School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Wigmore School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 7 families who named Wigmore School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 88 and 93 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.

1.06

first choices for every place available

93 first preferences for 88 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Wigmore School

There is no published appeal success rate for Wigmore 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

Wigmore School turned first-choice families away in 5 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 Wigmore 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 per place 83 first choices 83 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 78 first choices 77 places 2017/18 1.05 per place 96 first choices 91 places 2018/19 0.99 per place 86 first choices 87 places 2019/20 0.99 per place 76 first choices 77 places 2020/21 1 per place 86 first choices 86 places 2021/22 0.95 per place 86 first choices 91 places 2022/23 0.96 per place 82 first choices 85 places 2023/24 0.93 per place 75 first choices 81 places 2024/25 1.16 per place 103 first choices 89 places 2025/26 1.09 per place 88 first choices 81 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 93 first choices 88 places
First preferences per place at Wigmore School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 93 first preferences for 88 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Wigmore 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 83 83 83 1
2016/17 77 78 77 1.01
2017/18 91 96 91 1.05
2018/19 87 86 86 0.99
2019/20 77 76 76 0.99
2020/21 86 86 86 1
2021/22 91 86 86 0.95
2022/23 85 82 82 0.96
2023/24 81 75 75 0.93
2024/25 89 103 88 1.16
2025/26 81 88 80 1.09
2026/27 88 93 86 1.06

Places offered

88

in 2026/27

Named first choice

93

159 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

92.5%

86 of 93

Offers to families outside the council

17%

15 of 88 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

587

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

465

79.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

122

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 Wigmore 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 Wigmore School reported 122 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 79.2% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Wigmore School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 300 600 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 450 places 461 on roll 2011/12 450 places 463 on roll 2012/13 450 places 464 on roll 2013/14 450 places 463 on roll 2014/15 450 places 449 on roll 2015/16 450 places 452 on roll 2016/17 450 places 451 on roll 2017/18 450 places 453 on roll 2018/19 456 places 444 on roll 2020/21 450 places 447 on roll 2021/22 450 places 452 on roll 2022/23 450 places 442 on roll 2023/24 450 places 449 on roll 2024/25 587 places 465 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 HR6 9UW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136405).

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.