School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Rastrick High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 14 families who named Rastrick High School as their first choice did not get a place: 322 put it first and 308 of them were offered one.

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

14

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

322 first preferences for 347 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Rastrick High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Rastrick 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 Calderdale 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 Calderdale, 14.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 46 of 319 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 Calderdale.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Calderdale 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

Rastrick High School turned first-choice families away in 5 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 4 of those years. In the other 1 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 Rastrick 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 0.9 per place 234 first choices 260 places 2016/17 0.93 per place 259 first choices 278 places 2017/18 0.95 per place 277 first choices 291 places 2018/19 0.86 per place 273 first choices 318 places 2019/20 0.88 per place 299 first choices 338 places 2020/21 1.1 per place 377 first choices 342 places 2021/22 0.95 per place 327 first choices 346 places 2022/23 1.04 per place 360 first choices 346 places 2023/24 1.07 per place 374 first choices 348 places 2024/25 1 per place 348 first choices 347 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 340 first choices 349 places 2026/27 0.93 per place 322 first choices 347 places
First preferences per place at Rastrick High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 322 first preferences for 347 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Rastrick 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
2015/16 260 234 230 0.9
2016/17 278 259 243 0.93
2017/18 291 277 252 0.95
2018/19 318 273 268 0.86
2019/20 338 299 285 0.88
2020/21 342 377 316 1.1
2021/22 346 327 283 0.95
2022/23 346 360 320 1.04
2023/24 348 374 331 1.07
2024/25 347 348 321 1
2025/26 349 340 328 0.97
2026/27 347 322 308 0.93

Places offered

347

in 2026/27

Named first choice

322

698 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

95.7%

308 of 322

Offers to families outside the council

35%

121 of 347 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

1,800

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,781

98.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

19

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 Rastrick 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 Rastrick High School reported 19 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.9% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Rastrick High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,560 places 1,386 on roll 2012/13 1,560 places 1,409 on roll 2013/14 1,560 places 1,432 on roll 2014/15 1,560 places 1,430 on roll 2015/16 1,710 places 1,405 on roll 2016/17 1,710 places 1,476 on roll 2017/18 1,710 places 1,522 on roll 2018/19 1,710 places 1,534 on roll 2020/21 1,800 places 1,611 on roll 2021/22 1,800 places 1,667 on roll 2022/23 1,800 places 1,731 on roll 2023/24 1,800 places 1,770 on roll 2024/25 1,800 places 1,781 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Rastrick High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.

Adjudicator determinations naming Rastrick High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
12 September 2022 No fault found ADA3900

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Calderdale

Postcode HD6 3XB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137444).

Other contested secondary schools in Calderdale

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.