School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Richard Lander School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 20 families who named Richard Lander School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 308 and 326 put it first.

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

1.06

first choices for every place available

326 first preferences for 308 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Richard Lander School

There is no published appeal success rate for Richard Lander 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 Cornwall 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 Cornwall, 40.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 105 of 258 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 Cornwall.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Cornwall 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

Richard Lander School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Richard Lander 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 1.16 per place 304 first choices 261 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 279 first choices 276 places 2017/18 1.12 per place 315 first choices 281 places 2018/19 1.22 per place 351 first choices 287 places 2019/20 1.1 per place 312 first choices 284 places 2020/21 1.02 per place 293 first choices 288 places 2021/22 1.12 per place 322 first choices 287 places 2022/23 1.25 per place 381 first choices 306 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 342 first choices 298 places 2024/25 1.07 per place 332 first choices 310 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 337 first choices 332 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 326 first choices 308 places
First preferences per place at Richard Lander School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 326 first preferences for 308 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Richard Lander School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 261 304 261 1.16
2016/17 276 279 273 1.01
2017/18 281 315 278 1.12
2018/19 287 351 287 1.22
2019/20 284 312 283 1.1
2020/21 288 293 286 1.02
2021/22 287 322 284 1.12
2022/23 306 381 306 1.25
2023/24 298 342 290 1.15
2024/25 310 332 306 1.07
2025/26 332 337 329 1.02
2026/27 308 326 306 1.06

Places offered

308

in 2026/27

Named first choice

326

544 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.9%

306 of 326

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 308 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

1,523

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,522

99.9% of capacity

Unfilled places

1

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 Richard Lander 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 Richard Lander School reported 1 unfilled place across Years 7 to 11, at 99.9% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Richard Lander School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,350 places 1,341 on roll 2010/11 1,350 places 1,347 on roll 2011/12 1,350 places 1,306 on roll 2012/13 1,350 places 1,293 on roll 2013/14 1,350 places 1,289 on roll 2014/15 1,356 places 1,302 on roll 2015/16 1,356 places 1,345 on roll 2016/17 1,356 places 1,368 on roll 2017/18 1,356 places 1,397 on roll 2018/19 1,356 places 1,438 on roll 2020/21 1,356 places 1,462 on roll 2021/22 1,430 places 1,499 on roll 2022/23 1,430 places 1,506 on roll 2023/24 1,430 places 1,504 on roll 2024/25 1,523 places 1,522 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
Cornwall

Postcode TR3 6LT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 112055).

Other contested secondary schools in Cornwall

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.