School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ryburn Valley High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 21 families who named Ryburn Valley High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 254 and 261 put it first.

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

1.03

first choices for every place available

261 first preferences for 254 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ryburn Valley High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Ryburn Valley 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

Ryburn Valley High School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Ryburn Valley 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 1.04 per place 258 first choices 247 places 2016/17 1.23 per place 287 first choices 233 places 2017/18 1.13 per place 305 first choices 270 places 2018/19 1.1 per place 275 first choices 249 places 2019/20 1.13 per place 294 first choices 260 places 2020/21 1.12 per place 317 first choices 282 places 2021/22 1.01 per place 274 first choices 272 places 2022/23 0.96 per place 266 first choices 277 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 316 first choices 275 places 2024/25 1.15 per place 320 first choices 279 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 276 first choices 254 places 2026/27 1.03 per place 261 first choices 254 places
First preferences per place at Ryburn Valley High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 261 first preferences for 254 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ryburn Valley 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
2015/16 247 258 226 1.04
2016/17 233 287 220 1.23
2017/18 270 305 256 1.13
2018/19 249 275 238 1.1
2019/20 260 294 252 1.13
2020/21 282 317 273 1.12
2021/22 272 274 245 1.01
2022/23 277 266 262 0.96
2023/24 275 316 267 1.15
2024/25 279 320 274 1.15
2025/26 254 276 248 1.09
2026/27 254 261 240 1.03

Places offered

254

in 2026/27

Named first choice

261

481 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92%

240 of 261

Offers to families outside the council

1%

3 of 254 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

1,407

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,393

99% of capacity

Unfilled places

14

across Years 7 to 11

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 Ryburn Valley 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 Ryburn Valley High School reported 14 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99% 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 Ryburn Valley High School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 1,500 places 1,402 on roll 2015/16 1,500 places 1,394 on roll 2016/17 1,500 places 1,420 on roll 2017/18 1,500 places 1,416 on roll 2018/19 1,500 places 1,465 on roll 2020/21 1,500 places 1,593 on roll 2021/22 1,500 places 1,612 on roll 2022/23 1,620 places 1,650 on roll 2023/24 1,620 places 1,642 on roll 2024/25 1,707 places 1,603 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 converter
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Calderdale

Postcode HX6 1DF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141307).

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.