School admission appeals in East Riding of Yorkshire
East Riding of Yorkshire heard 65 school admission appeals in 2026, and 10 of them were upheld. The figures below come from the Department for Education and cover every state-funded school in the authority — they describe East Riding of Yorkshire as a whole, not any single school.
Over the last three years the East Riding of Yorkshire success rate has run 7.3 percentage points lower than the England average of 19.4%.
of appeals heard in East Riding of Yorkshire were upheld
41 of 339 appeals heard in 2024–2026
2026 at a glance
Appeals lodged
107
by parents in East Riding of Yorkshire
Appeals heard by a panel
65
61% of those lodged
Appeals upheld
10
15.4% of those heard
England, same year
18.5%
6,414 of 34,711 heard
If your child is going into Reception, Year 1 or Year 2, read this first
53.8% of the primary appeals heard in East Riding of Yorkshire were infant class size appeals. These are a different kind of appeal with a much narrower test. A panel can only uphold one if the admission arrangements were unlawful, they were applied incorrectly, or the decision to refuse was one no reasonable authority would have made. How much your child wants the place, or how strong the school is, cannot come into it.
In East Riding of Yorkshire, 4.8% of infant class size appeals were upheld (4 of 84 appeals heard in 2024–2026) against 9.4% across England. That is far lower than other appeals, and it is the single most important thing to establish before you spend time on a case.
The three grounds one can be upheld on, and how to tell if yours is even an infant class size case →
What counts as grounds in East Riding of Yorkshire
The rules are national, so this part does not vary by council: a panel works through two fixed stages, and the East Riding of Yorkshire rate above tells you nothing about which arguments it can act on. Most appeals fail because the case put to the panel answers neither stage.
- 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
Which appeals succeed in East Riding of Yorkshire
Secondary and primary appeals are judged on different tests, and the gap between them is usually wide. Pooling three years gives a steadier picture than any single year.
Vertical marker shows the England figure for the same phase.
View as a table
| Phase | Heard | Upheld | Rate | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Secondary | 183 | 22 | 12% | 20.1% |
| Primary | 156 | 19 | 12.2% | 17.1% |
| Infant class size | 84 | 4 | 4.8% | 9.4% |
Infant class size appeals are counted within the primary figures, not added to them.
Appeals in East Riding of Yorkshire, 2016–2026
View as a table
| Year | Heard | Upheld | East Riding of Yorkshire | England |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 66 | 5 | 7.6% | 22.3% |
| 2017 | 90 | 12 | 13.3% | 21.8% |
| 2018 | 41 | 5 | 12.2% | 21.8% |
| 2019 | 63 | 5 | 7.9% | 22.2% |
| 2020 | 103 | 15 | 14.6% | 21.2% |
| 2021 | 90 | 12 | 13.3% | 19% |
| 2022 | 68 | 11 | 16.2% | 20.1% |
| 2023 | 112 | 13 | 11.6% | 19.8% |
| 2024 | 197 | 26 | 13.2% | 20% |
| 2025 | 77 | 5 | 6.5% | 19.4% |
| 2026 | 65 | 10 | 15.4% | 18.5% |
How East Riding of Yorkshire compares
Success rate ranking
110 of 151
English councils, ranked on the pooled 3-year success rate, LAs with 10+ appeals heard. Position 1 is the highest rate.
Appeal volume ranking
103 of 151
by number of appeals heard over the same period — 339 in total.
Success rates vary enormously between councils, from under 5% to over 50%. Some of that is real difference in how panels and admission authorities operate; some of it reflects which schools are oversubscribed and how many hopeless cases get lodged. A high local rate is not a prediction about your appeal.
Schools in East Riding of Yorkshire
East Riding of Yorkshire has 141 state-funded mainstream schools — 123 primary, 17 secondary and 1 all-through. The largest concentrations are in Hull, Goole, Driffield and York.
What we can't tell you
Nobody publishes appeal outcomes school by school — the Department for Education collects returns from individual schools but only releases them added up to council level. Any site claiming to know your school's appeal odds is guessing. What matters far more than a local average is whether your particular grounds are ones a panel is allowed to act on.
Where places are hardest to get
What is published, school by school, is how many families applied and how many got in. These are the East Riding of Yorkshire schools with the most first choices for each place available in 2026/27 — the places where refusals, and so appeals, are concentrated. High demand does not mean an appeal is more likely to succeed; it means more families are refused.
See all 10 secondary and 38 primary schools in East Riding of Yorkshire →
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hessle High School and Penshurst Primary School | 173 | 206 | 1.19 |
| Headlands School | 202 | 223 | 1.10 |
| The Market Weighton School | 126 | 138 | 1.10 |
| Beverley Grammar School | 139 | 147 | 1.06 |
| Beverley High School | 148 | 154 | 1.04 |
| South Hunsley School and Sixth Form College | 340 | 343 | 1.01 |
| The Snaith School | 186 | 187 | 1.01 |
| Goole Academy | 259 | 259 | 1 |
| Withernsea High School | 133 | 131 | 0.98 |
| Driffield School and Sixth Form | 228 | 217 | 0.95 |
| School | Places | First choices | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barmby Moor Church of England Primary School | 15 | 24 | 1.60 |
| Newbald Primary School | 15 | 22 | 1.47 |
| St Martin's Church of England Voluntary Aided Primary School, Fangfoss | 15 | 21 | 1.40 |
| Molescroft Primary School | 60 | 80 | 1.33 |
| Roos Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School | 15 | 20 | 1.33 |
| Acre Heads Primary School | 60 | 79 | 1.32 |
| Elloughton Primary School | 44 | 57 | 1.30 |
| Nafferton Primary School | 45 | 58 | 1.29 |
| Swanland Primary School | 60 | 73 | 1.22 |
| Cowick Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School | 18 | 21 | 1.17 |
Department for Education, Primary and secondary school applications and offers, school-level file, 2026/27.
Admission rules challenged in East Riding of Yorkshire
Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Since 2011 it has reached a decision on 1 objection about schools in East Riding of Yorkshire, and found the arrangements did not comply in every one.
Too few to quote as a rate — the national figure is 68.3%.
| School or authority | Determined | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Woldgate School and Sixth Form College | 13 July 2023 | Did not comply |
East Riding of Yorkshire does not write the admission arrangements for every school in the table. Academies, foundation and voluntary aided schools are their own admission authority, so a finding against one of them is a finding about that school's governing body or trust, not about the council. An upheld objection also requires the arrangements to be revised, so an older determination describes rules that have since had to change.
How often admission rules are found not to comply, nationally →
Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations, 2011–2026.