School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Marsden Heights Community College?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 23 families who named Marsden Heights Community College as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 205 and 209 put it first.

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

1.02

first choices for every place available

209 first preferences for 205 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Marsden Heights Community College

There is no published appeal success rate for Marsden Heights Community 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

Marsden Heights Community 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 Marsden Heights Community 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 0.73 per place 120 first choices 164 places 2016/17 0.7 per place 147 first choices 209 places 2017/18 0.62 per place 129 first choices 209 places 2018/19 0.62 per place 127 first choices 206 places 2019/20 0.64 per place 134 first choices 209 places 2020/21 0.68 per place 141 first choices 208 places 2021/22 0.77 per place 157 first choices 205 places 2022/23 0.78 per place 163 first choices 208 places 2023/24 0.82 per place 173 first choices 210 places 2024/25 1.01 per place 209 first choices 206 places 2025/26 1.1 per place 227 first choices 207 places 2026/27 1.02 per place 209 first choices 205 places
First preferences per place at Marsden Heights Community College. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 209 first preferences for 205 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Marsden Heights Community College, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 164 120 120 0.73
2016/17 209 147 136 0.7
2017/18 209 129 121 0.62
2018/19 206 127 122 0.62
2019/20 209 134 127 0.64
2020/21 208 141 134 0.68
2021/22 205 157 157 0.77
2022/23 208 163 158 0.78
2023/24 210 173 173 0.82
2024/25 206 209 182 1.01
2025/26 207 227 192 1.1
2026/27 205 209 186 1.02

Places offered

205

in 2026/27

Named first choice

209

463 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

89%

186 of 209

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 205 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 134990.

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

1,050

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

1,042

99.2% of capacity

Unfilled places

8

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 Marsden Heights Community 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 Marsden Heights Community College reported 8 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 99.2% 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, 2009/10 to 2024/25

Places Pupils on roll

Places and pupils on roll at Marsden Heights Community College from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 550 1,100 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 1,050 places 712 on roll 2010/11 1,050 places 709 on roll 2011/12 1,050 places 705 on roll 2012/13 1,050 places 779 on roll 2013/14 1,050 places 849 on roll 2014/15 1,050 places 872 on roll 2015/16 1,050 places 905 on roll 2016/17 1,050 places 979 on roll 2017/18 1,050 places 968 on roll 2018/19 1,050 places 996 on roll 2020/21 1,050 places 1,054 on roll 2021/22 1,050 places 1,051 on roll 2022/23 1,050 places 1,048 on roll 2023/24 1,050 places 1,047 on roll 2024/25 1,050 places 1,042 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 sponsor led
Admissions policy
Non-selective
Religious character
No religious character
Entry point
Year 7
Council
Lancashire

Postcode BB9 0PR. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 146276).

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.