School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Haslingden High School and Sixth Form?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 22 families who named Haslingden High School and Sixth Form as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 263 and 266 put it first.

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

1.01

first choices for every place available

266 first preferences for 263 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Haslingden High School and Sixth Form

There is no published appeal success rate for Haslingden High School and Sixth Form, 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

Haslingden High School and Sixth Form turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 9 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 Haslingden High School and Sixth Form, 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 1.18 per place 310 first choices 262 places 2016/17 1.01 per place 271 first choices 267 places 2017/18 1.07 per place 284 first choices 266 places 2018/19 1.11 per place 299 first choices 270 places 2019/20 1.17 per place 314 first choices 268 places 2020/21 1.09 per place 294 first choices 269 places 2021/22 0.96 per place 256 first choices 266 places 2022/23 0.95 per place 251 first choices 265 places 2023/24 1.14 per place 305 first choices 268 places 2024/25 1.03 per place 273 first choices 265 places 2025/26 0.98 per place 266 first choices 272 places 2026/27 1.01 per place 266 first choices 263 places
First preferences per place at Haslingden High School and Sixth Form. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 266 first preferences for 263 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Haslingden High School and Sixth Form, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 262 310 245 1.18
2016/17 267 271 241 1.01
2017/18 266 284 244 1.07
2018/19 270 299 245 1.11
2019/20 268 314 253 1.17
2020/21 269 294 255 1.09
2021/22 266 256 238 0.96
2022/23 265 251 236 0.95
2023/24 268 305 263 1.14
2024/25 265 273 249 1.03
2025/26 272 266 234 0.98
2026/27 263 266 244 1.01

Places offered

263

in 2026/27

Named first choice

266

669 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

91.7%

244 of 266

Offers to families outside the council

1%

2 of 263 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

1,310

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,329

101.5% of capacity

Over its capacity by

19

reported as full or beyond

Sixth form places

201

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 Haslingden High School and Sixth Form 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 Haslingden High School and Sixth Form 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 Haslingden High School and Sixth Form from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 850 1,700 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,498 places 1,516 on roll 2010/11 1,498 places 1,528 on roll 2011/12 1,508 places 1,531 on roll 2012/13 1,497 places 1,564 on roll 2013/14 1,497 places 1,526 on roll 2014/15 1,497 places 1,557 on roll 2015/16 1,493 places 1,552 on roll 2016/17 1,493 places 1,549 on roll 2017/18 1,501 places 1,573 on roll 2018/19 1,501 places 1,563 on roll 2020/21 1,511 places 1,601 on roll 2021/22 1,511 places 1,571 on roll 2022/23 1,511 places 1,540 on roll 2023/24 1,511 places 1,523 on roll 2024/25 1,511 places 1,540 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 BB4 4EY. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 119767).

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.