School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Driffield School and Sixth Form?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 1 families who named Driffield School and Sixth Form as their first choice did not get a place: 217 put it first and 216 of them were offered one.

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

1

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

217 first preferences for 228 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Driffield School and Sixth Form

There is no published appeal success rate for Driffield School and Sixth Form, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for East Riding of Yorkshire 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 East Riding of Yorkshire, 12% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 22 of 183 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 East Riding of Yorkshire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not East Riding of Yorkshire 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

Driffield School and Sixth Form turned first-choice families away in 1 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 Driffield School and Sixth Form, 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 per place 245 first choices 246 places 2016/17 0.99 per place 245 first choices 247 places 2017/18 0.98 per place 198 first choices 203 places 2018/19 0.94 per place 216 first choices 229 places 2019/20 0.92 per place 246 first choices 266 places 2020/21 0.96 per place 219 first choices 228 places 2021/22 0.94 per place 222 first choices 237 places 2022/23 1 per place 266 first choices 266 places 2023/24 0.98 per place 244 first choices 249 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 240 first choices 237 places 2025/26 0.99 per place 229 first choices 232 places 2026/27 0.95 per place 217 first choices 228 places
First preferences per place at Driffield School and Sixth Form. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 217 first preferences for 228 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Driffield School and Sixth Form, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 246 245 245 1
2016/17 247 245 245 0.99
2017/18 203 198 198 0.98
2018/19 229 216 216 0.94
2019/20 266 246 246 0.92
2020/21 228 219 219 0.96
2021/22 237 222 221 0.94
2022/23 266 266 262 1
2023/24 249 244 244 0.98
2024/25 237 240 237 1.01
2025/26 232 229 229 0.99
2026/27 228 217 216 0.95

Places offered

228

in 2026/27

Named first choice

217

246 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

99.5%

216 of 217

Offers to families outside the council

3%

6 of 224 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 118078.

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

2,080

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,198

57.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

882

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

312

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 Driffield School and Sixth Form 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 Driffield School and Sixth Form reported 882 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 57.6% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Driffield School and Sixth Form from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 1,200 2,400 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 2,013 places 1,922 on roll 2010/11 2,013 places 1,888 on roll 2011/12 2,013 places 1,846 on roll 2012/13 1,992 places 1,786 on roll 2013/14 1,992 places 1,770 on roll 2014/15 1,992 places 1,733 on roll 2015/16 1,992 places 1,608 on roll 2016/17 2,078 places 1,506 on roll 2017/18 2,078 places 1,376 on roll 2018/19 2,078 places 1,341 on roll 2020/21 1,992 places 1,338 on roll 2021/22 1,992 places 1,345 on roll 2022/23 1,992 places 1,398 on roll 2023/24 1,992 places 1,385 on roll 2024/25 2,392 places 1,395 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
East Riding of Yorkshire

Postcode YO25 5HR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 143854).

Other contested secondary schools in East Riding of Yorkshire

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.