School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Lytham St Annes High School?

In 2026/27, Lytham St Annes High School offered 275 places and 257 families named it as their first choice.

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

0.93

first choices for every place available

257 first preferences for 275 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Lytham St Annes High School

There is no published appeal success rate for Lytham St Annes High 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

Lytham St Annes High School turned first-choice families away in 4 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 Lytham St Annes High 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 0.88 per place 221 first choices 252 places 2016/17 1.1 per place 299 first choices 271 places 2017/18 0.94 per place 276 first choices 293 places 2018/19 0.9 per place 265 first choices 294 places 2019/20 0.92 per place 296 first choices 321 places 2020/21 0.98 per place 317 first choices 325 places 2021/22 0.98 per place 311 first choices 318 places 2022/23 1.05 per place 361 first choices 344 places 2023/24 1.15 per place 368 first choices 320 places 2024/25 1.12 per place 355 first choices 318 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 311 first choices 319 places 2026/27 0.93 per place 257 first choices 275 places
First preferences per place at Lytham St Annes High School. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 257 first preferences for 275 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Lytham St Annes High School, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 252 221 216 0.88
2016/17 271 299 226 1.1
2017/18 293 276 262 0.94
2018/19 294 265 252 0.9
2019/20 321 296 285 0.92
2020/21 325 317 294 0.98
2021/22 318 311 292 0.98
2022/23 344 361 321 1.05
2023/24 320 368 302 1.15
2024/25 318 355 313 1.12
2025/26 319 311 289 0.97
2026/27 275 257 257 0.93

Places offered

275

in 2026/27

Named first choice

257

495 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

100%

257 of 257

Offers to families outside the council

6%

17 of 273 offers

This school was issued a new Department for Education reference when it converted to an academy. Its earlier years are included above, reported at the time under reference 119740.

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

1,640

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,600

97.6% of capacity

Unfilled places

40

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 Lytham St Annes High 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 Lytham St Annes High School reported 40 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 97.6% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Lytham St Annes High School from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 900 1,800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,698 places 1,641 on roll 2010/11 1,738 places 1,637 on roll 2011/12 1,735 places 1,600 on roll 2012/13 1,650 places 1,608 on roll 2013/14 1,649 places 1,502 on roll 2014/15 1,631 places 1,425 on roll 2015/16 1,597 places 1,373 on roll 2016/17 1,526 places 1,411 on roll 2017/18 1,526 places 1,365 on roll 2018/19 1,475 places 1,418 on roll 2020/21 1,551 places 1,519 on roll 2021/22 1,625 places 1,517 on roll 2022/23 1,655 places 1,579 on roll 2023/24 1,655 places 1,622 on roll 2024/25 1,640 places 1,600 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 FY8 4GW. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 150607).

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.