School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Hungerhill School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 73 families who named Hungerhill School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 242 and 305 put it first.

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

1.26

first choices for every place available

305 first preferences for 242 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Hungerhill School

There is no published appeal success rate for Hungerhill 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 Doncaster 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 Doncaster, 24.8% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 137 of 553 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 Doncaster.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Doncaster 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

Hungerhill School turned first-choice families away in 11 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 Hungerhill 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 1.28 per place 287 first choices 225 places 2016/17 1.21 per place 273 first choices 226 places 2017/18 1.21 per place 297 first choices 246 places 2018/19 1.16 per place 289 first choices 250 places 2019/20 1.14 per place 295 first choices 258 places 2020/21 1.08 per place 270 first choices 251 places 2021/22 0.91 per place 222 first choices 244 places 2022/23 1.04 per place 260 first choices 249 places 2023/24 1.06 per place 261 first choices 246 places 2024/25 1.17 per place 285 first choices 244 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 273 first choices 248 places 2026/27 1.26 per place 305 first choices 242 places
First preferences per place at Hungerhill School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 305 first preferences for 242 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Hungerhill School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 225 287 225 1.28
2016/17 226 273 226 1.21
2017/18 246 297 245 1.21
2018/19 250 289 246 1.16
2019/20 258 295 250 1.14
2020/21 251 270 239 1.08
2021/22 244 222 222 0.91
2022/23 249 260 231 1.04
2023/24 246 261 226 1.06
2024/25 244 285 232 1.17
2025/26 248 273 233 1.1
2026/27 242 305 232 1.26

Places offered

242

in 2026/27

Named first choice

305

528 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

76.1%

232 of 305

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 242 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

1,203

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,172

97.4% of capacity

Unfilled places

31

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 Hungerhill 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 Hungerhill School reported 31 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.4% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Hungerhill School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,120 places 1,130 on roll 2012/13 1,120 places 1,130 on roll 2013/14 1,145 places 1,126 on roll 2014/15 1,145 places 1,123 on roll 2015/16 1,145 places 1,132 on roll 2016/17 1,145 places 1,140 on roll 2017/18 1,215 places 1,167 on roll 2018/19 1,203 places 1,191 on roll 2020/21 1,203 places 1,203 on roll 2021/22 1,203 places 1,197 on roll 2022/23 1,203 places 1,164 on roll 2023/24 1,203 places 1,159 on roll 2024/25 1,203 places 1,172 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
Doncaster

Postcode DN3 2JY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137899).

Other contested secondary schools in Doncaster

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.