School Admission Appeals

Refused a place at Moor Park High School and Sixth Form?

You are not alone. In 2026/27, 29 families who named Moor Park High School and Sixth Form as their first choice did not get a place: the school offered 127 and 141 put it first.

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

1.11

first choices for every place available

141 first preferences for 127 places, 2026/27

Appealing a refusal at Moor Park High School and Sixth Form

There is no published appeal success rate for Moor Park High School and Sixth Form, 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

Moor Park High School and Sixth Form turned first-choice families away in 10 of the last 12 years. More families named it first than it had places in 7 of those years. In the other 3 it had places on paper and still turned first-choice families away — which happens where families who may not meet a school's criteria rank it below a safer choice — common at selective, faith and single-sex schools, and it means the first-preference count understates how wanted the school is.

First preferences per place at Moor Park High School and Sixth Form, 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 per place 115 first choices 115 places 2016/17 0.9 per place 86 first choices 96 places 2017/18 0.72 per place 82 first choices 114 places 2018/19 1.05 per place 109 first choices 104 places 2019/20 0.92 per place 103 first choices 112 places 2020/21 1.35 per place 148 first choices 110 places 2021/22 1.21 per place 135 first choices 112 places 2022/23 1.08 per place 119 first choices 110 places 2023/24 1.3 per place 146 first choices 112 places 2024/25 1.58 per place 169 first choices 107 places 2025/26 0.97 per place 125 first choices 129 places 2026/27 1.11 per place 141 first choices 127 places
First preferences per place at Moor Park High School and Sixth Form. Years with too small an intake to carry a ratio are left blank rather than plotted. Latest year: 141 first preferences for 127 places.
View as a table
Places, first preferences and offers at Moor Park High School and Sixth Form, by year. A ratio is shown only where the intake is large enough to carry one.
Year Places First choices Offered Per place
2015/16 115 115 101 1
2016/17 96 86 86 0.9
2017/18 114 82 82 0.72
2018/19 104 109 94 1.05
2019/20 112 103 87 0.92
2020/21 110 148 101 1.35
2021/22 112 135 97 1.21
2022/23 110 119 93 1.08
2023/24 112 146 94 1.3
2024/25 107 169 100 1.58
2025/26 129 125 105 0.97
2026/27 127 141 112 1.11

Places offered

127

in 2026/27

Named first choice

141

446 named it at any preference

First choices offered a place

79.4%

112 of 141

Offers to families outside the council

0%

0 of 127 offers

How places were ranked

These are the oversubscription criteria Moor Park High School and Sixth Form published for 2025 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 Moor Park High School and Sixth Form, 2025 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.
2 Children with special medical or social circumstances affecting the child where these needs can only be met at Moor Park. To meet this criterion written evidence from an appropriate professional, such as a doctor, psychologist or social worker is required for the governors to consider medical, social or welfare reasons for admission. This should accompany the application form. Please note, only exceptional reasons associated with the child/or family and relating to the suitability of the school, are normally accepted in this criterion, for example, where these needs can only be met at this school.
3 Children who will have a sibling in attendance at Moor Park in years 7 to 11 at the time of admission. The term ‘sibling’ includes brothers and sisters, stepchildren, half brothers and sisters and adopted and fostered children who are living at the same address.
4 Children with a parent employed by the School on a permanent contract either full or part- time at the date of application. 5. Proximity to school. The measurement used will be taken in a straight line from the centre point of the residence to the centre point of Moor Park, with nearer addresses having priority over more distant ones. Address of Pupil The address used on the admission form must be the current one at the time of application, ie the family’s main residence. If the address changes subsequently, the parents should notify the school. […] criterion continues in the source document

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 2025 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.

Moor Park High School and Sixth Form's determined admission arrangements for 2025 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

618

2024/25, whole school

Pupils in them

558

90.3% of capacity

Unfilled places

60

across Years 7 to 11

Sixth form places

68

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 Moor Park High School and Sixth Form 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 Moor Park High School and Sixth Form reported 60 unfilled places across Years 7 to 11, at 90.3% 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 Moor Park High School and Sixth Form from 2009/10 to 2024/25. Where the roll meets the places line, the school is full. 0 400 800 places on roll 09/10 11/12 13/14 15/16 17/18 20/21 22/23 24/25 2009/10 520 places 518 on roll 2010/11 540 places 522 on roll 2011/12 536 places 528 on roll 2012/13 547 places 525 on roll 2013/14 644 places 537 on roll 2014/15 700 places 575 on roll 2015/16 742 places 567 on roll 2016/17 742 places 564 on roll 2017/18 742 places 591 on roll 2018/19 742 places 594 on roll 2020/21 742 places 607 on roll 2021/22 688 places 617 on roll 2022/23 688 places 608 on roll 2023/24 686 places 604 on roll 2024/25 686 places 599 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 PR1 6DT. School details from Get Information About Schools (URN 119773).

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.