School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Balshaw's Church of England High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 39 families who named Balshaw's Church of England High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 179 and 201 put it first.

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

1.12

first choices for every place available

201 first preferences for 179 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Balshaw's Church of England High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Balshaw's Church of England 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 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.

How contested this school has been

Balshaw's Church of England High 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 Balshaw's Church of England 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 1.35 per place 250 first choices 185 places 2016/17 1.12 per place 207 first choices 185 places 2017/18 1.18 per place 216 first choices 183 places 2018/19 1.12 per place 207 first choices 184 places 2019/20 1.16 per place 215 first choices 185 places 2020/21 1.51 per place 272 first choices 180 places 2021/22 1.25 per place 228 first choices 183 places 2022/23 1.25 per place 228 first choices 182 places 2023/24 1.2 per place 221 first choices 184 places 2024/25 1.15 per place 213 first choices 186 places 2025/26 1.17 per place 215 first choices 183 places 2026/27 1.12 per place 201 first choices 179 places
First preferences per place at Balshaw's Church of England High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 201 first preferences for 179 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Balshaw's Church of England 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
2015/16 185 250 167 1.35
2016/17 185 207 158 1.12
2017/18 183 216 162 1.18
2018/19 184 207 165 1.12
2019/20 185 215 174 1.16
2020/21 180 272 165 1.51
2021/22 183 228 169 1.25
2022/23 182 228 165 1.25
2023/24 184 221 164 1.2
2024/25 186 213 167 1.15
2025/26 183 215 164 1.17
2026/27 179 201 162 1.12

Places offered

179

in 2026/27

Named first choice

201

630 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

80.6%

162 of 201

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 179 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

973

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

930

95.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

43

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 Balshaw's Church of England 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 Balshaw's Church of England High School reported 43 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 95.6% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Balshaw's Church of England High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 500 1,000 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 925 places 921 on roll 2010/11 925 places 926 on roll 2011/12 925 places 931 on roll 2012/13 925 places 924 on roll 2013/14 925 places 926 on roll 2014/15 925 places 925 on roll 2015/16 925 places 924 on roll 2016/17 925 places 924 on roll 2017/18 925 places 916 on roll 2018/19 925 places 916 on roll 2020/21 925 places 919 on roll 2021/22 925 places 912 on roll 2022/23 925 places 916 on roll 2023/24 925 places 916 on roll 2024/25 973 places 930 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.

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. Balshaw's Church of England High School has been the subject of one such determination. The adjudicator found its arrangements did not comply with the Code.

Adjudicator determinations naming Balshaw's Church of England High School. Each links to the full determination on GOV.UK.
Determined Outcome Determination
22 September 2025 Arrangements did not comply ADA4440

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

About the school

Type
Voluntary controlled school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lancashire

Postcode PR25 3AH. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 119775).

Other contested secondary schools in Lancashire

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.