School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Lift Kingswood?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 54 families who named Lift Kingswood as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 354 and 398 put it first.

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

1.12

first choices for every place available

398 first preferences for 354 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Lift Kingswood

There is no published appeal success rate for Lift Kingswood, or for any individual school in England. The Department for Education collects appeal outcomes and publishes them by council. The figures here are for Kingston upon Hull, City 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 Kingston upon Hull, City of, 24.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 220 of 901 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 Kingston upon Hull, City of.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Kingston upon Hull, City 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

Lift Kingswood turned first-choice families away in 6 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 Lift Kingswood, 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 0.56 per place 101 first choices 179 places 2016/17 0.55 per place 118 first choices 215 places 2017/18 0.69 per place 163 first choices 236 places 2018/19 0.81 per place 176 first choices 217 places 2019/20 1.02 per place 262 first choices 258 places 2020/21 1.1 per place 298 first choices 270 places 2021/22 1.12 per place 331 first choices 295 places 2022/23 0.9 per place 293 first choices 327 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 376 first choices 328 places 2024/25 1.11 per place 362 first choices 326 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 337 first choices 347 places 2026/27 1.12 per place 398 first choices 354 places
First preferences per place at Lift Kingswood. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 398 first preferences for 354 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Lift Kingswood, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 179 101 101 0.56
2016/17 215 118 118 0.55
2017/18 236 163 163 0.69
2018/19 217 176 176 0.81
2019/20 258 262 242 1.02
2020/21 270 298 257 1.1
2021/22 295 331 290 1.12
2022/23 327 293 293 0.9
2023/24 328 376 316 1.15
2024/25 326 362 316 1.11
2025/26 347 337 325 0.97
2026/27 354 398 344 1.12

Places offered

354

in 2026/27

Named first choice

398

741 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

86.4%

344 of 398

Offers to families outside the council

0%

1 of 354 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

1,500

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,521

101.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

21

reported as full or beyond

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 Lift Kingswood 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 Lift Kingswood 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, 2013/14 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Lift Kingswood from 2013/14 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 800 1,600 places on roll 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2013/14 900 places 594 on roll 2014/15 900 places 592 on roll 2015/16 900 places 624 on roll 2016/17 900 places 651 on roll 2017/18 1,300 places 763 on roll 2018/19 1,300 places 893 on roll 2020/21 1,300 places 1,166 on roll 2021/22 1,300 places 1,282 on roll 2022/23 1,500 places 1,364 on roll 2023/24 1,500 places 1,453 on roll 2024/25 1,500 places 1,521 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
Kingston upon Hull, City of

Postcode HU7 4WR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 139118).

Other contested secondary schools in Kingston upon Hull, City 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.