School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Lancaster Royal Grammar School?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 20 families who named Lancaster Royal Grammar School as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 164 and 183 put it first.

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

1.12

first choices for every place available

183 first preferences for 164 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Lancaster Royal Grammar School

There is no published appeal success rate for Lancaster 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

Lancaster 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 Lancaster 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 1.17 per place 158 first choices 135 places 2016/17 1.2 per place 168 first choices 140 places 2017/18 1.17 per place 182 first choices 156 places 2018/19 1.19 per place 195 first choices 164 places 2019/20 1.23 per place 195 first choices 159 places 2020/21 1.13 per place 185 first choices 164 places 2021/22 1.28 per place 205 first choices 160 places 2022/23 1.16 per place 182 first choices 157 places 2023/24 1.16 per place 185 first choices 160 places 2024/25 1.21 per place 202 first choices 167 places 2025/26 1.28 per place 203 first choices 158 places 2026/27 1.12 per place 183 first choices 164 places
First preferences per place at Lancaster Royal Grammar School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 183 first preferences for 164 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Lancaster 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
2015/16 135 158 134 1.17
2016/17 140 168 139 1.2
2017/18 156 182 156 1.17
2018/19 164 195 162 1.19
2019/20 159 195 155 1.23
2020/21 164 185 164 1.13
2021/22 160 205 158 1.28
2022/23 157 182 155 1.16
2023/24 160 185 159 1.16
2024/25 167 202 167 1.21
2025/26 158 203 158 1.28
2026/27 164 183 163 1.12

Places offered

164

in 2026/27

Named first choice

183

287 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89.1%

163 of 183

Offers to families outside the council

2%

3 of 164 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

866

96.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

34

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

350

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 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 Lancaster Royal Grammar School reported 34 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 96.2% 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 Royal 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 1,165 places 1,043 on roll 2011/12 1,165 places 1,045 on roll 2012/13 1,165 places 1,044 on roll 2013/14 1,165 places 1,041 on roll 2014/15 1,165 places 1,027 on roll 2015/16 1,165 places 1,021 on roll 2016/17 1,165 places 1,014 on roll 2017/18 1,165 places 1,035 on roll 2018/19 1,165 places 1,078 on roll 2020/21 1,180 places 1,221 on roll 2021/22 1,180 places 1,260 on roll 2022/23 1,165 places 1,259 on roll 2023/24 1,165 places 1,268 on roll 2024/25 1,250 places 1,286 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
Faith
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lancashire

Postcode LA1 3EF. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 136742).

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.