School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Lathom High School : A Technology College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 71 families who named Lathom High School : A Technology College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 160 and 228 put it first.

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

1.43

first choices for every place available

228 first preferences for 160 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Lathom High School : A Technology College

There is no published appeal success rate for Lathom High School : A Technology College, 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

Lathom High School : A Technology College turned first-choice families away in 3 of the last 12 years. In each of those years more families named it as their first choice than it had places available.

First preferences per place at Lathom High School : A Technology College, 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 0.84 per place 65 first choices 77 places 2016/17 0.53 per place 67 first choices 126 places 2017/18 0.73 per place 74 first choices 101 places 2018/19 0.52 per place 49 first choices 95 places 2019/20 0.54 per place 65 first choices 121 places 2020/21 0.88 per place 105 first choices 120 places 2021/22 0.74 per place 91 first choices 123 places 2022/23 0.92 per place 120 first choices 131 places 2023/24 0.91 per place 159 first choices 174 places 2024/25 1.59 per place 255 first choices 160 places 2025/26 1.17 per place 186 first choices 159 places 2026/27 1.43 per place 228 first choices 160 places
First preferences per place at Lathom High School : A Technology College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 228 first preferences for 160 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Lathom High School : A Technology College, 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 77 65 65 0.84
2016/17 126 67 67 0.53
2017/18 101 74 74 0.73
2018/19 95 49 49 0.52
2019/20 121 65 65 0.54
2020/21 120 105 105 0.88
2021/22 123 91 91 0.74
2022/23 131 120 120 0.92
2023/24 174 159 159 0.91
2024/25 160 255 151 1.59
2025/26 159 186 145 1.17
2026/27 160 228 157 1.43

Places offered

160

in 2026/27

Named first choice

228

381 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

68.9%

157 of 228

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 160 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Lathom High School : A Technology College published for 2026 entry, in the order the school itself sets them out. They are the rules the admission authority had to apply when more families applied than there were places — and at the first stage of an appeal, they are the document the panel is looking at.

Oversubscription criteria for Lathom High School : A Technology College, 2026 entry, quoted from the school's determined admission arrangements. Sub-clauses are shown indented under the criterion they qualify.
Rank Criterion, as the school words it
1 Looked after children or a child who was previously looked after, but immediately after being looked after became subject to an adoption, child arrangement order, or special guardianship order or those children who appear to the school to have been in state care outside of England and ceased to be in state care as a result of being adopted then
2 Children for whom the Governing Body accepts that there are exceptional medical, social or welfare reasons which are directly relevant to the school concerned. (see note i below) then
3 Children with older brothers or sisters attending the school when the younger child will start, (see

The first criterion is not the school's choice. Paragraph 1.7 of the School Admissions Code 2021 requires every admission authority in England to give looked-after and previously looked-after children the highest priority, so it sits at the top of every list of this kind.

Meeting a criterion is not the same as winning an appeal

A panel does not decide your appeal by working through this list again. At the first stage it asks a narrower question: were these arrangements lawful, and were they applied to your application correctly and impartially? If they were, the panel moves to the second stage and weighs your child's circumstances against the harm to the school of admitting another pupil — and that stage has nothing to do with which criterion you fell under.

So this list is most useful for checking one thing: whether the school applied its own published rules to you properly. A criterion applied to you in a way the wording does not support is a first-stage point. Simply falling into a lower category is not — that is the system working as published.

These are the criteria determined for 2026 entry. An admission authority must re-determine its arrangements by 15 March each year, so check the school's current version before relying on any of this for a different round.

Lathom High School : A Technology College's determined admission arrangements for 2026 entry, published by the admission authority under paragraph 1.47 of the School Admissions Code 2021. Source document. Quoted verbatim; wording, order and numbering are the school's own.

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

872

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

786

90.1% of capacity

Unfilled places

86

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 Lathom High School : A Technology College 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 Lathom High School : A Technology College reported 86 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 90.1% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Lathom High School : A Technology College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 869 places 666 on roll 2010/11 869 places 698 on roll 2011/12 869 places 720 on roll 2012/13 861 places 664 on roll 2013/14 861 places 605 on roll 2014/15 861 places 549 on roll 2015/16 861 places 616 on roll 2016/17 872 places 619 on roll 2017/18 872 places 598 on roll 2018/19 872 places 553 on roll 2020/21 872 places 564 on roll 2021/22 872 places 603 on roll 2022/23 872 places 650 on roll 2023/24 872 places 753 on roll 2024/25 872 places 786 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
Foundation school
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lancashire

Postcode WN8 6JN. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 119774).

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.