask it as a question, not an assertion. A panel will want the figure for the year group in question, and the school may have a good answer about staffing, rooms or timetabling.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Darwen Vale High School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 600 1,200 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,200 places 766 on roll 2015/16 1,200 places 747 on roll 2016/17 1,200 places 760 on roll 2017/18 1,200 places 749 on roll 2018/19 1,200 places 757 on roll 2020/21 1,200 places 909 on roll 2021/22 1,200 places 946 on roll 2022/23 1,200 places 1,038 on roll 2023/24 1,200 places 1,071 on roll 2024/25 1,200 places 1,057 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
Academy sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Blackburn with Darwen

Postcode BB3 0AL. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141321).

Other contested secondary schools in Blackburn with Darwen

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.