School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Clitheroe Royal Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 57 families who named Clitheroe Royal Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 175 and 231 put it first.

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

1.32

first choices for every place available

231 first preferences for 175 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Clitheroe Royal Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Clitheroe Royal 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.

How contested this school has been

Clitheroe Royal 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.

First preferences per place at Clitheroe Royal Grammar 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 1.13 per place 133 first choices 118 places 2016/17 1.35 per place 205 first choices 152 places 2017/18 1.17 per place 177 first choices 151 places 2018/19 1.09 per place 164 first choices 150 places 2019/20 1.29 per place 193 first choices 150 places 2020/21 1.31 per place 194 first choices 148 places 2021/22 1.51 per place 222 first choices 147 places 2022/23 1.28 per place 187 first choices 146 places 2023/24 1.31 per place 237 first choices 181 places 2024/25 1.28 per place 230 first choices 179 places 2025/26 1.23 per place 213 first choices 173 places 2026/27 1.32 per place 231 first choices 175 places
First preferences per place at Clitheroe Royal Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 231 first preferences for 175 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Clitheroe Royal Grammar School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 118 133 118 1.13
2016/17 152 205 152 1.35
2017/18 151 177 150 1.17
2018/19 150 164 146 1.09
2019/20 150 193 148 1.29
2020/21 148 194 147 1.31
2021/22 147 222 146 1.51
2022/23 146 187 144 1.28
2023/24 181 237 180 1.31
2024/25 179 230 179 1.28
2025/26 173 213 172 1.23
2026/27 175 231 174 1.32

Places offered

175

in 2026/27

Named first choice

231

451 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

75.3%

174 of 231

Offers to families outside the council

10%

18 of 175 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

810

90% of capacity

Unfilled places

90

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

713

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 Clitheroe Royal 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 Clitheroe Royal Grammar School reported 90 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 90% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Clitheroe Royal Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 1,321 places 1,261 on roll 2011/12 1,342 places 1,243 on roll 2012/13 1,321 places 1,243 on roll 2013/14 1,321 places 1,246 on roll 2014/15 1,321 places 1,224 on roll 2015/16 1,321 places 1,174 on roll 2016/17 1,321 places 1,220 on roll 2017/18 1,321 places 1,286 on roll 2018/19 1,321 places 1,305 on roll 2020/21 1,463 places 1,397 on roll 2021/22 1,445 places 1,424 on roll 2022/23 1,463 places 1,409 on roll 2023/24 1,463 places 1,426 on roll 2024/25 1,613 places 1,472 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
Selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lancashire

Postcode BB7 2DJ. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136390).

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.