School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Fairfield High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 39 families who named Fairfield High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 107 and 145 put it first.

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

1.36

first choices for every place available

145 first preferences for 107 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Fairfield High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Fairfield 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 Herefordshire, County of 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 Herefordshire, County of, 19.7% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 27 of 137 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 Herefordshire, County of.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Herefordshire, County of 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

Fairfield High School turned first-choice families away in 8 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 Fairfield 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 1.01 per place 100 first choices 99 places 2016/17 1.1 per place 95 first choices 86 places 2017/18 1.08 per place 99 first choices 92 places 2018/19 0.99 per place 90 first choices 91 places 2019/20 0.99 per place 94 first choices 95 places 2020/21 0.99 per place 121 first choices 122 places 2021/22 1.34 per place 131 first choices 98 places 2022/23 0.97 per place 100 first choices 103 places 2023/24 1.02 per place 111 first choices 109 places 2024/25 1.15 per place 121 first choices 105 places 2025/26 1.39 per place 157 first choices 113 places 2026/27 1.36 per place 145 first choices 107 places
First preferences per place at Fairfield High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 145 first preferences for 107 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Fairfield 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 99 100 97 1.01
2016/17 86 95 85 1.1
2017/18 92 99 91 1.08
2018/19 91 90 89 0.99
2019/20 95 94 94 0.99
2020/21 122 121 116 0.99
2021/22 98 131 96 1.34
2022/23 103 100 97 0.97
2023/24 109 111 108 1.02
2024/25 105 121 103 1.15
2025/26 113 157 113 1.39
2026/27 107 145 106 1.36

Places offered

107

in 2026/27

Named first choice

145

228 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

73.1%

106 of 145

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 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

649

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

609

93.8% of capacity

Unfilled places

40

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 Fairfield 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 Fairfield High School reported 40 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93.8% 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Fairfield High School from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 450 places 448 on roll 2014/15 450 places 451 on roll 2015/16 450 places 478 on roll 2016/17 450 places 480 on roll 2017/18 450 places 495 on roll 2018/19 471 places 496 on roll 2020/21 450 places 530 on roll 2021/22 600 places 548 on roll 2022/23 600 places 561 on roll 2023/24 600 places 585 on roll 2024/25 649 places 609 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
Herefordshire, County of

Postcode HR2 0SG. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 140868).

Other contested secondary schools in Herefordshire, County of

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.