Refused a place at Polam Hall School?
You are not alone. In 2026/27, 3 families who named Polam Hall School as their first choice did not get a place: 101 put it first and 98 of them were offered one.
Below: what an appeal in Darlington actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 11 years of official figures.
first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27
101 first preferences for 107 places, 2026/27
Appealing a refusal at Polam Hall School
There is no published appeal success rate for Polam Hall 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 Darlington 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 Darlington, 33.3% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 35 of 105 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 Darlington.
What a panel here can act on
These are national rules, not Darlington ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.
- Infant class size
- A mistake in how the decision was made
- Distance and catchment
- Siblings
- Faith and religious criteria
- Medical and social need
- Special educational needs without an EHC plan
- A late application
- In-year admissions
- Grammar schools and the 11-plus
- Sixth form places
- Twins and multiple births
How contested this school has been
Polam Hall School turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 11 years. More families named it first than it had places in 5 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.
View as a table
| Year | Places | First choices | Offered | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016/17 | 26 | 33 | 17 | 1.27 |
| 2017/18 | 28 | 66 | 23 | 2.36 |
| 2018/19 | 25 | 50 | 20 | 2 |
| 2019/20 | 37 | 33 | 22 | 0.89 |
| 2020/21 | 76 | 58 | 58 | 0.76 |
| 2021/22 | 99 | 85 | 84 | 0.86 |
| 2022/23 | 109 | 88 | 88 | 0.81 |
| 2023/24 | 110 | 114 | 95 | 1.04 |
| 2024/25 | 108 | 108 | 103 | 1 |
| 2025/26 | 108 | 115 | 100 | 1.06 |
| 2026/27 | 107 | 101 | 98 | 0.94 |
Places offered
107
in 2026/27
Named first choice
101
287 named it at any preference
First choices offered a place
97%
98 of 101
Offers to families outside the council
3%
3 of 107 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
882
2024/25, whole school
Pupils in them
841
95.4% of capacity
Unfilled places
41
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 Polam Hall 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 Polam Hall School reported 41 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.4% 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, 2015/16 to 2024/25
Places Pupils on roll
Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.
What these figures do not tell you
- How close you had to live. Cut-off distances are set by whoever runs admissions for the school. Darlington does not publish them, and no council is required to — the regulations ask only for the admission number and the preferences received. Ask the admission authority directly — how distance is measured, and when it is arguable.
- How this school decides between applicants. Sibling rules, catchment, faith criteria and tie-breaks are in the school's own admission arrangements. What matters for an appeal is whether they were applied to you correctly — siblings, faith criteria and process mistakes.
- Whether an appeal here succeeds. Appeal outcomes are published by council only. A school being heavily oversubscribed means more families appeal, not that their appeals do better.
About the school
- Type
- Free schools
- Admissions policy
- Non-selective
- Religious character
- No religious character
- Entry point
- Year 7
- Council
- Darlington
Postcode DL1 5PA. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 142174).
Other contested secondary schools in Darlington
- Carmel College 1.41 first choices per place
- Haughton Academy 0.97 first choices per place
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.