School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Eden Boys' School, Preston?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 8 families who named Eden Boys' School, Preston as their first choice did not get a place: 116 put it first and 108 of them were offered one.

Below: what an appeal in Lancashire actually involves, and how contested this school has been over 11 years of official figures.

8

first-choice families refused a place in 2026/27

116 first preferences for 121 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Eden Boys' School, Preston

There is no published appeal success rate for Eden Boys' School, Preston, 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

Eden Boys' School, Preston turned first-choice families away in 6 of the last 11 years. More families named it first than it had places in 3 of those years. In the other 3 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 Eden Boys' School, Preston, 2016/17 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 16/17 18/19 20/21 22/23 24/25 26/27 2016/17 0.98 per place 118 first choices 120 places 2017/18 0.93 per place 111 first choices 119 places 2018/19 0.8 per place 95 first choices 119 places 2019/20 0.85 per place 103 first choices 121 places 2020/21 0.97 per place 120 first choices 124 places 2021/22 0.96 per place 119 first choices 124 places 2022/23 1.05 per place 129 first choices 123 places 2023/24 1.1 per place 136 first choices 124 places 2024/25 0.85 per place 99 first choices 117 places 2025/26 1.04 per place 129 first choices 124 places 2026/27 0.96 per place 116 first choices 121 places
First preferences per place at Eden Boys' School, Preston. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 116 first preferences for 121 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Eden Boys' School, Preston, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2016/17 120 118 103 0.98
2017/18 119 111 105 0.93
2018/19 119 95 95 0.8
2019/20 121 103 98 0.85
2020/21 124 120 105 0.97
2021/22 124 119 104 0.96
2022/23 123 129 114 1.05
2023/24 124 136 117 1.1
2024/25 117 99 99 0.85
2025/26 124 129 109 1.04
2026/27 121 116 108 0.96

Places offered

121

in 2026/27

Named first choice

116

198 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

93.1%

108 of 116

Offers to families outside the council

2%

3 of 121 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

700

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

617

88.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

83

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 Eden Boys' School, Preston 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 Eden Boys' School, Preston reported 83 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 88.1% 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, 2015/16 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Eden Boys' School, Preston from 2015/16 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 350 700 places on roll 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2015/16 700 places 144 on roll 2016/17 700 places 270 on roll 2017/18 700 places 388 on roll 2018/19 700 places 518 on roll 2020/21 700 places 605 on roll 2021/22 700 places 606 on roll 2022/23 700 places 616 on roll 2023/24 700 places 616 on roll 2024/25 700 places 617 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lancashire

Postcode PR1 4BD. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 141971).

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.