School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Keswick School?

In 2026/27, Keswick School offered 200 places and 199 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.99

first choices for every place available

199 first preferences for 200 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Keswick School

There is no published appeal success rate for Keswick 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 Cumberland 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 Cumberland, 52.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 76 of 145 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 Cumberland.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Cumberland 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

Keswick School turned first-choice families away in 5 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 Keswick 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 0.98 per place 196 first choices 201 places 2016/17 1.35 per place 231 first choices 171 places 2017/18 1.11 per place 223 first choices 200 places 2018/19 1.17 per place 236 first choices 202 places 2019/20 1.06 per place 223 first choices 211 places 2020/21 0.94 per place 176 first choices 188 places 2021/22 0.97 per place 172 first choices 177 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 173 first choices 179 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 149 first choices 150 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 161 first choices 160 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 169 first choices 172 places 2026/27 0.99 per place 199 first choices 200 places
First preferences per place at Keswick School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 199 first preferences for 200 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Keswick School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 201 196 192 0.98
2016/17 171 231 171 1.35
2017/18 200 223 198 1.11
2018/19 202 236 198 1.17
2019/20 211 223 207 1.06
2020/21 188 176 176 0.94
2021/22 177 172 171 0.97
2022/23 179 173 173 0.97
2023/24 150 149 149 0.99
2024/25 160 161 159 1.01
2025/26 172 169 167 0.98
2026/27 200 199 199 0.99

Places offered

200

in 2026/27

Named first choice

199

381 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

199 of 199

Offers to families outside the council

25%

49 of 200 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

946

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

932

98.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

14

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

280

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 Keswick 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 Keswick School reported 14 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 Keswick School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 700 1,400 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,079 places 1,050 on roll 2012/13 1,079 places 1,054 on roll 2013/14 1,079 places 1,118 on roll 2014/15 1,190 places 1,171 on roll 2015/16 1,194 places 1,229 on roll 2016/17 1,194 places 1,245 on roll 2017/18 1,226 places 1,275 on roll 2018/19 1,226 places 1,285 on roll 2020/21 1,226 places 1,350 on roll 2021/22 1,226 places 1,313 on roll 2022/23 1,226 places 1,251 on roll 2023/24 1,226 places 1,202 on roll 2024/25 1,226 places 1,200 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
Cumberland

Postcode CA12 5QB. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136902).

Other contested secondary schools in Cumberland

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.