School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Ribston Hall High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 77 families who named Ribston Hall High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 149 and 152 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

152 first preferences for 149 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Ribston Hall High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Ribston Hall High 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 Gloucestershire 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 Gloucestershire, 26.5% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 424 of 1,598 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 Gloucestershire.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Gloucestershire 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

Ribston Hall High School turned first-choice families away in 11 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 8 of those years. In the other 3 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.

First preferences per place at Ribston Hall High 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 1.23 per place 136 first choices 111 places 2016/17 1.57 per place 189 first choices 120 places 2017/18 1.25 per place 150 first choices 120 places 2018/19 1.3 per place 156 first choices 120 places 2019/20 1.15 per place 172 first choices 149 places 2020/21 1.22 per place 181 first choices 148 places 2021/22 0.8 per place 119 first choices 148 places 2022/23 1 per place 128 first choices 128 places 2023/24 1.13 per place 166 first choices 147 places 2024/25 0.92 per place 138 first choices 150 places 2025/26 0.63 per place 93 first choices 148 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 152 first choices 149 places
First preferences per place at Ribston Hall High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 152 first preferences for 149 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Ribston Hall High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 111 136 77 1.23
2016/17 120 189 113 1.57
2017/18 120 150 97 1.25
2018/19 120 156 106 1.3
2019/20 149 172 103 1.15
2020/21 148 181 119 1.22
2021/22 148 119 52 0.8
2022/23 128 128 118 1
2023/24 147 166 135 1.13
2024/25 150 138 96 0.92
2025/26 148 93 61 0.63
2026/27 149 152 75 1.02

Places offered

149

in 2026/27

Named first choice

152

564 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

49.3%

75 of 152

Offers to families outside the council

39%

58 of 149 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

750

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

760

101.3% of capacity

Over its capacity by

10

reported as full or beyond

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 Ribston Hall High 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 Ribston Hall High School was at or beyond its stated capacity across Years 7 to 11. A school in that position has a straightforward case that another admission would cause it difficulty, and an appeal here has to succeed on the strength of your child's own circumstances rather than on spare room.

Places and pupils on roll, whole school, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Ribston Hall High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 813 places 822 on roll 2012/13 813 places 798 on roll 2013/14 813 places 801 on roll 2014/15 813 places 842 on roll 2015/16 813 places 840 on roll 2016/17 813 places 820 on roll 2017/18 843 places 839 on roll 2018/19 843 places 827 on roll 2020/21 1,000 places 819 on roll 2021/22 1,000 places 858 on roll 2022/23 1,000 places 873 on roll 2023/24 1,000 places 871 on roll 2024/25 1,000 places 906 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.

This school's admission rules have been challenged

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. Ribston Hall High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Ribston Hall High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
13 October 2020 Arrangements did not comply case reference number ADA3676

This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.

When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →

Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.

What these figures do not tell you

About the school

Type
Academy converter
Admissions policy
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Gloucestershire

Postcode GL1 5LE. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136767).

Other contested secondary schools in Gloucestershire

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.