School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Salendine Nook High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 80 families who named Salendine Nook High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 263 and 329 put it first.

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

1.25

first choices for every place available

329 first preferences for 263 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Salendine Nook High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Salendine Nook 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 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

Salendine Nook High School turned first-choice families away in 9 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 Salendine Nook 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 0.94 per place 257 first choices 274 places 2016/17 0.91 per place 247 first choices 272 places 2017/18 0.93 per place 254 first choices 272 places 2018/19 1.3 per place 346 first choices 266 places 2019/20 1.02 per place 281 first choices 275 places 2020/21 1.26 per place 341 first choices 271 places 2021/22 1.29 per place 347 first choices 269 places 2022/23 1.07 per place 289 first choices 270 places 2023/24 1.16 per place 323 first choices 279 places 2024/25 1.1 per place 308 first choices 280 places 2025/26 1.22 per place 322 first choices 264 places 2026/27 1.25 per place 329 first choices 263 places
First preferences per place at Salendine Nook High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 329 first preferences for 263 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Salendine Nook 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
2015/16 274 257 248 0.94
2016/17 272 247 229 0.91
2017/18 272 254 243 0.93
2018/19 266 346 240 1.3
2019/20 275 281 257 1.02
2020/21 271 341 249 1.26
2021/22 269 347 253 1.29
2022/23 270 289 256 1.07
2023/24 279 323 265 1.16
2024/25 280 308 266 1.1
2025/26 264 322 255 1.22
2026/27 263 329 249 1.25

Places offered

263

in 2026/27

Named first choice

329

724 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75.7%

249 of 329

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 263 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

1,496

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,402

93.7% of capacity

Unfilled places

94

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 Salendine Nook 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 Salendine Nook High School reported 94 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 93.7% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Salendine Nook High School from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 750 1,500 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 1,496 places 1,315 on roll 2012/13 1,496 places 1,328 on roll 2013/14 1,496 places 1,318 on roll 2014/15 1,496 places 1,311 on roll 2015/16 1,496 places 1,314 on roll 2016/17 1,496 places 1,308 on roll 2017/18 1,496 places 1,335 on roll 2018/19 1,496 places 1,350 on roll 2020/21 1,496 places 1,383 on roll 2021/22 1,496 places 1,380 on roll 2022/23 1,496 places 1,403 on roll 2023/24 1,496 places 1,411 on roll 2024/25 1,496 places 1,402 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
Kirklees

Postcode HD3 4GN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137869).

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.