School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Lostock Hall Academy?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 36 families who named Lostock Hall Academy as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 156 and 187 put it first.

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

1.20

first choices for every place available

187 first preferences for 156 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Lostock Hall Academy

There is no published appeal success rate for Lostock Hall Academy, 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

Lostock Hall Academy turned first-choice families away in 7 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 Lostock Hall Academy, 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 0.89 per place 92 first choices 103 places 2016/17 0.98 per place 90 first choices 92 places 2017/18 0.92 per place 97 first choices 105 places 2018/19 0.83 per place 96 first choices 116 places 2019/20 1.21 per place 147 first choices 121 places 2020/21 1.04 per place 165 first choices 158 places 2021/22 1.13 per place 178 first choices 158 places 2022/23 0.99 per place 146 first choices 147 places 2023/24 1.23 per place 190 first choices 154 places 2024/25 1.13 per place 171 first choices 151 places 2025/26 1.07 per place 160 first choices 150 places 2026/27 1.2 per place 187 first choices 156 places
First preferences per place at Lostock Hall Academy. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 187 first preferences for 156 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Lostock Hall Academy, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 103 92 92 0.89
2016/17 92 90 90 0.98
2017/18 105 97 97 0.92
2018/19 116 96 96 0.83
2019/20 121 147 112 1.21
2020/21 158 165 145 1.04
2021/22 158 178 155 1.13
2022/23 147 146 135 0.99
2023/24 154 190 151 1.23
2024/25 151 171 144 1.13
2025/26 150 160 136 1.07
2026/27 156 187 151 1.2

Places offered

156

in 2026/27

Named first choice

187

442 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

80.7%

151 of 187

Offers to families outside the council

1%

1 of 156 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Lostock Hall Academy published for 2027 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 Lostock Hall Academy, 2027 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 Academy 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 Trustees accept, based on the written opinion of professional experts that there are exceptional medical, social or welfare reasons associated with the child or family that are directly relevant to Lostock Hall Academy; then
3 Children of staff who are employed by Lostock Hall Academy on either a full or part time basis when:
a) the member of staff has been employed by Lostock Hall Academy for 2 years or more
b) the member of staff is recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skill shortage.
4 Children with older brothers or sisters (including adopted and fostered siblings, step siblings and those living as siblings in the same family unit) attending the Academy at the date of the younger child's admission.
5 Higher priority will be given to the children living within the District Council wards of Coupe Green and Gregson Lane that lie within the geographical priority area (super GPA) up to a maximum of 15 students.
6 Children living within the Academy's geographical priority area (GPA) (see note (i) below).
7 Children living outside the Academy's geographical priority area (see note (i) below). If there are more children in any of the individual categories than there are places remaining, then those children who live nearest to the Academy by a straight line (radial) measure will have priority. The distance is measured using a geographical information system and the measurement is taken from the centre point of the Academy to the centre point of the home (see note (i) below). If the Trustees are unable to distinguish between applicants using the published criteria places will be offered via a random draw.

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 2027 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.

Lostock Hall Academy's determined admission arrangements for 2027 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

775

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

772

99.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

3

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 Lostock Hall Academy 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 Lostock Hall Academy reported 3 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.6% 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, 2011/12 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Lostock Hall Academy from 2011/12 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 450 900 places on roll 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2011/12 850 places 805 on roll 2012/13 850 places 785 on roll 2013/14 850 places 724 on roll 2014/15 850 places 680 on roll 2015/16 850 places 600 on roll 2016/17 850 places 551 on roll 2017/18 850 places 559 on roll 2018/19 798 places 567 on roll 2020/21 850 places 651 on roll 2021/22 850 places 700 on roll 2022/23 850 places 718 on roll 2023/24 850 places 776 on roll 2024/25 775 places 772 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
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lancashire

Postcode PR5 5UR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 137111).

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.