School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Lancaster Girls' Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 25 families who named Lancaster Girls' Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 184 and 208 put it first.

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

1.13

first choices for every place available

208 first preferences for 184 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Lancaster Girls' Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Lancaster Girls' 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

Lancaster Girls' 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 Lancaster Girls' 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 1.2 per place 133 first choices 111 places 2016/17 1.1 per place 154 first choices 140 places 2017/18 1.11 per place 154 first choices 139 places 2018/19 1.16 per place 162 first choices 140 places 2019/20 1.12 per place 168 first choices 150 places 2020/21 1.14 per place 169 first choices 148 places 2021/22 1.38 per place 198 first choices 144 places 2022/23 1.12 per place 162 first choices 145 places 2023/24 1.2 per place 171 first choices 143 places 2024/25 1.13 per place 169 first choices 149 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 194 first choices 177 places 2026/27 1.13 per place 208 first choices 184 places
First preferences per place at Lancaster Girls' Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 208 first preferences for 184 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Lancaster Girls' 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
2015/16 111 133 111 1.2
2016/17 140 154 140 1.1
2017/18 139 154 139 1.11
2018/19 140 162 140 1.16
2019/20 150 168 150 1.12
2020/21 148 169 148 1.14
2021/22 144 198 144 1.38
2022/23 145 162 143 1.12
2023/24 143 171 142 1.2
2024/25 149 169 149 1.13
2025/26 177 194 176 1.1
2026/27 184 208 183 1.13

Places offered

184

in 2026/27

Named first choice

208

315 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

88%

183 of 208

Offers to families outside the council

3%

5 of 184 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

895

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

729

81.5% of capacity

Unfilled places

166

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

351

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 Lancaster Girls' 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 Lancaster Girls' Grammar School reported 166 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 81.5% 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, 2010/11 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Lancaster Girls' Grammar School from 2010/11 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 650 1,300 places on roll 10/11 12/13 14/15 16/17 18/19 21/22 23/24 24/25 2010/11 895 places 898 on roll 2011/12 895 places 896 on roll 2012/13 895 places 912 on roll 2013/14 895 places 920 on roll 2014/15 895 places 881 on roll 2015/16 895 places 885 on roll 2016/17 895 places 903 on roll 2017/18 1,065 places 891 on roll 2018/19 1,065 places 920 on roll 2020/21 1,000 places 981 on roll 2021/22 1,000 places 996 on roll 2022/23 1,065 places 1,000 on roll 2023/24 1,065 places 999 on roll 2024/25 1,246 places 995 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 LA1 1SF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136381).

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.