School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Park View School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 22 families who named Park View School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 235 and 250 put it first.

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

1.06

first choices for every place available

250 first preferences for 235 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Park View School

There is no published appeal success rate for Park View 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 County Durham 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 County Durham, 35.9% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 153 of 426 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 County Durham.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not County Durham 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

Park View School turned first-choice families away in 10 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 Park View 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 0.96 per place 223 first choices 233 places 2016/17 0.94 per place 202 first choices 216 places 2017/18 1.07 per place 254 first choices 237 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 264 first choices 237 places 2019/20 1.41 per place 342 first choices 242 places 2020/21 1.4 per place 328 first choices 235 places 2021/22 1.39 per place 324 first choices 233 places 2022/23 1.23 per place 287 first choices 234 places 2023/24 1.39 per place 325 first choices 234 places 2024/25 1.24 per place 294 first choices 238 places 2025/26 1.13 per place 266 first choices 236 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 250 first choices 235 places
First preferences per place at Park View School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 250 first preferences for 235 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Park View School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 233 223 223 0.96
2016/17 216 202 202 0.94
2017/18 237 254 219 1.07
2018/19 237 264 234 1.11
2019/20 242 342 237 1.41
2020/21 235 328 233 1.4
2021/22 233 324 231 1.39
2022/23 234 287 231 1.23
2023/24 234 325 233 1.39
2024/25 238 294 237 1.24
2025/26 236 266 234 1.13
2026/27 235 250 228 1.06

Places offered

235

in 2026/27

Named first choice

250

498 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.2%

228 of 250

Offers to families outside the council

6%

14 of 235 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

1,182

98.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

18

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 Park View 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 Park View School reported 18 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 98.5% 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 Park View School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,484 places 1,429 on roll 2012/13 1,484 places 1,368 on roll 2013/14 1,437 places 1,381 on roll 2014/15 1,437 places 1,384 on roll 2015/16 1,437 places 1,376 on roll 2016/17 1,500 places 1,376 on roll 2017/18 1,500 places 1,398 on roll 2018/19 1,500 places 1,468 on roll 2020/21 1,500 places 1,549 on roll 2021/22 1,500 places 1,636 on roll 2022/23 1,500 places 1,605 on roll 2023/24 1,500 places 1,618 on roll 2024/25 1,500 places 1,613 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
County Durham

Postcode DH3 3QA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136971).

Other contested secondary schools in County Durham

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.