School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Burnley High School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 13 families who named Burnley High School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 119 and 126 put it first.

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

1.06

first choices for every place available

126 first preferences for 119 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Burnley High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Burnley 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

Burnley High School turned first-choice families away in 8 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 7 of those years. In the other 1 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Burnley 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 0.81 per place 61 first choices 75 places 2016/17 0.92 per place 83 first choices 90 places 2017/18 1.38 per place 124 first choices 90 places 2018/19 1.66 per place 148 first choices 89 places 2019/20 0.82 per place 99 first choices 120 places 2020/21 1.12 per place 135 first choices 120 places 2021/22 0.96 per place 124 first choices 129 places 2022/23 1.05 per place 133 first choices 127 places 2023/24 0.99 per place 130 first choices 131 places 2024/25 1.05 per place 136 first choices 129 places 2025/26 1.08 per place 130 first choices 120 places 2026/27 1.06 per place 126 first choices 119 places
First preferences per place at Burnley High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 126 first preferences for 119 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Burnley 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 75 61 61 0.81
2016/17 90 83 72 0.92
2017/18 90 124 83 1.38
2018/19 89 148 77 1.66
2019/20 120 99 92 0.82
2020/21 120 135 102 1.12
2021/22 129 124 121 0.96
2022/23 127 133 122 1.05
2023/24 131 130 123 0.99
2024/25 129 136 122 1.05
2025/26 120 130 111 1.08
2026/27 119 126 113 1.06

Places offered

119

in 2026/27

Named first choice

126

551 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.7%

113 of 126

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 119 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

650

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

595

91.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

55

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 Burnley 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 Burnley High School reported 55 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 91.5% 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, 2014/15 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Burnley High School from 2014/15 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2014/15 450 places 41 on roll 2015/16 650 places 133 on roll 2016/17 650 places 224 on roll 2017/18 650 places 333 on roll 2018/19 650 places 421 on roll 2020/21 650 places 540 on roll 2021/22 650 places 560 on roll 2022/23 650 places 570 on roll 2023/24 650 places 596 on roll 2024/25 650 places 595 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
Free schools
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lancashire

Postcode BB12 6NX. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141028).

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.