Refused a place at Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School?
You are not alone. In 2026/27, 47 families who named Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 181 and 219 put it first.
Below: what an appeal in Lancashire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 12 years of official figures.
first choices for every place available
219 first preferences for 181 places, 2026/27
Appealing a refusal at Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School
There is no published appeal success rate for Bacup and Rawtenstall 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 Lancashire 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 Lancashire, 28.4% of secondary appeals heard were upheld — 768 of 2,706 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 Lancashire.
What a panel here can act on
These are national rules, not Lancashire ones. Whichever school you are appealing for, the panel works through the same two stages and is required to ignore the same things.
- Infant class size
- A mistake in how the decision was made
- Distance and catchment
- Siblings
- Faith and religious criteria
- Medical and social need
- Special educational needs without an EHC plan
- A late application
- In-year admissions
- Grammar schools and the 11-plus
- Sixth form places
- Twins and multiple births
How contested this school has been
Bacup and Rawtenstall 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.
View as a table
| Year | Places | First choices | Offered | Per place |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015/16 | 173 | 223 | 173 | 1.29 |
| 2016/17 | 166 | 226 | 164 | 1.36 |
| 2017/18 | 175 | 218 | 175 | 1.25 |
| 2018/19 | 179 | 259 | 178 | 1.45 |
| 2019/20 | 180 | 239 | 179 | 1.33 |
| 2020/21 | 179 | 232 | 177 | 1.3 |
| 2021/22 | 178 | 335 | 175 | 1.88 |
| 2022/23 | 177 | 209 | 176 | 1.18 |
| 2023/24 | 172 | 184 | 162 | 1.07 |
| 2024/25 | 147 | 175 | 144 | 1.19 |
| 2025/26 | 171 | 210 | 162 | 1.23 |
| 2026/27 | 181 | 219 | 172 | 1.21 |
Places offered
181
in 2026/27
Named first choice
219
385 named it at any preference
First choices offered a place
78.5%
172 of 219
Offers to families outside the council
44%
80 of 181 offers
This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 138835.
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
852
2024/25, whole school
Pupils in them
862
101.2% of capacity
Over its capacity by
10
reported as full or beyond
Sixth form places
450
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 Bacup and Rawtenstall 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 Bacup and Rawtenstall 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, 2012/13 to 2024/25
Places Pupils on roll
Department for Education, School capacity, school-level file, 2024/25. Published under the Open Government Licence.
This school's admission rules have been challenged
Separately from appeals, anyone can object that a school's admission arrangements break the School Admissions Code. The Office of the Schools Adjudicator decides those objections and publishes a determination naming the school. Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator did not find its arrangements at fault.
| Determined | Outcome | Determination |
|---|---|---|
| 13 October 2020 | No fault found | ADA3674 |
This is not a prediction about your appeal. An objection is about the rules the school admits by; an appeal is your case about your child. No school-level appeal figures are published for any school in England, and a determination does not create any. An upheld objection also requires the school to revise its arrangements, so a finding from an earlier year describes rules that had to change — what matters for your appeal is the arrangements for the year you applied under, and whether they were applied to you correctly.
When a mistake in the process is a ground for appeal →
Office of the Schools Adjudicator, published determinations.
What these figures do not tell you
- How close you had to live. Cut-off distances are set by whoever runs admissions for the school. Lancashire does not publish them, and no council is required to — the regulations ask only for the admission number and the preferences received. Ask the admission authority directly — how distance is measured, and when it is arguable.
- How this school decides between applicants. Sibling rules, catchment, faith criteria and tie-breaks are in the school's own admission arrangements. What matters for an appeal is whether they were applied to you correctly — siblings, faith criteria and process mistakes.
- Whether an appeal here succeeds. Appeal outcomes are published by council only. A school being heavily oversubscribed means more families appeal, not that their appeals do better.
About the school
- Type
- Academy converter
- Admissions policy
- Selective
- Religious character
- No religious character
- Entry point
- Year 7
- Council
- Lancashire
Postcode BB4 7BJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 150261).
Other contested secondary schools in Lancashire
- Corpus Christi Catholic High School 1.84 first choices per place
- Bay Leadership Academy 1.57 first choices per place
- Millfield Science & Performing Arts College 1.45 first choices per place
- Lathom High School : A Technology College 1.43 first choices per place
- St Michael's Church of England High School 1.42 first choices per place
- Broughton High School 1.39 first choices per place
- Clitheroe Royal Grammar School 1.32 first choices per place
- St Bede's Catholic High School 1.32 first choices per place
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.