School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Heckmondwike Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 151 families who named Heckmondwike Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 207 and 355 put it first.

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

1.71

first choices for every place available

355 first preferences for 207 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Heckmondwike Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Heckmondwike Grammar 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 Kirklees 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 Kirklees, 39.2% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 345 of 880 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 Kirklees.

What a panel here can act on

These are national rules, not Kirklees 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

Heckmondwike Grammar School turned first-choice families away in every one of the 12 years published. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Heckmondwike Grammar School, 2015/16 to 2026/27. A value above 1 means more families named the school first than there were places. 0.0 0.6 1.3 1.9 2.5 one first preference per place 15/16 17/18 19/20 21/22 23/24 25/26 26/27 2015/16 1.73 per place 311 first choices 180 places 2016/17 1.52 per place 269 first choices 177 places 2017/18 1.27 per place 266 first choices 209 places 2018/19 1.38 per place 287 first choices 208 places 2019/20 1.35 per place 284 first choices 211 places 2020/21 1.79 per place 369 first choices 206 places 2021/22 2.06 per place 433 first choices 210 places 2022/23 1.63 per place 337 first choices 207 places 2023/24 1.56 per place 322 first choices 207 places 2024/25 1.56 per place 326 first choices 209 places 2025/26 1.8 per place 374 first choices 208 places 2026/27 1.71 per place 355 first choices 207 places
First preferences per place at Heckmondwike Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 355 first preferences for 207 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Heckmondwike Grammar School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 180 311 178 1.73
2016/17 177 269 174 1.52
2017/18 209 266 209 1.27
2018/19 208 287 206 1.38
2019/20 211 284 208 1.35
2020/21 206 369 205 1.79
2021/22 210 433 206 2.06
2022/23 207 337 203 1.63
2023/24 207 322 204 1.56
2024/25 209 326 206 1.56
2025/26 208 374 207 1.8
2026/27 207 355 204 1.71

Places offered

207

in 2026/27

Named first choice

355

580 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

57.5%

204 of 355

Offers to families outside the council

68%

140 of 207 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Heckmondwike Grammar School published for 2026 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Heckmondwike Grammar School, 2026 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Children of selective ability who are in public care (in or outside of England) or have previously been in public care. (Children previously in public care are children who were in public care and ceased to be so because they were adopted or became subject to a residence order or special guardianship order) 2
2 Children of selective ability who are eligible for the Pupil Premium3.
3 Children of selective ability who reside in the catchment area4 (a map of the catchment area is available on the school’s website). The place of residence is the child’s permanent address on the date of sitting the entrance exam. Proof of the EHCP must be provided to the school by 12 noon Friday 27th June 2025. 2 Proof of eligibility of looked-after status must be provided to the school by 12 noon Friday 27th June 2025. 3 Proof of Pupil Premium be required and must be submitted by 12 noon Friday 27th June 2025. 4 Proof of residence will be required by the school. The offer of a place may be withdrawn if proof of residency cannot be met. […] criterion continues in the source document
4 Children of selective ability who have a parent who is employed by the school and has been so for two or more years at the time of sitting the entrance examination, or who has been recruited to a post where there is a recognised skill shortage.
5 Children who have gained grade 2 or above in Music6. The percentage of children offered a place under this criterion shall not exceed 5% of the total number of offers made. If more candidates meet the criterion for Music, places will be offered to those children scoring highest on the entrance examination. Once criteria 1 to 6 have been applied, the remaining places will be offered on the basis of overall performance in the entrance examination. The criteria will be used to create a ranked list of selected students which will be forwarded to the Local Authority. All documentation must be sent ONLY to admissions@heckgrammar.co.uk. […] criterion continues in the source document

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2026 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Heckmondwike Grammar School's determined admission arrangements for 2026 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

965

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,049

108.7% of capacity

Over its capacity by

84

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

685

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 Heckmondwike Grammar 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 Heckmondwike Grammar 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Heckmondwike Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,350 places 1,323 on roll 2011/12 1,350 places 1,328 on roll 2012/13 1,350 places 1,342 on roll 2013/14 1,350 places 1,382 on roll 2014/15 1,500 places 1,382 on roll 2015/16 1,500 places 1,444 on roll 2016/17 1,500 places 1,485 on roll 2017/18 1,650 places 1,464 on roll 2018/19 1,650 places 1,480 on roll 2020/21 1,650 places 1,519 on roll 2021/22 1,650 places 1,551 on roll 2022/23 1,650 places 1,520 on roll 2023/24 1,650 places 1,473 on roll 2024/25 1,650 places 1,468 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
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Kirklees

Postcode WF16 0AH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136283).

Other contested secondary schools in Kirklees

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.