School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Tanfield School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 56 families who named Tanfield School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 149 and 201 put it first.

Below: what an appeal in County Durham actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 6 years of official figures.

1.35

first choices for every place available

201 first preferences for 149 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Tanfield School

There is no published appeal success rate for Tanfield 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

Tanfield School turned first-choice families away in 4 of the last 6 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Tanfield School, 2021/22 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 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 25/26 26/27 2021/22 0.84 per place 127 first choices 152 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 155 first choices 157 places 2023/24 1.17 per place 180 first choices 154 places 2024/25 1.49 per place 227 first choices 152 places 2025/26 1.24 per place 185 first choices 149 places 2026/27 1.35 per place 201 first choices 149 places
First preferences per place at Tanfield School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 201 first preferences for 149 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Tanfield School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2021/22 152 127 125 0.84
2022/23 157 155 148 0.99
2023/24 154 180 144 1.17
2024/25 152 227 141 1.49
2025/26 149 185 143 1.24
2026/27 149 201 145 1.35

Places offered

149

in 2026/27

Named first choice

201

406 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

72.1%

145 of 201

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 149 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

788

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

691

87.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

97

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 Tanfield 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 Tanfield School reported 97 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 87.7% 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, 2020/21 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Tanfield School from 2020/21 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 20/21 21/22 22/23 23/24 24/25 2020/21 788 places 655 on roll 2021/22 788 places 688 on roll 2022/23 788 places 698 on roll 2023/24 788 places 705 on roll 2024/25 788 places 691 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
County Durham

Postcode DH9 8AY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 147894).

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.