School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Broughton High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 75 families who named Broughton High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 168 and 234 put it first.

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

1.39

first choices for every place available

234 first preferences for 168 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Broughton High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Broughton 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

Broughton 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 Broughton 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 1.15 per place 205 first choices 179 places 2016/17 1.39 per place 256 first choices 184 places 2017/18 1.27 per place 230 first choices 181 places 2018/19 1.21 per place 218 first choices 180 places 2019/20 1.27 per place 228 first choices 180 places 2020/21 1.35 per place 241 first choices 178 places 2021/22 1.56 per place 279 first choices 179 places 2022/23 1.43 per place 253 first choices 177 places 2023/24 1.43 per place 255 first choices 178 places 2024/25 1.79 per place 317 first choices 177 places 2025/26 1.53 per place 271 first choices 177 places 2026/27 1.39 per place 234 first choices 168 places
First preferences per place at Broughton High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 234 first preferences for 168 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Broughton 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
2015/16 179 205 166 1.15
2016/17 184 256 162 1.39
2017/18 181 230 167 1.27
2018/19 180 218 161 1.21
2019/20 180 228 158 1.27
2020/21 178 241 162 1.35
2021/22 179 279 161 1.56
2022/23 177 253 167 1.43
2023/24 178 255 169 1.43
2024/25 177 317 167 1.79
2025/26 177 271 167 1.53
2026/27 168 234 159 1.39

Places offered

168

in 2026/27

Named first choice

234

768 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

67.9%

159 of 234

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 168 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

900

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

922

102.4% of capacity

Over its capacity by

22

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 Broughton 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 Broughton High 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Broughton 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 2009/10 880 places 896 on roll 2010/11 880 places 891 on roll 2011/12 900 places 891 on roll 2012/13 900 places 893 on roll 2013/14 900 places 904 on roll 2014/15 900 places 903 on roll 2015/16 900 places 898 on roll 2016/17 900 places 901 on roll 2017/18 900 places 901 on roll 2018/19 900 places 906 on roll 2020/21 900 places 910 on roll 2021/22 900 places 912 on roll 2022/23 900 places 917 on roll 2023/24 900 places 912 on roll 2024/25 900 places 922 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
Community school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lancashire

Postcode PR3 5JJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 119759).

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.