School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at William Howard School?

In 2026/27, William Howard School offered 222 places and 202 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.

0.91

first choices for every place available

202 first preferences for 222 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at William Howard School

There is no published appeal success rate for William Howard 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

William Howard School turned first-choice families away in 2 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 William Howard 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 0.93 per place 239 first choices 257 places 2016/17 0.92 per place 224 first choices 243 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 254 first choices 259 places 2018/19 0.96 per place 189 first choices 197 places 2019/20 0.96 per place 218 first choices 227 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 196 first choices 203 places 2021/22 0.95 per place 199 first choices 209 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 225 first choices 233 places 2023/24 1.01 per place 238 first choices 236 places 2024/25 0.99 per place 215 first choices 217 places 2025/26 1.02 per place 237 first choices 232 places 2026/27 0.91 per place 202 first choices 222 places
First preferences per place at William Howard School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 202 first preferences for 222 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at William Howard School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 257 239 236 0.93
2016/17 243 224 224 0.92
2017/18 259 254 244 0.98
2018/19 197 189 189 0.96
2019/20 227 218 218 0.96
2020/21 203 196 196 0.97
2021/22 209 199 199 0.95
2022/23 233 225 225 0.97
2023/24 236 238 231 1.01
2024/25 217 215 208 0.99
2025/26 232 237 229 1.02
2026/27 222 202 202 0.91

Places offered

222

in 2026/27

Named first choice

202

323 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

202 of 202

Offers to families outside the council

12%

26 of 211 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

1,212

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,146

94.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

66

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

250

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 William Howard 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 William Howard School reported 66 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 94.6% 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 William Howard School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,483 places 1,554 on roll 2012/13 1,535 places 1,525 on roll 2013/14 1,535 places 1,489 on roll 2014/15 1,551 places 1,486 on roll 2015/16 1,551 places 1,492 on roll 2016/17 1,551 places 1,494 on roll 2017/18 1,462 places 1,457 on roll 2018/19 1,462 places 1,418 on roll 2020/21 1,462 places 1,373 on roll 2021/22 1,462 places 1,365 on roll 2022/23 1,462 places 1,324 on roll 2023/24 1,462 places 1,331 on roll 2024/25 1,462 places 1,294 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 CA8 1AR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137252).

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.