School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Pleckgate High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 63 families who named Pleckgate High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 265 and 281 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in Blackburn with Darwen actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 11 years of official figures.

1.06

first choices for every place available

281 first preferences for 265 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Pleckgate High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Pleckgate 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

Pleckgate High School turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 11 years. More families named it first than it had places in 1 of those years. In the other 3 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Pleckgate High School, 2016/17 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 16/17 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2016/17 0.36 per place 85 first choices 233 places 2017/18 0.49 per place 108 first choices 219 places 2018/19 0.53 per place 126 first choices 236 places 2019/20 0.53 per place 138 first choices 259 places 2020/21 0.64 per place 174 first choices 273 places 2021/22 0.67 per place 183 first choices 273 places 2022/23 0.62 per place 171 first choices 274 places 2023/24 0.74 per place 195 first choices 264 places 2024/25 0.9 per place 237 first choices 262 places 2025/26 0.91 per place 244 first choices 268 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 281 first choices 265 places
First preferences per place at Pleckgate High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 281 first preferences for 265 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Pleckgate 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
2016/17 233 85 85 0.36
2017/18 219 108 108 0.49
2018/19 236 126 126 0.53
2019/20 259 138 137 0.53
2020/21 273 174 173 0.64
2021/22 273 183 183 0.67
2022/23 274 171 169 0.62
2023/24 264 195 173 0.74
2024/25 262 237 193 0.9
2025/26 268 244 206 0.91
2026/27 265 281 218 1.06

Places offered

265

in 2026/27

Named first choice

281

698 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

77.6%

218 of 281

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 265 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

1,350

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,360

100.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

10

reported as full or beyond

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 Pleckgate 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 Pleckgate High 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, 2015/16 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Pleckgate High School from 2015/16 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2015/16 1,350 places 1,099 on roll 2016/17 1,350 places 1,096 on roll 2017/18 1,350 places 1,070 on roll 2018/19 1,350 places 1,090 on roll 2020/21 1,350 places 1,236 on roll 2021/22 1,350 places 1,291 on roll 2022/23 1,350 places 1,329 on roll 2023/24 1,350 places 1,358 on roll 2024/25 1,350 places 1,360 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 BB1 8QA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142088).

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.